"My Favorite NHL Game Ever"

NHL 96 is one of the few NHL games I’ve played and the only one I own. But I’m glad that I own it. NHL 96 is an excellent NHL simulation. There are fights, a create a player mode and a lot of other stuff that makes this game great. Read about the different sections where I go into detail about why this is my favorite NHL game ever. The only thing that doesn’t fit into a category is that in this game, you can score when you are in the crease.

Graphics- This game has great graphics. Everything is the proper size, so the players aren’t bigger than the net, etc. The players are easy to see and easy to distinguish one team from another. The only problem with the graphics in this game was the thing you’ll see most often... the ice! This is a serious problem! The ice is blue! That’s what ruins this game’s overall grade. 7/10

Animations- The animations were also very good. Everything was very smooth and everything looked like it should. That means when a player is shooting it doesn’t look like they are sliding across the ice. The best part of the animations is that the goalie actions look very realistic.
10/10

Sound- There wasn’t much music in the game, only the menus, pause screen and the title screen. All of it was good except the season screen music gets really annoying after awhile. The in-game organ music was great. It didn’t play songs the entire period and they only played at the right times. However, the circus music just doesn’t seem like it fits in this game though. The Sound FX were also great, everything sounding realistic. The crowd cheering and booing is the same for pretty much everything and gets annoying because the crowd boos everytime some one on the home team is checked. 9/10

Options/Variety- This game is very customizable. They have season, exhibition, shootout and even TWO types of playoff modes. You can change clock speeds, toggle penalties and fights and believe me, this game is more enjoyable with the fights! You can also change difficulty levels a lot more. You can create your own player and pick everything about him like number, position and you get to pick how good he is certain categories. This game can give you so many
options it’ll take you awhile to do all of the combinations. 9/10

Control- This game has great control. Sometimes it can get frustrating when you want to switch players and they start moving the wrong direction just before you switch but that’s it. It also keeps it simple, all of your hockey with 3 buttons. 10/10

Gameplay- This game pretty much makes it like regular hockey. There are fights, the puck can go out of play and stuff like that. Two things I think are wrong are that you can score in the crease and you get all 5 players in overtime. For some reason, I think it’s easier to score goals on Nomad so if you have one... use it. 8/10

Replay Value- With all of these options and the season mode you’ll be coming back to this game for a while. It’s fun seeing how many goals you can score in one game and you can create some pretty interesting matchups too. 10/10

The Bottom Line- This game is worth getting. That’s right, your getting the most out of your $2 when you buy it at FuncoLand. Overall- 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/01, Updated 10/13/01