A heavy, sweltering Arizona heat was pounding down on my mother and me outside the Scottsdale Toys”R”Us. Temperatures had reached 95 degrees as we walked out of the former giant toy store that had played a crucial role in my childhood development. The year was 1991, and Electronic Arts (EA) had just released its first NHL game for the Sega Genesis console. I had convinced her that if we got there early enough, I could be “the first person in the world to play it.” The phrase “I remember it like it was yesterday” is sometimes used too casually in context, but I can use it here without question. The anticipation to play was overwhelming during the 25-minute ride home back to Fountain Hills.
My passion for hockey started in Plymouth, Michigan, during the mid-’80s as Steve Yzerman rose to prominence with the Detroit Red Wings. I spent most of my youth playing roller hockey with my elementary school friends. The days of calling up my buddies Justin and Tyler on the (house-line) phone to figure out if we had enough to play or scrambling to get our homemade wooden nets out onto the street will always be one of my favorite childhood memories. But when the first EA Hockey title was introduced, during the late summer of 1991, our games began to change.
It’s in the Game
I made it home and ripped open that packaged game with a vengeance. My mother told me years later, it reminded her of Ralphie in the movie “A Christmas Story” when he finally got his Red Rider BB gun. I was grinning from ear to ear as I started to learn the basics with my favorite stars, which included Yzerman, Ray Sheppard, Sergei Fedorov, Steve Chiasson, and Vladimir Konstantinov. I can’t recollect how many hours I spent that day playing; I was in a zone of euphoria. This was the game of all games for me. Do you know that sound that plays in your head after spending too many hours in a casino, where you can still hear the slot machines ringing? I still remember that distinct organ music from the game echoing through my ears during that late night, long after I had gone to bed.
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The first version of the game in 1991, titled “NHL Hockey,” was, at the time, considered to be far and away the best hockey video game ever made. EA obtained an NHL license, so all of the team names and logos could be used, but the lack of a license from the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) resulted in all players being referred to by their numbers rather than names. That didn’t bother me since I knew who they were.
After that summer, it kind of all becomes a blur with regards to the various versions of the game we played throughout my teenage years. Every fall, we were lined up outside the Twelve Oaks Mall in Livonia, Michigan, to grab the latest annual edition. I would host parties at my house every summer, and the wait to get “next” could be five to six guys deep.
I still recall the girlfriends groaning as they looked on from my living room couch, knowing we would be loud and obnoxious for the next few hours. Bragging rights were always at stake, and I hated to lose. Controllers were thrown, verbal assaults ensued, and accusations of exposing game glitches were hurled. Sometimes, it got outright nasty. We didn’t know at the time, but those were some special moments of our teenage years. We would always laugh it off with no hard feelings. Well, at least most of us would. Sometimes, it would take a day or two to get an apology from certain characters.
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EA finally got licensing rights from both the NHL and NHLPA for the 1994 version. That didn’t matter, because our generation finally had a game that every hockey fan loved. The game itself has been considered a pop culture phenomenon throughout its 32-year history. I’ve always noticed that if someone brings up the Genesis console in a discussion, there’s always someone lurking about who shouts out, “NHL 94!”
Swingers
“I’m gonna make Wayne Gretzky’s head bleed for super fan number 99 over here.” It was a low-budget cult classic that really raised this EA franchise to a new level. The movie “Swingers” came out in 1996 and instantly became one of the most quotable films of the 1990s. It glorified the lifestyle of struggling actors trying to make it in Tinseltown. The scene was executed to perfection as a circle of friends were getting ready for a night of parties in the infamous Hollywood Hills. It was an iconic moment that appealed to many in the hockey community because the filmmakers found a way to make it relatable.
Vince Vaughn’s character, Trent, actor Patrick Van Horn’s character, Sue, and Mike, played by actor and director Jon Favreau, are “pregaming” in Sue’s apartment as they wait for their food delivery. It begins with a wide shot of the Sunset Strip with that all too familiar EA organ music playing underneath mixed with that roar of the crowd that you still can’t get out of your head. They are battling it out on their Sega console with Trent’s Chicago Blackhawks and Sue’s Los Angeles Kings. The constant back-and-forth banter over whose team is better is a key aspect of the scene.
Van Horn’s character is, of course, wearing a Kings home-white Gretzky jersey as a nicely added touch. When Sue gets up to grab cash for the food, he requests that the game be paused. An overexcited but mischievous Trent stops the game at first but then proceeds to line up Gretzky with Jeremy Roenick for a bone-crushing hit as Sue looms in the background. Trent points out to Mike that he made “Gretzky’s head bleed” — courtesy of some gruesome, bloody EA animation.
For hockey fans, it didn’t matter if you lived in LA, New York, Chicago, or Vancouver, people who played the game could see similarities to their own group of friends. I don’t think, at the time, anyone involved with the film could have imagined that scene would become as big as it did, especially from a movie that had little to do with real hockey. To this day, the Gretzky line still stands the test of time for hockey and movie enthusiasts. The filmmakers succeeded in capturing the essence of what the EA NHL franchise meant for a younger generation of gamers and hardcore hockey fans.
Growing Up
As the years passed and priorities changed, the game was always the one constant. But as we get older, we develop new interests, which was a contributing factor for me in college. I think I really stopped playing after the 1998 PlayStation edition of the game came out. Consoles were changing every year, and with that came new controllers, leading to more buttons and my complete lack of interest. Why can’t we just have three buttons? Friends move on, and the real world starts to take over, while video games start to lose their luster. That free time that once seemed so inconsequential doesn’t exist anymore.
But the Story Doesn’t End There
I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2000 to work in the sports entertainment industry and have continued to do so for 23 years. During the majority of that time, I never owned a game console of any sort. While I had friends and roommates who played EA’s NFL Madden series or Call of Duty, I just never felt the urge to pick up a controller again. But things changed in March of 2020.
The COVID pandemic struck, confining many of us in the entertainment industry to our own homes. Working from our place of residence was the new normal, and let me tell you, I got bored quickly. Very quickly. My workdays were cut in half as we didn’t have as many projects to focus on, but I was still getting paid, so I had money and time to spend. For years, I had friends trying to convince me to get the latest gaming console so I could play Madden or MLB’s “The Show” online with them.
I finally caved in from boredom and purchased the Xbox console. Part of me was ashamed, while the other half was curious to see how the game had evolved since the late 1990s. It had been over 22 years since I last played. There were now what seemed to be about five times as many buttons as there were on my original Genesis controller, not to mention they were now wireless.
Part of the fun used to be playing the “untangle game” with your opponent before matches — those Sega cords could really get tied in knots if you remember correctly. But where was the camaraderie and the bonding? It seemed that everyone was playing online now, and the human element of it was all but gone. More importantly, how was I going to learn this all over again?
I started slowly, as navigating through the menus was terrifying at first. But after a few weeks of sparse play, I finally settled in on the Hockey Ultimate Team feature, and it all started coming back to me. While the gameplay and graphics were almost life-like, I still had that same joy of skating in from the blue line on a sharp angle to try and beat the goalie with that patented NHL 94 backhand-forehand move. It took me a while to learn the new game mechanics, but once I did, I was off and running again. I was back to being an NHL gamer.
The 2021 and 2022 editions kept me busy for the next two years as I continued to work from home. I enjoyed the team building and the Squad Battles game mode. But it didn’t take me long to realize the most important aspect of the NHL franchise had changed. Online play was now the preferable option for most players. For example, you could now essentially play someone in another state and could even communicate through your console with people you didn’t even know. At my age and with my schedule, I can’t have friends over to play. I started to reminisce about the shoulder battles you would have with your buddy and the bruises on your arms the following day.
Game Changer
I still purchased NHL 23 but haven’t been playing as much as I had in the previous two years. At times, it feels like the game has passed me by. I can’t keep up with some of these kids who play online as they toe-drag and spin around me. Some of these gamers are even now considered “professionals,” playing in major worldwide tournaments for money. Where was that in 1994 when my thumbs could move faster, EA?
Critics of the game have also argued that it’s become a “copy and paste” of the most recent version and that the gameplay suffers from “ice tilt.” “Glitch goals” and “ragging” have also resulted in online verbal melees that, at times, can go too far. It’s just not the same for me anymore. But that’s also a part of growing up.
What a Run It Was
Colorado Avalanche All-Star defenseman Cale Makar was introduced recently as the cover athlete for NHL 24. A new fancy trailer was produced and released on YouTube, generating hundreds of thousands of views. Online play continues to grow as the gaming industry evolves. I still haven’t decided if I will purchase the latest edition this fall, as it gets harder and harder to find the time to enjoy it. My daughter is about to turn four and is starting to command most of my attention these days. The game will forge on, with or without me, and I’m okay with that. I will always have fond memories of a video game from a sport that I cherish, one that brought my childhood friends and me together. That’s something that will stick with me the next time I hear, “EA Sports, it’s in the game.”