Eastern Micro Electronic's 1983 Hoccer
Gameplay

Is it Hockey? Is it Soccer? Is it Hockey and Soccer? Well, no. It's more like full-contact Curling.

You're all alone as you take on entire teams in a battle for the championship. Hardly seems fair.

Armed with your hoccer stick (or maybe it's a Swiffer) you push a ball around the playfield. Your main objective is to knock out your opponents by either hitting them with the ball or your stick. But they don't play fair, since they'll send out several members of their team at a time to take you on. If you wipe out their entire team, you move up to the next round.

Besides just wiping out opposing players, there are a couple of other elements to deal with. One is a moving target at the top of the screen. If you can hit it, this will temporarily stun your opponents, giving you some time to take them out of the game.

There are stars lining both sides of the playfield. Shooting out all of the stars gives you an extra life, and gains you some points. Shooting the ball through the any of the rings in the middle of the playfield will make the stars flash, temporarily increasing their value. This is the key to driving up your score.

Missing Ingredient
Well, considering this is supposed to be a sports game, an actual goal would have been nice. There are too many ways for the player to score points in this game, which gives Hoccer a very random feel. Scoring points should have been limited to actually hitting the goal. It would have put more of a sports feel back into this game. It would also have helped if the opposing team could score against you - perhaps taking away some of your points in the process. In the end, Hoccer feels more like a maze-chase game without a maze, than a sports game.

Thanks to Jeffrey Carl at ServInt for providing the space for CinemArcade

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