Format: Advance
Genre: Sports
Developer: Exient Entertainment
Publisher: Midway

Reminiscent of every other hockey or soccer game ever to exist, NHL Hitz 2003 is one of the many many many many MANY garbage sports games mass produced during the 00's era. There really isn't all that much difference between soccer and hockey in game format, so really, it's hard for me personally to give any of these sports games a high score unless they pull a left field and do something like backyard sports with crazy wacky powerups. NHL Hitz 2003 tends to lean on the "Blitz" side of sports games. Prioritizing 'impacts' and standardized gameplay of hockey. Due to the limitations of the GBA, this is a 3 on 3 (plus goalies) affair. It's not the worst simulation of hockey, but it's still just a soccer sports game with a white background. Speaking of that white background, whoever thought it was a good idea to put white team jersey's on a white background should've been fired. There are several options of which you will turn them all off if you want to enjoy this game. One option that you may consider keeping on is fights. True to classic hockey style, you can get into fights in this game and beat the living shit out of your opponents team. It's a nice distraction but doesn't do much to the game if you turn off stamina and injuries. The gameplay is your standard 2.5d field. The A button shoots the puck when you're in possession and will attempt to steal if not. B button will pass the puck or switch players if you don't have the puck. R button is the Turbo button, it makes you go temporarily faster. The Turbo gauge in this game empties fast and fills fast, so it's used often as a quick burst. There is also another bar that fills up during gameplay. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it causes one of your players to be surrounded by a blue or red fire. I think this amplifies their abilities since whenever I seemed to get it, my players began to move faster and were scoring shots more often. League Play eventually leads into the Playoffs for the Stanley Cup. Charge in, take a shot, get blocked, run player into the goalie, score points. There's not much else to it than that. Some of the outfit colors by enemy teams are hard to see. Go Boston and you'll get very prominent black/white or black/yellow colors. Makes it super easy to see where you are. The game did like to reset a lot of the personal things I set up. For example, it would shuffle out my team strategies every match and my players every match. I liked using the same 3 guys so I had to reset it to those 3 guys AND set them for offensive strategy every single match. It was tedious and annoying. Credits after playoffs.

All in All, NHL Hitz 2003 etched out a passable 6.3 score for it's generic sports game style. Copy-paste sports game. forgettable music if there was any. Randomized pre-sets. K-Mart game.