The technological advancements in projection systems have been manna for the folks in charge of in-game entertainment at sporting events in recent years. The hardwood in the NBA and the frozen water in the NHL have provided the perfect canvases for stunning 3D visuals that have been wowing crowds for about the last two years or so.
However, it seems like we’ve kind of seen it all these days. A lot of teams in the NHL and NBA have them and there hasn’t been a whole lot of new ground being covered. We’ve seen the ice looking like it’s breaking about 50 different ways now.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, which is the owner of one of the very best projection shows in sports, is taking the medium to new heights, though. At least if you're a child of the 1980s and early 1990s. As part of some intermission entertainment recently, the team used their projection system to hit the nostalgia button for any hockey fan that owned or knew someone that owned an original Nintendo.
The Lightning turned the ice surface of Amalie Arena into a larger-than-life-sized version of Blades of Steel, the extremely popular Konami video game that anyone who even had moderate interest in hockey has played at least once in their lives. It's pretty great.
The game, which predates the Lightning as it was released in 1988, featured no NHL team names, but had the cities of many major NHL markets. From the music, to the digitized announcer who would yell things like “HIT THE PASS” and “FIGHT,” it was pretty awesome for the period.
The Lightning even got the scoreboard involved, with it looking exactly like it does in the game.
As someone who grew up on Blades of Steel, everyone else can stop doing the projection thing. You’ll never top this in my book. The only way it can be topped is if the Lightning make it playable and let me spend my summer there.
