Actua Ice Hockey is an ice hockey video game series composed by two games released in 1998 and 1999, part of Gremlin's Actua Sports series, released for Windows PCs and the PlayStation. Experienced with sports games (after the successful Actua Soccer and Premier Manager games), Gremlin required more additions to their sports range after releasing Actua Golf. As the Nagano Olympic Games were close, they acquired a license for the ice hockey tournament (which for the first time accepted proefessional athletes), making it the official video game, including real players. Market leader NHL '98, while adding for the first time national teams, only NHL players were real, but that was enough for the EA Sports franchise to top Gremlin's game in sales and critic appreciation (and eventually, even became one of the sports games of the year). Like Actua Soccer, the game was developed in close ties with a local club, this time, the Sheffield Steelers. Their players provided hints to the programmers and also served as motion capture models. Source: Wikipedia, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actua_Ice_Hockey," available under the CC-BY-SA License.