"Little Kids shoot and..."

The GameBoy Advance has not been very kind to the sports genre. For every Baseball Advance there is a NBA Jam. Hockey, to date has had two previous efforts, the excellent but ultimately easy NHL 2002 and the awful NHL Hitz 2003. Sports fans have been clamoring for a new kid on the block, and Backyard Hockey has it. In fact it has several kids.

The Backyard sports series, in case you didn't know, features pro athletes as kids, along with some of the neighborhood kids. Backyard hockey features Brian Leetch, Mike Modano(cover boy), Joe Thornton, Curtis Joseph and Jarome Ignilia, among others. You can also create your own kid, though you cant name him or her, instead giving them a nickname from a pre-selected list, like Sweetness or The General.

The game has several modes, including Practice, Exhibition and Season. Practice allows you to play 3 on 1 hockey. In addition the game has Air Hockey, a fun little time-waster.

The main portion of the game comes from its Season Play. In it, you pick 7 kids to comprise your team. You play a 14 game season to compete for a playoff spot. The game has all the NHL teams, plus some special Backyard teams. You get to choose from 4 rinks, plus two more you have to unlock.

The game itself is 3-on-3 hockey, plus goalies. You can 2, 4, and 6 minute periods. You can also choose to play with or without power ups. The game is pretty smooth, no slowdown at all. There are even powerplays and penalties. Sometimes penalties are based on who loses a rock-paper-scissor match. Penalties are pro-rated towards the length of the period(in other words, 30 seconds for 2 minute periods, 40 second for 4 minute periods, and 60 second for 6 minute periods).

The graphics are nothing special. They are about as good as the old NHL series. Sound-wise there is nothing to this game, outside of some sound effects and the occasional speech.

The real beauty is in the gameplay. On offense A is to shoot, B is to pass, R is for a speed burst and L is to dump the puck. On defense A is to poke check, B is to switch players and R is for speed burst. Despite these simple sounding controls the game plays just as well as NHL 2002 on the Game Boy Advance did. The difference is in difficulty levels. On the hardest settings I was losing games 8-1, 9-1. On the medium difficulty I'm about .500, scoring 3 goals a game. Meanwhile on NHL 2002 it took all of 4 games for me to have no problem winning.

The game has limited stat tracking abilities, and will only keep track of stats for your team. It keeps track of games played, goals, assists, points, plus/minus and penalty minutes. For goalies it keeps track of games played, wins, losses, ties, overtime losses, goals against average and save percentage.

Overall, I'd recommend this game to anyone who has grown tired of NHL 2002, or someone looking for a fun little sports game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/16/03