You've got to remember the historical time period that the NES was released – it was an age when the Cold War was still a very prominent problem in many American's minds, and game companies certainly didn't shy away from the free advertising that the fear-inspiring nightly news and morning papers were instilling in the purchasing public. It doesn't take a master of Mad Gab to discern the phonetically equivalent true title Konami was going for with this one, especially after you realize that the setting is a Soviet stronghold and all of the enemies are Communists. Do you need anything else? It's no Blades of Steel (hell EA's NHL09 isn't Blades of Steel), but growing up in Minnesota and playing on a hockey team ensured that this one was in the NES as much as Super Mario 3. I think I've got the same fond memory for this one as everyone else does: skinny dude, medium dude, and fat dude.

The only game that ended up rivaling this excellent design was Konami's Blades of Steel, but the two were different enough to own and enjoy both (which is why you'll find Blades on this countdown). Every Ice Hockey player discovered their own perfect combination of men, and then it was on to the ice. You could choose from three different player body types, and outfit your team with any combination of them fast but weak Skinny Guys, brawny but slow Fat Guys, or well-balanced, middle-ground Normal Guys. This game of skating and slap shots was perfectly balanced, simple fun with just the right touch of planning and strategy to keep things interesting match after match. None of those games ended up having the lasting appeal and addictiveness of one of its other contemporaries, though – the first-party Nintendo sports sim known simply as Ice Hockey.

Nintendo had a fairly diverse lineup of sports titles introduced for the NES early on in the system's life cycle, including 8-bit interpretations of soccer, tennis, volleyball and even downhill slalom skiing.

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