Blades of Steel & Super Team Games retrospective: Body checks and balances | NES Works

In this episode, I learned that the Power Pad is not really designed for use on hardwood floors. Bring back that deep-pile ’70s shag, baby. My feet are killing me.
Super Team Games gives us the last of Nintendo's casual-appeal titles for 1988. There's still one final Nintendo-published game for the year, but it's kind of the opposite of casual-appeal-really, the closest Nintendo themselves ever got to "git gud" difficulty on NES. But Super Team Games is meant for small people to pretend to exercise with, or for big people to be uncomfortably intimate with.
As for the headline feature, Blades of Steel, it's an even more casual-appeal approach to hockey than Nintendo's Ice Hockey. You don't have to make any meaningful choices in this game besides deciding when to shoot for the goal... and how hard to hammer the punch button during player-versus-player fights.
Production note: NES footage captured from ‪@analogueinc‬ Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with XRGB Mini Framemeister.
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