Elitserien 95

Elitserien 95 is an ice hockey game for the Sega Mega Drive that this record dates to 1994. The gap between the number in the title and the release year is not an error: sports games were routinely named after the season ahead and put on sale before it started, so a game badged 95 came out during 1994.

The name refers to Sweden's top hockey league. Sweden had its own games scene in the nineties, and localised sports titles carrying domestic club rosters made solid commercial sense there, because a fan was buying a game with his own team in it rather than someone else's.

Hockey on sixteen-bit consoles was a well-tuned genre by that point: quick passing, shots taken without hesitation, scrapping along the boards, and above all matches against a second player, since those decided how long a cartridge stayed in the machine.

The Mega Drive had enough power to keep a crowded rink moving smoothly and a sound chip with a distinctly rougher timbre, which suited arena noise better than you might expect.

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