EA SPORTS™ games are all about authenticity, and there's nothing more authentic than an actual professional athlete. Dean Richards, the associate producer of NHL® 2004, knows his hockey -- he played professionally in both Europe and the United States before joining the development team for the popular EA SPORTS hockey title four years ago.

Dean was kind enough to give us a few minutes to discuss NHL 2004, including some of the new graphics, gameplay, and different game modes that provide the complete hockey experience.

EA SPORTS: What is Total Player Control, and how easy will it be to use?

DEAN RICHARDS: Total Player Control allows the gamer to control all aspects of the player and team during the fast-paced, hard-hitting action of hockey. It offers beginners a fun pick-up-and-play experience and enough advanced controls to satisfy the experienced gamers. The game will be easy to play but hard to master.

Among the new controls are the touch sensitive passing system that allows you to pass anywhere and control the strength of the pass. This new two button system (Flat pass and Saucer or Flip pass) allows you to control and do things like pass off the boards, dump it into the corner, perform drop passes or place it to an area for your teammate to skate on to it. The options are limitless; if you can think it, you can do it.

Also new to NHL 2004 is an enhanced momentum skating engine, which allows for a realistic skating experience during tight turns, on hard stops or cruising up the ice.

Our new ?Quick Play? strategies allow users to adjust strategies or the offensive and defensive zones during gameplay. With one press on the D-pad your strategies can make your offense go on an ?All Out Attack? driving to the net hard and sending in 3 fore-checkers or you can make your defense hang back and ?Protect the Lead?.

Lastly, we have the Right Analog, which has a new and improved deking system and as it?s explained below, we also have our new ?Bruise Control? checking system which gives the gamer the ability to choose the direction and power of their hit.

EA SPORTS: What?s different this year in terms of checking your opponent?

DEAN RICHARDS: You can still use the traditional button press to throw a hit, but this year we added Right Analog checking which allows you to control the direction you want to throw a check. If you see two opposing players and want to hit the one on the right then just move the Right Analog to the right and your player will throw a check in that direction.

On top of this, we added the new ?Bruise Control? to the Right Analog. By pressing down on the Right Analog your player will ?Charge? up or start to ?Load? up his hit, which increases the power of the hit. It?s like when Scott Stevens comes across the middle of the ice, loading up his hit to crunch an unsuspecting player.

Another addition is the tying up or pinning of your opponents. Not only can gamers now pin their opponents along the boards, they can tie them up in front of the net, taking them out of the play.

EA SPORTS: Talk to us about Dynasty Mode. How robust is it?

DEAN RICHARDS: This year?s Dynasty Mode is a brand new experience for gamers. It?s a game within a game and promises to be amazing. We will get into more detail with this at Camp EA (EA's annual camp-themed summer press event) in July, and with a follow up interview here at EASPORTS.com.

EA SPORTS: International teams are included this year. What leagues will you are able to use, and what sort of tournaments can you run?

DEAN RICHARDS: We have three new Elite leagues in the game this year -- DEL (German League), SM Liiga (Finnish League) and Elitserien (Swedish League). These leagues include a one-year season and playoff with International rules and other aspects of those leagues like the SM Liiga?s Golden Helmet.

We also have 20 National teams (like Canada, USA, Russia, etc.) for tournaments. The Elite and National teams all can play in Exhibition mode.

EA SPORTS: How about graphics and game physics? Any big changes there?

DEAN RICHARDS: NHL 2004 features all new Motion Capture, Graphics and a new Physics engine. We merged the two teams from Black Box and EA Canada to make a super team, and from this we have some cool technological advances like our new ?Player on Player? collisions, ?Player Face Technology?, ?Core Skating? animations with new momentum physics and Right analog checking.

EA SPORTS: Fill us in on the Online Play for PS2. What will gamers be able to do?

DEAN RICHARDS: Gamers will be able to chat, play single match play, join tournaments and belong to leaderboards in NHL 2004. They will be able to talk to other users while playing a game using EA SPORTS Talk. They can also keep their rosters up-to-date with roster downloads, and keep track of their buddies online with EA messenger.

EA SPORTS: Anything else you want to tell us about NHL 2004?

DEAN RICHARDS: We have made great strides towards making this year?s hockey title a complete authentic hockey game. This version of the EA SPORTS NHL series will offer gamers a fun, brand new experience and I am really looking forward to seeing the response gamers have about our game.