Genesis

NHLPA Hockey '93

The second EA Hockey game is an improvement, with a battery backed-up season mode, new goalie animations, signature moves, and real NHL players. Certain players can even shatter glass when they miss shots! During the intermissions, you not only view scores from other games, but see highlights as well! Perhaps this game's most infamous feature is the inclusion of blood, as seen in the classic movie "Swingers". When a player takes a hard shot and lies on his back injured, a large pool of blood forms around his head. It's unintentionally hilarious, and didn't appear in any other versions of this game. This was also the last NHL game to have fighting in it for several years. Another item of interest is a serious bug that lets you score at will by passing the puck straight through the goalie's legs and into the goal.

Luckily, at this point in time Genesis games have the most bang for your buck. I have seen this game sell for as little as 50 cents to as high as $2. In today's market, this game is a steal. So how much would I value this game? My value rating scale is based on how much I would pay for a game given any market. So for instance whether the game was selling for 10 cents or $100, the most I would pay for the game would be based solely on how much entertainment value an average gamer would get out of it. So, based on my evaluation of the game I would value it at $3. The strong gameplay and functional graphics will keep people involved initially, and the different teams and strong multiplayer gameplay will keep people interested beyond the time when they figure out how to score goals by the boatload. Beyond that, they'll probably just want to move on to a more advanced game.