NHL Hockey
| NHL Hockey | |
|---|---|
North American cover art featuring Glenn Healy and 8 team logos from the 1990–91 NHL season | |
| Developer(s) | Park Place Productions |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Producer(s) | List
|
| Designer(s) | List
|
| Programmer(s) | Jim Simmons |
| Composer(s) | Rob Hubbard |
| Series | NHL series |
| Platform(s) | Mega Drive/Genesis |
| Release | August 1991 |
| Genre(s) | Sports (ice hockey) |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
NHL Hockey is an ice hockey video game developed by Park Place Productions and published by Electronic Arts. Released in the summer of 1991 exclusively for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the game allows one to two players to play action-oriented hockey matches that include events such as fighting, power plays, and penalties. Officially licensed by the National Hockey League, NHL Hockey features the teams from the 1990-1991 NHL season. It was later released outside North America as EA Hockey with country-based teams due to the lack of a worldwide league license.
As part of Electronic Arts' push to release console games for the Sega Genesis, the development team included several members of the group who created the 1990 John Madden Football. The team aimed to replicate the general concepts that made their football game successful. While they did not have access to the NHL players' likeness, the developers based the virtual players on real life players' skills and identified them by their respective jersey numbers.
NHL Hockey received critical acclaim both from contemporary video game publications and in retrospective commentaries. Critics lauded the game's action and variety of options as well as the realism of the title's presentation. The success lead to immediate sequels, spawning the NHL series, which has become one of the publisher's long-running franchises.