Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey is a 3-on-3 ice hockey game developed by Midway Games and co-published with Atari for arcades and the Nintendo 64 in 1996. In classic Midway sports fashion, it's an arcade-style interpretation of the sport it's based on, with an emphasis on frenetic gameplay and multiplayer action—in fact, it was the very first N64 game to allow 4 players at once, taking advantage of the 4 controller ports built into the system. Apart from the usual one-off matches, 3D Hockey allows for a few different varieties of season mode, ranging from an arcade-style gauntlet of all 26 (at the time) National Hockey League teams to an 82-game season, complete with Stanley Cup Playoffs afterward.
The game was successful enough to receive two home console sequels, first Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98 for N64 and the original PlayStation in 1997, then Olympic Hockey '98 as an N64 exclusive the year after that, this time without the Great One's name attached.
Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey and its sequels contain the following tropes:
- Big Head Mode: The classic code returns again, featured among other size-altering cheats.
- Easter Egg: Pressing the Z button on certain menu screens causes the logos of various companies to appear and move across the screen, ranging from league-associated brands like CCM to Wayne's personal sponsors like Coca-Cola.
- Literal Metaphor: The game's more cartoony aspects delve into this, with actual blazing-fast shots and brick-wall goaltenders.
- Oddly Named Sequel: Both of the followup games ended in "'98", even though only Olympic Hockey came out in 1998.
- Self-Plagiarism: Both sequels got accused of this, especially Olympic Hockey '98. While 3D Hockey '98 at least attempted to do more than a mere roster update, revamping the goalie AI and even adding a secret division of retro teams, Olympic Hockey did the absolute bare minimum, merely replacing the NHL teams and rosters with Olympic ones, changing the rink size to meet Olympic standards, and calling it a day. IGN found it so insulting that they gave the game a 0/10 two months the game was even out, giving the game one paragraph before ending with a verdict of "We'll post a new review when Midway releases a new game." It's probably a good thing the Great One didn't have his name on it this time.
