PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

When it comes to American Sports in Great Britain, not limited to but especially so in Hockey’s case, the way the sport is treated is beyond ridiculous, and it’s been made to feel more like British Football (or Soccer to anyone from North America) on ice, with promotion and relegation between leagues rather than franchise based systems in place, the same teams winning every season, at least four different championship trophies (knockout cup, league cup, etc), adverts all over the jerseys, lack of creativity when it comes to naming teams (think of how many teams in British Football are named “United”), and worst of all, many of the logos and jerseys are horrible. It’s almost as if the teams are deliberately trying to make themselves look and feel tacky to serious sports fans.

For this edition of War On Logos, I will be listing the top five things that are generally wrong with the identities of most of these teams from the United Kingdom, starting with…

5: Complete Irrelevance

Example team: Peterborough Islanders

As mentioned earlier, there is a general lack of creativity when it comes to naming UK based teams, with many of them resorting to using comfortably generic names that ultimately have little or nothing to do with the area they are based in. Pictured here for example is the logo of the Peterborough Islanders. To be fair, the logo looks quite good (probably because it was stolen or something), but they were named the Islanders because one of the founders of the team had ties with the Falkland Islands. And you guessed it; the name has absolutely nothing to do with the City of Peterborough.

Other examples: Chelmsford Chieftains, Streatham Redskins, Sheffield Scimitars, Swindon Wildcats, Basingstoke Bison… I could go on for ages here.

4: Boring, Old Fashioned Designs

Example team: Trafford Metros

Looking at this logo, you’d think that it was designed in the early 20^th century if not even earlier, despite the fact that this team hasn’t even been around that long. Believe it or not, this team was founded as recently as 2007, and then changed to this name and logo in 2009! Logos in this category are usually either hand drawn, or they tend to feature only the black lining, lacking in many, if any other colours. Most of the time these logos also seem to be trying to emulate British Football logos in appearance: this one shown here looks more like it belongs on a 1900’s Football shirt instead of a 2009 Ice Hockey jersey.

Other Examples: Oxford City Stars, Murrayfield Racers (defunct), Lee Valley Lions, Cambridge University Blues

3: Generic Clipart (Or Clipart-ish Graphics)

Example Team: Telford Tigers

When a team can’t afford/be bothered to hire a professional designer to make a good logo for them, one of their two other options is to go with a generic piece of clipart instead, which is usually provided to them by a jersey manufacturer such as Rhino (I had to mention them at some point). These graphics always have a tendency to be overly detailed, with way too many thin lines, and most of these logos make use of everybody’s favourite shading effect, gradients. Amateur designers always seem to think that gradients are “cool looking” for logos, yet it always feels tacky. Many logos of this type also tend to use generic word art to go with the clipart.

Other Examples: Chelmsford Chieftains, Wightlink Raiders, Paisley Pirates, Braehead Clan

2: Blatantly Stolen Logos

Example Team: Guildford Flames

Oh wow, that logo doesn’t look familiar at all now, does it? The other option for teams that won’t hire a professional designer to make a good looking logo for them is to instead “borrow” one already being used by a North American team (not limited to Hockey), much like how this Guildford Flames logo is evidently a rip-off of the Calgary Flames. It’s as if these teams either don’t know any better or they think that nobody will notice or care. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but at least the teams that use generic clipart are actually trying to come up with an identity for themselves!

Other Examples: Romford Raiders, Streatham Redskins, Basingstoke Bison, Bracknell Bees, Manchester Phoenix, Grimsby Redwings… yeah, that’s a lot. And I haven’t even named every team that does this!

1: A Sponsor in the Team Name

Example team: Wightlink Raiders

Never mind using crappy Clipart or stolen logos: this is about as low as it can possibly get for British teams. Most, if not all UK teams are funded primarily by sponsors, and as if the adverts all over the jerseys weren’t enough, some teams actually make the name of their biggest sponsor part of their team name, with the Isle of Wight based Wightlink Raiders being an example of this (the sponsor is a ferry company that pays for the team to travel across to the mainland, go figure).

Other Examples: Not many, although some of the top level Elite League teams are doing it: the “LBM” Belfast Giants, “GMB” Nottingham Panthers, and “MobileX” Newcastle Vipers.

And that’s pretty much a summary of all British Hockey logos there. Maybe some time in future I’ll take a look at teams from other countries in Europe, as there are some pretty bad logos there too.

I’m Wildwing64, and I declare War On Logos.

Ice Hockey (NES)

During the 80’s, as well as smash hits such as the Super Mario Bros. series, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, Nintendo also produced a series of sports games for its NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) console, with one of them being a game based around ice hockey, fittingly named Ice Hockey. Released in 1988, and featuring international teams, its release was seemingly tied in with the 1988 Winter Olympics. With the 2010 winter games being just around the corner, I saw it fitting to review this game now.

I was too young to have ever owned a NES back in the day, so I recently bought and downloaded it from the Wii online shop instead. Keep reading to see if I think this was a worthy purchase, or a waste of my 500 Wii points…

Presentation

When you turn on the game for the first time, you get a fairly standard title screen with a short little tune playing, and if you don’t select anything after a few seconds the game will go straight into a demo. On the title screen, you’re given two options: a one player game, and a two player game. From there, you can select your team, which team you will play against, as well as the game speed (from a choice of 1-5) and a time limit for each period (7, 10 or 15 minutes). Once that’s done and before the game starts, you can adjust your team’s lineup, made up of four players of up to three different players types (which I’ll talk about a bit later), and then the game will begin.

Graphics are fairly decent, and for a NES game they are generally what you’d expect. They aren’t the most bright and colourful in a videogame, since the majority of the time you’ll be seeing the big, white rink take up most of the screen, but since rinks are usually white anyway, that’s not really something to complain about. The rink basically looks as you’d expect it to in real life, and there are even a couple of Nintendo logos on the ice. The scoreboard seems to be built into the top of the rink, and serves its purpose well.

To make up for the seeming lack of colours, each of the six nations you can play as are represented by a different colour as follows: the USA (light blue), Sweden (yellow), Poland (brown), Canada (light green), the Soviet Union/Russia (Red) and Czechoslovakia (Gray). I’m not sure why, but for the Virtual Console version of this game, Sweden looks pale green while Poland looks dark green, but then only a small few of the NES games I’ve downloaded are perfect conversions of the originals.

Much like the graphics, sounds are just as you’d expect from an older videogame, but for a hockey game they work surprisingly well: among the many sound effects, you will hear things like the crowd, the referee’s whistle, the sound of a puck being shot, and when you pause the game you will hear a familiar sound from the Super Mario games.

At the end of each period, you’ll see one of the strangest looking Zambonis I’ve ever seen driving up and down the ice. It doesn’t beat Hat Trick’s “Nazi War Machine” as far as weirdness goes, but it looks like a steamroller tank thing being driven by a goalie.

Gameplay

With the NES having just two buttons as well as the D-Pad, the controls are simple but effective, although at first they’ll take a moment to get used to. For those who have picked up the original cartridge from eBay or something without instructions, the B and A buttons (1 and 2 on Wii) will respectively control shooting and passing when in possession of the puck, while on defence they will be used for switching players on your team, and body checking the rivals.

As mentioned earlier, when adjusting your team’s lineup you get a choice of up to three different player types to fill the four available spaces. They aren’t anything like the wingers or defensemen in real life hockey, but rather they are different weight classes: you’ll get the skinny lightweight player: very fast but gets pushed about easily; the fat heavyweight: strong but fairly slow; and finally the middleweight: who as his name suggests sits comfortably in the middle. Expert players may be able to take advantage of the lightweight’s high speed, while others may tend to use an all-heavyweight team and run the opponents down. Of course, as well as the four players in your lineup, you will also have a goaltender.

Unlike many other hockey games that followed, this game does not use cursors to show which player you are currently controlling, instead, the currently selected player for either team will flash, kind of like when Mario is invincible in his earlier games. When you pass the puck to another player, he will start flashing instead. Note that as well as the player, you will also be in control of your team’s goalie: simply press up and down to move him.

Once you get used to the controls, you’ll find that the game moves nice and fast, even at the lowest speed setting. And since there’s no real way to adjust the game’s difficulty, it’s deceptively hard the first time you play. Shots take a moment to charge up, so you’ll actually have to hold the B button for a moment, and then let go to send the puck flying. But you’ll need plenty of space to do so, as other players can easily slam into you and snatch the puck away. Sometimes you can fight another player for puck possession, which can sometimes lead to a funny little brawl, complete with a cartoony dust cloud that will send at least one player to the penalty box.

Lasting Appeal

Unlike the many hockey games that came after it, this game isn’t very deep, and only has the basic one or two player modes to choose from. What it lacks in depth however, it more than makes up for being very addictive, and that alone will keep you coming back time and time again.

Overall

While there are a few minor control related niggles, this game is still very fun to play, even though it’s the most simple and basic hockey game out there. If you have a Wii with access to the internet, go ahead and buy this game. If you have an old NES lying around, dust it off and get this game from eBay. As for how this game compares to Konami’s Blades of Steel, also available on the NES and the Wii’s Virtual Console service, I can’t say anything at the moment since I haven’t played it properly yet, so that’ll be a review for another time.

Rating: 7/10 “Addictive”

Much like I did with War On Logos #10, this time I’ll be talking about another team, based in the UK, that I (or in this case, we) root for with an identity that I find very displeasing (the very fact that this is a UK based team I’m going to be talking about may already be a bad sign). This team also happens to be a long-time rival of another team we covered back in WOL #4, so any fans of that team who have stumbled upon this site might just be pleased to see this.

And before I get started, I’ll introduce this team to those not familiar with them: the Chelmsford Chieftains. Now unlike North America, Great Britain, or for that matter the city of Chelmsford is not exactly home to any Native Americans, so Chieftains is completely irrelevant as a name (although I’m safely assuming they really picked it just for the generic alliteration)… oh, but wait! Apparently the team are named that because back when they were founded in 1987 and still looking for an identity, the players started giving the nickname of “Chief” to their player-coach, and so the name stuck… yeah, kinda lame. And serving as further proof that UK sports team owners suck at naming their teams.

This team could probably be compared to the Vancouver Canucks in that they’ve gone through several different logos and colour combinations over their 23 year existence – the jerseys have changed too, but like many UK teams they change the jersey designs every year anyway, taking another page from football (soccer) so as to further ruin hockey.

Currently the Chieftains seem to have settled on this design, with a Boston Bruins-esque black and gold (orange?) colour scheme:

At first glance, this looks like one of the better logos belonging to a lower level UK team, but that really isn’t saying much. I can’t be completely certain, but something about this logo just screams “generic clipart”, that’s been provided to the team by their jersey manufacturer. And why do I think this? First of all, it’s been recoloured three times in the past five years (from red and black, to burgundy and silver, and finally to black and gold/orange), an even lower level team that plays at Chelmsford, the Warriors, who used the exact same logo even before their affiliation with the Chieftains, and finally, the team’s youth development program again uses the same logo, but with a red and blue colour scheme.

The second giveaway of this possibly being a clipart-type logo is the use of one of the most generic fonts ever, Impact, for the wordmark (We’ve been through this already…). Their junior team, the Warriors, also use the exact same font in the exact same position for their otherwise identical logo. In one this logo’s previous colour schemes, the wordmark had a tacky gradient going through it, which I’m glad to see gone.

Ah yes, gradients. Another favourite element of bad logo design. It’s great that they got rid of the aforementioned one in the wordmark, but why not remove it from all of the other objects that have them too? It’s tacky, and no matter how “awesome” you think it looks, it just doesn’t work, not even for shading. And this is why professional sports teams always go with solid colours for their logos, including any shading that’s needed.

And finally, the designer at some point seems to have gotten lazy. It’s not noticeable when you first look at it, but there’s been a lot of copying and pasting going on with this logo: the feathers are all exactly the same – not that consistency is a bad thing, but it really does feel lazy. They also use the same zig-zaggy line featured underneath the wordmark to act as the middle bit of the feather… but why is that zig-zag there in the first place? I have no idea…

OK, you know what: I’m going to be doing something very different for the next edition of War On Logos. As these teams from Romford and Chelmsford have shown, British hockey teams hardly ever get it right when it comes to their identities, so Instead of ranting about why a logo sucks for a change, I’ll be doing a list of the Top Five things that are wrong with British hockey logos.

Until the next time, I’m Wildwing64, and I declare War On Logos.