''Brett Hull Hockey'' is an

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

developed by

Radical Entertainment Radical Entertainment Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver. The studio is best known for developing '' The Simpsons: Hit & Run'', '' Prototype'' and ''Prototype 2'', as well as entries in the ''Crash Bandicoot'' franchise ...

and originally published by Accolade for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in January 1994. It prominently features former

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

- American

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

player

Brett Hull Brett Andrew Hull (born August 9, 1964) is a Canadian–American former ice hockey player and general manager, and currently an executive vice president of the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League (NHL). He played for the Calgary Flames, ...

and is officially licensed from the

NHL Players' Association NHLPA (french: AJLNH) is the labour union for the group of professional hockey players who are under Standard Player Contracts to the 32 member clubs in the National Hockey League (NHL) located in the United States and Canada. The association r ...

. Featuring the sportscaster

Al Michaels Alan Richard Michaels (born November 12, 1944) is an American television sportscaster currently working as the play-by-play announcer for '' Thursday Night Football'' on Prime Video and in an emeritus role for NBC Sports. He has worked on n ...

as the play-by-play announcer, players have the choice to play across any of the game modes available against with either CPU-controlled opponents or other players. Despite being licensed by the NHLPA, the game was not officially endorsed by the NHL and as such, all the teams are referred only by city with no use of the team name itself, in addition to not having either NHL team logos or NHL emblems to be seen anywhere in the title. ''Brett Hull Hockey'' received mixed but positive reception when it was released. Ports for the Sega Genesis,

Atari Jaguar The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and th ...

and

Atari Jaguar CD The Atari Jaguar CD is a CD-ROM peripheral for the Jaguar video game console. Atari announced a CD-ROM drive for the Jaguar before the console's November 1993 launch. Codenamed Jaguar II during development, the Jaguar CD was released on Septemb ...

were in development but never released. A sequel to the game, '' Brett Hull Hockey '95'', was released the following year for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

, Sega Genesis and Super NES.

Gameplay

''Brett Hull Hockey'' is an ice hockey game that is played from a vertical perspective in a

two-dimensional In mathematics, a plane is a Euclidean ( flat), two-dimensional surface that extends indefinitely. A plane is the two-dimensional analogue of a point (zero dimensions), a line (one dimension) and three-dimensional space. Planes can arise as ...

environment with sprites.''Brett Hull Hockey'' instruction booklet (Super Nintendo Entertainment System, US) Most of the

rules Rule or ruling may refer to: Education * Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pert ...

from the sport are present in the title, though they can be disabled from the menu and in-game options. Other options are available such as turning on/off music and sound effects, along with the pre-game

coaching Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a ''coach'', supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a ''coa ...

mode which can turn a losing team into a winning team and vice versa, among other settings. Some of the gameplay options found within the game include an exhibition match, regular

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

and

playoff The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...

competitions, among other modes of play. The announcer, Al Michaels, makes commentary during gameplay and announces Brett Hull by name but other players are only called by their respective jersey number due to the lack of the NHL license, while his commentaries can also be turned off on the options menu. Season progress is only kept via

password A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...

and there is also a two-player option for every mode. During gameplay, players are able to apply

tactics Tactic(s) or Tactical may refer to: * Tactic (method), a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks ** Military tactics, the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield ** Chess tactics ** Political tact ...

such as multiple types of

shot Shot may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Shot'' (album), by The Jesus Lizard *''Shot, Illusion, New God'', an EP by Gruntruck *'' Shot Rev 2.0'', a video album by The Sisters of Mercy * "Shot" (song), by The Rasmus * ''Shot'' (2017 f ...

s and checking for both offensive and defensive purposes respectively in order to score points. Offsides can occur if attacking players crossing the blue lines are entering the offensive zone (red zone), before the puck and anyone on either team touches the puck before leaving the red zone. Penalties are applied by an official when any of the rules are infringed, sending the offending player into the

penalty box The penalty box or sin bin (sometimes called the bad box, or simply bin or box) is the area in ice hockey, rugby union, rugby league, roller derby and some other sports where a player sits to serve the time of a given penalty, for an offence not ...

for a set number of minutes before re-entering into the playfield. Fights can also erupt at any moment between players from either team.

Teams

The teams featured in the game only represent their respective cities from both

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, in addition to featuring two original teams: Eastern All-Star and Western All-Star. Some of the teams available to choose in the game are: * Calgary *

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

* Ottawa *

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...

* Anaheim *

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

* Buffalo *

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

Hartford Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...

(cont.) *

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

NY Islanders The New York Islanders (colloquially known as the Isles) are a professional ice hockey team based in Elmont, New York. The Islanders compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference, ...

* NY Rangers *

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

* San Jose *

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

(cont.) *

Tampa Bay Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

Development and release

In April 1993, Accolade announced that it had signed exclusive licensing agreements with

St. Louis Blues The St. Louis Blues are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Louis. The Blues compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the ...

right winger A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

Brett Hull and former

New York Cosmos New York Cosmos may refer to * New York Cosmos (1970–1985), a team in the North American Soccer League (then the top-tier soccer league in the United States and Canada) * New York Cosmos (2010), a team playing since 2020 in the National Independ ...

forward Pelé to endorse and help design sports games for the

SNES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in E ...

, Sega Genesis, and

. ''Brett Hull Hockey'' was first released in January 1994 by Accolade, and it received a European release by Sony Electronic Publishing later in the same year. A version for the Sega Genesis was advertised and planned for a 1993/1994 release in all regions, alongside the Super NES version. Unlike the SNES version, which used

Mode 7 Mode 7 is a graphics mode on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console that allows a background layer to be rotated and scaled on a scanline-by-scanline basis to create many different effects. The most famous of these effects ...

to display the playfield, the Genesis version featured

isometric graphics Isometric video game graphics are graphics employed in video games and pixel art that use a parallel projection, but which angle the viewpoint to reveal facets of the environment that would otherwise not be visible from a top-down perspective o ...

instead and despite reportedly being completed, it was cancelled for unknown reasons.

Brett Hull NHL Hockey

In November 1993, Accolade signed an agreement with

Atari Corporation Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communica ...

to be a

third-party developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

for the recently released Atari Jaguar and licensed five titles from their catalog to Atari Corp. in order to be ported and released for the system, with ''Brett Hull Hockey'' being one of the five licensed games and it was first announced in early 1994. The port was later showcased by Atari in an early playable state at WCES '95 and slated for a Q2 1995 release, with plans to be published for both the Jaguar and Jaguar CD. It was later showcased in a more advanced state at

E3 1995 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 1995, commonly known as E3 1995, was the first Electronic Entertainment Expo held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 11–13, 1995, with 50,000 total attendees. Highlights of th ...

and was later slated for a Q3 1995/November 1995 release. Internal documents from Atari also revealed that Ringler Studios was developing the conversion and that it would feature the NHL license unlike the SNES original, with some magazines previewing the game under the title ''NHL Hockey'', in addition to being listed as still being in development on August of the same year. Other internal documents from the company still listed the port as in development on December of the same year, with Atari sending the final builds of the game to both NHL and NHLPA for approval the next month. Despite the

cartridge Cartridge may refer to: Objects * Cartridge (firearms), a type of modern ammunition * ROM cartridge, a removable component in an electronic device * Cartridge (respirator), a type of filter used in respirators Other uses * Cartridge (surname), a ...

version being reviewed and rated by both ''

Game Players ''Game Players'' is a defunct monthly video game magazine founded by Robert C. Lock in 1989 and originally published by Signal Research in Greensboro, North Carolina. The original publication began as ''Game Players Strategy to Nintendo Games'' ...

'' and '' Next Generation'' magazines in their April and May 1996 issues respectively under its final title, ''Brett Hull NHL Hockey'', neither version was ever released during the commercial run of the system, which was discontinued by Atari a month earlier before merging with

JT Storage JT Storage, Inc. (also known as JTS Corporation) was a maker of inexpensive IDE hard drives for personal computers based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1994 by "Jugi" Tandon—the inventor of the double-sided floppy disk drive an ...

in a

reverse takeover A reverse takeover (RTO), reverse merger, or reverse IPO is the acquisition of a public company by a private company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. Sometimes, conversely, the public compa ...

. On May 14, 1999,

Hasbro Interactive Hasbro Interactive was an American video game production and publishing subsidiary of Hasbro, the large game and toy company. Several of its studios were closed in early 2001 and most of its properties were sold to Infogrames (now Atari SA) whi ...

released the patents and rights of the Jaguar into

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

by declaring it as an open platform and opening the doors for homebrew development, allowing independent publisher and developers to release unfinished titles from the system's past life cycle. A beta build of the cartridge version of ''Brett Hull NHL Hockey'' was released by B&C Computervisions on January 9, 2004, for

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

50. On May 14, 2009, the defunct Jaguar Sector II website released the CD version under the name ''Jaguar Hockey'' to avoid licensing issues for US$35. Aside from featuring the NHL license and updated graphics and sound compared to the SNES original, the differences between the cartridge and CD versions include bug fixes and full motion video

cutscene A cutscene or event scene (sometimes in-game cinematic or in-game movie) is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, interrupting the gameplay. Such scenes are used to show conversations between characters, set the mood, reward th ...

s but longer

loading screen A loading screen is a screen shown by a computer program, very often a video game, while the program is loading (moving program data from the disk to RAM) or initializing. In early video games, the loading screen was also a chance for graphic a ...

s, among others changes.

Reception

''Brett Hull Hockey'' received mixed but positive reviews since its release. '' Next Generation'' reviewed the Jaguar version of the game, and stated that "In the end, ''Brett Hull NHL Hockey'', with its three camera options, commentating from Al Michaels, full NHL roster, and realistic graphics, would have no problem holding its own against any competitor if it weren't for the choppy gameplay."

Legacy

With the advent of modern

console emulation A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass ...

on computers and despite never being officially published, the previously unreleased Atari Jaguar version of ''Brett Hull Hockey'' has since received two unofficial

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

hacks that were released in 2013 and 2015, titled ''Jaguar Hockey Legends '13'' and ''Jaguar Hockey League '15'' respectively, featuring updated title and menu screens. However, in addition to containing then current-day professional rosters while maintaining the original gameplay, each of these hacked versions contains a unique roster set based in members of the Jaguar community. The 2015 edition would go on to receive a physical release by community member Gaztee at AtariAge forums later in the same year.

References

External links

''Brett Hull Hockey''
at GameFAQs
''Brett Hull Hockey''
at

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

''Brett Hull Hockey''
at

Giant Bomb ''Giant Bomb'' is an American video game website and wiki that includes personality-driven gaming videos, commentary, news, and reviews, created by former ''GameSpot'' editors Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis. The website was voted by '' Time' ...

''Brett Hull Hockey''
at MobyGames {{Radical Entertainment 1994 video games Accolade (company) games Brett Hull video games Cancelled Atari Jaguar games Cancelled Sega Genesis games Multiplayer and single-player video games Super Nintendo Entertainment System games Super Nintendo Entertainment System-only games Video games based on real people Video games developed in Canada Ice hockey video games set in the United States Ice hockey video games set in Canada