While many elements of hockey can be rather confusing to the casual sports fan, you don't have to know a lot about it to enjoy a game of Blades of Steel. This 8-bit hockey game still remains a blast to pop in and have a blast, regardless of your interest in the sport by combining fast-paced gameplay, satisfying music, and well done presentation.

Blades of Steel was developed and published by Konami, with lead producing from Shiemaru Umezaki (whose other works include Contra, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose, and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness). Blades of Steel was initially released exclusively in arcades in North America in 1987 before creation of the NES version in '88 overseas, where it was titled Konamic Ice Hockey. 

There's no NHL affiliation with the game, so the teams presented have no clear names and share no distinct traits with NHL teams. You can select from New York, Toronto, Chicago, Minnesota, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, and Los Angeles. They vary in colors, and I guess you could say some of the hues could vaguely represent the pro teams (Toronto deals a very Leafs-ish blue, for example). 

Blades of Steel is pretty self-explanatory. It's...hockey. It's some pretty entertaining 8-bit hockey, and is a step above fellow game of the same sport, Ice Hockey, which was a solid and enjoyable blast of a game. Blades of Steel picks up the intensity and cranks up the speed. It's 5v5 hockey with some of the professional rules in play, like penalties and icing, but mostly sticks to a [barley] no strings attached game of hockey that's very easy to pick up. 

The graphics and presentation are cool, the signature stadium organs that accompany most hockey games are brought to life in chiptune fashion. there's a preskating prior to the start, and it's a little surprising how much detail is in the sprite animation on the skaters. The goal celebrations are a nice touch, and even the goalie turns into Ron Hextall when letting a softie. Even during the intermission, you get to play a brief version of another Konami classic, Gradius.

Speaking of the chiptune, many of the hockey sounds, like the blades carving up the ice and ref whistles, are present. Like Double Dribble, Konami's basketball game, Blades of Steel uses some voice audio samples, which is always progressive to hear in an NES game. It has surprising clarity, and aids in the atmosphere. 

One of the things that keeps Blades of Steel playable to this day are the controls. The shooting and passing is responsive, and skating is fast and fleeting. It's possible to engage in fights, by checking the opposing player three times without bumping into other players. By mashing the buttons, it obliges the other player into a skirmish. Directing your shot isn't done manually, but rather a guided arrow moves up and down across the netmouth, indicating your shot trajectory. Even after all these years, I still enjoy this as a mechanic. As the goaltender can be controlled by a human opponent, this makes two human opponents going at each other very entertaining. The game will either end up being 1-2 or 14-8.

If modern NHL games feel overly rigid and technical, Blades packs the right amount of physics and challenge to keep it entertaining over the decades. Against the CPU, the A.I. will either obliterate you or be a total cakewalk, based on which difficulty you play. It's the perfect NES party game.