Wayne Gretzky Hockey

Wayne Gretzky Hockey is an ice hockey simulation created by Bethesda Softworks for Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS and released in 1988. There were also Macintosh and NES versions, while the C-64/128 version was never completed.

This hockey sim was officially licensed and sponsored by the Canadian professional player Wayne Gretzky, also credited for the game design with Ed Fletcher, Julian Lefay, and others.

The title is a complete ice hockey sim; you can play the matches and manage your team, as in Sensible Soccer. Each player has several skills: aggression, quickness, power, fatigue, penalty, injury, skating, passing, puck control, checking, and shooting. You can select the players with the right skills to set your team playing style, but you can also change a player's characteristics to customize your team fully.

When it was released, Wayne Gretzky Hockey represented the most accurate and playable hockey video game ever created until then, surpassing DesignStar's Superstar Ice Hockey. Bethesda released a sequel, Wayne Gretzky Hockey II, in 1991. The third title was released only for PC.

Interestingly, it's possible to export the league data and import it into Hockey League Simulator. Then, when it's time to play the match, you can export it again and import it back to Wayne Gretzky Hockey. This feature was maintained also in the sequels. Nice idea!