Blast From the Past. The '76 Islanders in action again.
 

Hello, Fellow Islander Fans

With no NHL hockey, I thought I would create my own games with Action PC Hockey. So I started a Greatest Hockey Team Ever Tournament. My main purpose is to see how far the great Islander teams of the past would go in a tournament against the best of all time.

More details can be found in this thread.

http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/sh....php?t=1270505

Anyway, I am now in a group that has my first Islander team: the 75-76 edition. And their first game (of a 36 game round robin) is against....guess who? The 91-92 Rangers. And the 3rd period of the game is on Youtube, the link is here

http://youtu.be/J2wlD_rArGY

The game is from Madison Square Garden and the Rags are leading 4-3 at the start of the 3rd. No spoilers from me. Scoring for the Isles so far: Denis Potvin (1) from Howatt and Nystrom, Jude Drouin (1) from Hart and Parise, and Denis Potvin (2) again from Trottier and Gillies. The Rags have two goals from Turcotte, the others from Gilhen and Graves. Chico Resch is in goal for the Islanders and Vanbiesbrouck for the Rangers. I will be doing the play-by-play and I have to admit that as a announcer I am probably the biggest homer ever.

This is pretty cool, thanks for doing this. I do wish it was a little more visual though, I would like to see this done with a hockey simulator that shows actual simulated highlights, for example, maybe teams like this created on the NHL Hockey Video Game series.

Thank you for what you said and I agree with you. It seems that at this point we are forced to choose between an either/or scenario. Do we want nice visuals but results based upon subjective ratings and the skill of the end user or do we want more realistic results but something that looks like a spreadsheet. There was a game called Head Coach 09 for the NFL that I thought did a pretty good job of merging the two, but from what I understand it did not sell very well.

I think at this point games like NHL 13 are what the public wants and therefore is the product that will be more available on the market. A game like the one I am playing probably will be for more the older folks like me who do not have fast fingers and like to go back to the good old days of Denis Potvin and ask a lot of "what ifs".

I've done a few videos now and I've received some good responses and some mixed responses. I believe there is a market out there for videos like these. I enjoy the "Let's Plays" on Youtube by getdaved, quill18, and TheMeInTeam who are very popular and the games they play are not much more visual than this hockey game.

Bauer, do you remember Strat-o-matic hockey ? Man one of my friends and I used to play that for hours. My mom actually used to go to the company's headquarters to get me updated hockey and football sets for Christmas. Used to have a blast with those games.

I never played the Strat Hockey game, but I played A LOT of the Baseball game, which was the flagship game of that company. I think your point is HUGE about what we are talking about. Those of us who grew up playing Dice and Card games like Strat or APBA or the Statis Pro games from Avalon Hill like these computer simulations. We understand them because we grew up with them. We love them because the computer versions keep all the stats for us. Those of us under 25-30 look at them and say WTF is that? They group up on Madden or NHL 99 and it's sequels.

I think the one exception is the Football Manager series. That is a computer sim that is not about the graphics (although they are adding more and more graphics in the game), that is very popular in Europe and has some success in America. However, it has the limitation of not being able to play the teams of the past and for some of us guys that's huge.

The '76 Isles 3rd game of the year is up.

I recorded the home opener against '78 Montreal, but I had a burst of genius and forgot to turn on my mike. It was a loss anyway. The Isles gave it all they had but couldn't beat Dryden. Pierre Larouche broke a 2-2 tie with 3:45 left in the 3rd to win it for the Habs. JP Parise fought Rick Chartraw and Clark Gillies destroyed Bob Gainey. Montreal is going to be tough to beat. They lost their first game to '88 Calgary, but they've won their last 5.

Here is half of the boxscore.
http://i50.tinypic.com/fvl402.jpg

For me, THIS was the rivalry, the Islanders vs the Oilers in the early '80s. I had some buddies growing up in Edmonton who were Islander fans, but when the Oilers joined the NHL in 1979, they abandoned ship and left me alone. Anytime the Oilers won, I received relentless mass heckling for the following week. When they met in the playoffs in 1981, the Islanders even won the series but I received it mercilessly because the Oilers managed to win 2 games. Needless to say, I developed some negative feelings for these hotshot Oilers at that time and some of these emotions came out in the video. Here's the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAKYFV