I won the tournament on all three difficulty levels and with all 8 teams on the hardest (Pro) difficulty, as well as one exhibition game on Pro difficulty. With each game taking about 15-20 minutes to play, and the 8-team single elimination tournament requiring winning three games, it takes a little under an hour to play through a tournament.
The only time I'd played this was around when it was released at a friend's place. He always destroyed me, as we didn't play it enough to where I could get competitive. Now that I've been able to play it without having to go against someone who owned it and had put in enough time to get really good at it, I have to say that the only reason I can see why this is generally held in high regards is the head-to-head aspect and that the players can get into fights.
Playing solely against the CPU, I found it to be a pretty bad game. The main reason is because the goaltending is atrocious. In order to block a shot, you have to line up your goalie with an arrow that determines where the shot is headed, with the arrow going up and down across the front of the goal. A major problem with this is that you are ALWAYS in control of the goalie in addition to one of the other 5 players, meaning you're always in control of two players at once. This means if you're trying to move a player around to defend against the opponent's puck handler, there's a decent chance you'll be moving your goalie out of position to block a potential shot. The other problem with goaltending is that the goalie is extremely bad at controlling the puck when he blocks a shot, with the vast majority rebounding off of him, and quite a few of them being deflected into the net. I'd say at least 2/3 of the goals I gave up were because my goalie deflected a shot into the goal. Another problem is passing. The manual implies that if you aim the puck handler towards a teammate, that's who the pass will go to: "Aim the player controlling the puck toward a teammate, then press B Button to make a precision pass." Technically, it doesn't state that the pass will be to the teammate you're aiming at, just that a precision pass will be made. Instead, it will pass to the closest teammate that's on-screen. If there isn't a teammate on-screen, it'll simply send the puck in the direction you're pushing. This is really annoying when your goalie has the puck and instead of passing to the wide-open teammate that you're aiming at, he passes to the opponent right in front of the net that's between your goalie and closest teammate. Teammate AI is also terrible. Unless you drag the players back into the defensive zone by pushing towards your goal, they will not come back to help your goalie out, effectively giving your opponent a 5-on-0. The other players also have zero concern about a free puck. Unless the puck runs into one of them, they will not try to gain control of a free puck, even if it's right next to them.
I found the game to be very easy. I hadn't played the game in about 35 years, and only a few times at that, and was able to win the first game I played to get a feel for it, playing on the hardest difficulty level. My record was 30-3 on Pro difficulty (6-0 on the two lower difficulties), scoring at least 10 goals in all but around 5 of the games. I never did get the fighting down, but it had virtually zero bearing on my success.
Unless you have someone to play against, I can't recommend picking up this game unless it's inexpensive. Even though it's a sports title, being one of the well-regarded and fondly remembered NES games, it might be fetching a high price these days.
