The very original NHL game!!... "EA Hockey" in Europe.
This game is MUUUUCH MORE FUN to play than the FUCKING 16bit FIFAs (and I had one of those FIFA, and PLAYED IT A LOT in my MD, so, do NOT try to argument THIS with me).
Yeah, as an European boy you have no fucking idea who the hell are the Pittsburghs wathever, and you wanted to play with Manchester United, Juventus, FC Barcelona or Bayern Munich... but the truth is... NHL series is 10/10 fun and FIFAs were... slow and dumb as hell. And that is the "terrible" truth.
Unfortunately, Ice Hockey is basically a non existing thing in many European countries... so, "nobody" ever bought these games in those countries, even when this series DO had reviews in the european media every year: As a reader... you just passed the page uninterested.
The thing is, NHL game are pure gold, and you just learn the few basic rules they have in no time (like "icing"). It is not like those American Football Games or Baseball games you do not even understand how TF they work (because you have NO idea of the rules) or because you feel you are being cheated (esp. in baseball games).
I could only find out the MASSIVE fun the "NHL" Mega Drive games are... by chance, using emulation, 25 years ago. And at least one of them has to be in my TOP 20 for the Genesis/Mega Drive, and I'm SURE about that. You will not find FIFAs in that list:
I could play those NHL games for hours, as if it were minutes, just the contrary of those FIFAs, where you play minutes... and seems like an eternity.
In fact, I would like to play an NHL for MD right now, and I maybe will do it today.
But If I wanted to play some soccer game in Mega Drive now... I would NOT play a FIFA, I don't fucking care about the "official" license: they are BORING compared to many other football games for the system.
I suspect the magazines in the mid-90s had a lot of blame in the promotion of the 16bit "FIFA branded series" as "the definitive football game". Yeah, maybe they were the only ones having official names by then (well, not the very first one, they started to have them in the second, FIFA 95), but, dude... they suck "ballsroom".
I'm also sure that if EA had never payed to use the "FIFA brand" in that very first "FIFA game" for MD, in late 93 (which originally had to be called "EA Soccer", even previewed with that name in some mags of the time), that game would had been just another forgotten soccer game just in 2 years (Like MANY other soccer games of the time).
Not sure about the same with the NHL series, though.
