NHL Breakaway 99

Developer: Iguana West Publisher: Acclaim

Released: November 30, 1998 Rated: E 6/10

I think I’ve proven myself as being able to put the deserved amount of effort into the N64’s sports franchises and their individual entries. I offer up my assessment of each game in the three American football series as examples. But I was struggling a little bit to get a grasp on the second of the two NHL Breakaway titles as anything more than a repeat job roster update. This is especially as I had already explored the copy-and-paste nature of another hockey series on the system with the trilogy of fun-yet-redundant Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey games.

So I admit, there was a little bit of vindication when during my travels, I saw a quote from a review from Next Generation magazine that claimed that “NHL Breakaway ‘99 is nothing more than last year’s version with the new rosters and rules. Try to convince us otherwise, you’re wasting your breath.” I’m certainly inclined to agree, because while there may be something like a new coat of paint and a few rebalances that could just as easily be anecdotal representations of my experience, there feels like almost nothing truly different from NHL Breakaway ‘98 in here.

I admit, Tom Fitzgerald in the inaugural Nashville blue with gray shoulders gave me some feelings.

It’s definitely flashier in presentation than ‘98 is when you fire it up. There’s something about this ‘96-’98 era where there feels like a lot of games feel still kinda stuck in a plain or basic visual design and have a sequel that overcompensates with the big-time millennium flair. Not much else has changed, visually, though. There’s no Expansion Pak compatibility listed and while the models do seem a touch sharper, it’s probably within the margin of error that it only feels that way because it’s a different game.

You can tell that almost nothing has really been added or changed in this edition mainly due to the fact that even the back of the original box either lists many of the same features as ‘98 does, or lists things that either don’t feel exciting enough to tout in the marketing or are pretty hard to gauge. Includes the Nashville Predators in their inaugural year? Objectively more content but I would hope you don’t leave them out. Real player heights and weights? That at least sounds more accurate than the previous year’s “variable player size” but is still kinda the same thing. And again, I would hope we’re not playing with 12 identical players out here in 1998. Create, sign, trade, and release players? It’s written like a new feature, but check the first game, it says the same thing on it, almost verbatim.

Graphic design is my passion. Note the N in “NHL” is styled like a lowercase N. There’s something truly horrid about that and I can’t explain why.

Yeah, it’s rough finding things to talk about. I noticed a little bit less of that elasticity in player momentum this time around – you speed up and slow down within what feel like more reasonable parameters – and I think the goaltending was a little more reasonable. Shots that went in more often felt like they deserved to than in ‘98 and shots that didn’t find the back of the net probably shouldn’t have either. But once again, my experience may very well be anecdotal and I’m not confident in claiming that any improvements are consistent enough to be objective. NHL Breakaway ‘99 really isn’t much, if any different from its predecessor, and if you come across one or the other in the wild, they’re certainly serviceable hockey titles that are not quite as good as NHL ‘99, and very different from Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey. Owning both, however, is a redundancy and only necessary for completionists.

Continuing Legacy

Out of their various sports franchises on the N64, NHL Breakaway was the one that Acclaim cut bait on early and never brought back. While ‘98 was also released on PS1, Breakaway ‘99 was firmly after their transition to being an N64-focused publisher and in spite of having zero competition following the 1998-’99 season, NHL Breakaway has no real legacy to speak of.