0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Actua Ice Hockey

         

Actua Ice Hockey is a hockey based sports game that was released on the Playstation 1 and Windows in February 1998 in Europe and on the 17^th December of the same year in Japan, surprisingly the game was not released in North America.

The game like previous Actua games was developed by Gremlin Interactive and published by Gremlin in Europe with Konami publishing the game in Japan (back when Konami actually gave a shit about games), Actua Ice Hockey was the official Ice Hockey game for the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998.

Seeing as this is the official game partner for the Ice Hockey at the Nagano Winter Olympics the game contains an Olympic Tournament as well as player being able to start a custom tournament, play friendly matches or the option just to practice, the game has all the major Nations available to choose from as well as all the top player to help lead your chosen nation to Olympic glory from qualifiers to gold medal match, Paul Ferguson provides the commentary for the game.

No real story other than the quest for gold and glory at the Olympics.

Like the final Actua Golf game we have a couple of critic review scores that have survived thanks to Gamerankings with Absolute Playstation awarding this game a respectable 77/100, at the other end of the ratings scale however Computer & Video Games UK were less than favourable with their review score, with them scoring the game at just a 3/10 with the games Gamerankings score average standing at 53.5%.

With the critics review limited we are heading off to GameFAQs and Gamespot for some user ratings, first to GameFAQs, where a total of 8 users have rated the game with an average user rating of only 2.44/5 with 3 users giving the game a 3/5 this was the highest rating award to the game with 1 user giving the game a lowly 1.5/5.

Out of 3 users for the average playtime of the game two users clocked in around 4 hours in the game while the one other user spent around 12 hours in the game with game lifespan averaging out at 6.7 hours.

Moving over to Gamespot where a total of 15 users have rated the game with an average rating of 5.2/10 of those 15 user ratings one gave the game a full 10/10, while a the other end of the ratings spectrum another user game the game a 1/10, the majority however rated this game as a 5/10 or a 6/10

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific but from a podcast I listen to and  I have heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who along with eStarland.com don’t stock this game either new or used surprisingly Retrogames.co.uk don’t stock the game either so we have to head to Amazon.co.uk and like Actua Golf 3 there are two versions of the game, the original release version and the Zoo Classics release of it.

Cost wise a very good used copy of either version can be picked up for around £4 which converts to $5.17 in the US, in the Euro region It will cost €4.38 and 46576.4 Guinean Franc’s.

A used like new or a new copy of the game can both be picked up for around the £25 mark this converts to 291102.7 Guinean Franc’s, in the Euro Region it will set you back €27.35 while in the US you will be looking at paying $32.32 for a used like new or new copy of the game, again please be aware if you are in the market for a copy of this game make sure you have a console that can play the region the game comes from.

Moving to Ebay.com where a complete used copy of the game can be picked up for $3.88 this copy ships from the UK and comes with free international shipping again make sure you have a European Playstation for the disc to work, another couple of complete copies of the game are available for a very reasonable $5.83 these both come with free international shipping as well.

 

Written by

P J Gibbon