Backyard Hockey

Overview

Backyard Hockey is a hockey game developed by both Mistic Software (Game Boy Advance version) and Humongous Entertainment (PC Version) and published by Infogrames.

Game Boy Advance Version

The Game Boy Advance version of Backyard Hockey plays very similar to the PC version, but has a reduced image quality due to the lack of power in the Game Boy Advance hardware.

Game Modes

In the Game Boy Advance version there are five play modes, an options menu, and a view credits mode.

Play Now

The Play Now mode jumps the player quickly into a game. This game mode does not allow the player to choose a team, the players, or the arena. There is however a small set of options that can be adjusted before the game is played, these options are:

• Difficulty - There are three difficulty options that can be chosen from; easy, medium, or hard.

• Period Time Set - The period time set can be set to 2 minutes, 4 minutes, or 6 minutes.

• Fatigue - The fatigue option can be set to on or off. If this option is turned on, players in the game can become tired and will be less effective in the game.

• Penalties - Penalties can be chosen as either on or off. If penalties are turned on players can earn a penalty if an infraction is committed.

• Off-Sides - Off-Sides can either be turned on or off. If Off-Sides is turned on the player can receive a penalty for being Off-Sides.

• Power-Ups - Power-Ups can be toggled on or off. If the power-ups are turned on then there will be usable power ups that change the game temporarily.

• Rock, Paper, Scissors - Rock, Paper, Scissors can be turned on or off. In Backyard Hockey instead of getting in fights the players will initiate a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Single Game

The Single Game mode is much the same as the Play Now mode, except that the player has more options to choose from. When choosing Single Game the same options that are available in Play Now mode are selectable, but when moving on from that screen the player then gets to choose the rink the game will be played in. The selectable rinks are:

• Rectangular Garden
• Kissling Field
• Duksana Pond
• Queen Flaky's Ice Castle
• Secret Rink (unlockable)
• Secret Rink (unlockable)

After selecting the rink the next option to choose is the team. There are 36 teams to choose from, some of them are real teams while others were created by the developers.

Once the team has been selected a puck toss happens. The puck toss is like a coin flip in football, but instead a puck is flipped. The puck flip determines which player gets to choose a player for their team first, which is the next step in Single Game.

Season Play

The season play mode is the career mode of Backyard Hockey. There are two save slots available, which are labeled by a "coach name". The same options at the start of both the play now and single game modes are available here as well.

Season play consists of a series of 14 games. On the main screen of the season play mode before a game is started there are several options available to the player:

• Begin Season
• Standings
• Statistics
• Strategy
• Option
• Playoff
• Hall of Fame