Ice Hockey
Nintendo Entertainment System (1988)
Thirty five years ago, Nintendo ported Ice Hockey for the Famicom Disk System to the NES for its North American release. It was one of the later releases in the NES Sports Series and was produced not long after Nintendo transitioned away from their black box packaging for first party titles
This game is a hell of a lot of fun regardless of whether you're a fan of ice hockey or whether or not you grew up playing the game. It has simple mechanics that anybody of any age can pick up and know how to play in a matter of minutes. It's the kind of game that you could hand two controllers to any two people that you know and they're almost guaranteed to have a good time playing it together.
Thankfully, Ice Hockey is still being sold at very reasonable prices on eBay and in used game stores, so if you have a working NES, this game is well within the reach of a gamer on a budget. It was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console, and it's also available to play on Switch through the Nintendo Online service. If you use the service and want to play, message me on Twitter and I'll give you my friend code (I'll be Team Sweden).
