Hi everyone. For this development diary, I am going to talk a little bit about some of the new, unique-to-hockey features we added for NHL 2K9. As you’ve probably heard already, one of our main goals this year was to try to bring the fun back to hockey video games. When we first started designing this year’s game, we felt that there were several ways we could help to accomplish that. One of them was doing the Wii version, which we’ve talked about quite a bit, and another was adding a simpler control scheme to allow for players with any level of experience to jump in and be able to play with little-to-no learning curve.

Besides those things, we also really wanted to implement some of the unique elements that make the sport of hockey great. That includes fighting (which we talked about last week), plus three additional items that will be the focus this week – Zambonis, playoff beards, and the Stanley Cup celebration sequence.

Playoff beards....coming to a console near you very soon.

Let’s start with Zambonis. They are ingrained as part of the hockey culture. You see them at every game, and it’s only natural to wonder what it would be like to actually drive one. In NHL 2K9, you get that chance. During intermissions, you can let the normal sequence play through while hearing some stat recaps and analysis as the Zambonis do their job in the background. Or if you prefer, you can jump in and clean the ice yourself. In single player games, you have 3 minutes to clean as much of the ice as you can, and believe me, getting 100% is not easy. In fact, I still haven’t been able to do it. You really have to pick the right path and not make any mistakes, which turns into a pretty tough challenge in itself outside of normal gameplay. In a two-player game, both players are going at it at once, with the goal to get 45% of the ice cleaned first. And of course, crashing into each other and causing general mayhem is allowed and encouraged.

Another big part of hockey culture is playoff beards. This is definitely a tradition that you don’t see in the other major sports, and it seemed like a great fit with everything else we were doing. There are actually different levels of beards too, as they fill out more the further you get into the playoffs. We feel like it’s important to try to differentiate postseason play from the regular season, and this is certainly one thing that helps with that. We even have an achievement that ties in with playoff beards, so keep an eye out for that.

For the first tiem ever, time to use a zamboni on the ice in a video game.

And the last element, probably my favorite of all of these things, is our new Stanley Cup celebration sequence. Sports video games in general have never really given you much of a reward for playing through and winning a title, and we’ve wanted to create something to look forward to when you finally do win it all for quite a while now. Without spoiling too much of it, you get full control of your players skating around on the ice with the Cup, and there are different buttons that allow you to pass it to a teammate, kiss it, and raise it up in the air. When the celebration is done, we finish it off with a team photo, again honoring the NHL tradition.

Overall, each of these things really adds a nice extra layer on to everything else we’ve done with gameplay, AI, and the controls. Hopefully hockey fans will appreciate the inclusion of these unique elements, and people not so familiar with the sport will get the chance to see a few of the things that make hockey so great. And it’s all just a small part of what NHL 2K9 has to offer. It really is a new and different experience this year, and we can’t wait for the game to hit shelves so everyone can get a chance to try it out for themselves. See you all online!