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  1. NHL 94: 2024 Edition by Adam Catalyst v2.5 updated 2024 03 18 Hello there friendly strangers, Here is the latest version of my 2024 ROM. The goal is to try to provide the most refined and realistic up-to-date versions of this all-time classic game. I'm thrilled to be able to share this with you. Here are the top reasons you might want to give it a try… New in '24 800 players obsessively rated, up-to-date rosters, and realistic lines, based on even more extensive 2020-2024 regular season data. Logos, Colours, Uniforms, Arena names… everything up-to-date for the 2024 season. The Bench area has been completely re-designed, new puck design & animation, re-designed graphic overlays for Shoot-Outs, Penalty-Shots, Goal, Injuries, Stars of the Game, etc. and numerous other refinements. Gameplay Revisioned The gameplay has been adjusted for a more realistic modern hockey feel, with harder to score goals, easier to hit crossbars and posts, more realistic speed burst, fewer penalty calls, custom energy depletion and recovery rates (balanced for more realistic line rolling and shift length), and player rating distribution curves that have been carefully calibrated for more realistic gameplay on the ice. Graphical Refinements Hundreds of other refinements have been made including title screens, banners, player photos, scoreboard, audience, face-offs, bench area, player sprites, nets, ice markings, scorekeepers, Zamboni driver, and more. The goal is to bring the most graphically refined version of NHL 94 ever made, while remaining faithful to the spirit of the original art direction. And so much more Of course there is the weight bug fix, but also a custom weight scale, less variance in Hot/Cold rating randomization, immediate goalie control by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller, a custom 3-Stars of the Game rating formula, a Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg Menu & Player Cards crash fix, and… Every single feature & modification is documented below. I would love it if you would give it a try, and leave me any feedback! -Adam p.s. I'd be flattered if you wanted to lift any of my mods for your own ROM. Anyone who contributes to making hacks or ROMs for nhl94.com is welcome to PM me, and I will happily send you source files, including Tile Molester bookmarks and palettes. Current Version NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v2.5 - 2024 03 18.zip Previous Versions NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v2.4 - 2024 02 12.zip NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v2.3 - 2024 01 16.zip NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v2.0 - 2023 12 20.zip NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v1.0 - 2023 12 01.zip Box Art Maximum Quality: Box Art - SMD - NHL '94 [h] 2024.png.7z Features & Modifications Title Screens & Under the Hood ROM Header: Updated to indicate support for Japan region, 6-Button Controller, both domestic & foreign ROM names, and updated checksum. Title Screen: Opening Logo screens display time reduced by 30%. Graphics: EA logo screen heavily modified and updated to reflect current Stanley Cup winner. Graphics: High Score Production screen refined. Graphics: Splash image updated with EA's NHL24 image. Graphics: Masthead re-drawn to match EA’s current NHL24 lettering. Graphics: Title screen Logos removed. Text: Credits re-coloured & edited. Above: The player sprites design was revised to more accurately accommodate the wide range of colourations for all 32 NHL teams. Taped taped composite sticks complete the more realistic contemporary look. Above & Beyond: A global colour palette for the entire ROM was built, with all key colour decisions made in this relative context. Teams have been systemically coloured to have as accurate a representation as possible, with a consistent sense of depth, and realistic colour shifts for shadows and highlights. Tests were done with demo play, and final colour decisions were made to give the most accurate impression in motion, and not necessarily what looked the best in stills. Main Menu Settings: Default teams set for the 2023 Stanley Cup finals. Settings: Playoff brackets updated to the 2023 seedings. Settings: 7-minute period length option added. Settings: Line Changes & Penalties defaults set to on "On," because that's how I roll. Graphics: Team Banners & Logos updated and refined. Graphics: Team Banner names removed, and replaced with "VISITORS" and "HOME" for clarity. Graphics: Player Photos all updated with official NHL headshot images, custom cropped & colour graded. Graphics: Error removed from the selection box. Hack: Player Photo carousel cycling order modified. Hack: Bug that would causes crashes upon cycling through the Player Photos for Vegas, Washington, and Winnipeg has been eliminated. Please note, this comes at the cost of preventing saved stats from showing under player names. Text: Re-wording of a couple menu options for greater clarity. Typesetting: Player names centred vertically. Above Right: All logos were revised or re-drawn by hand, and matched for visual weight. Official team colours were relatively mapped to the Sega MD/Genesis colour space, and banners were matched to key logo colours, with some minor re-wording in the menus. Pre-Game Graphics: Banners typesetting improved, and colours improved for greater clarity and consistency with the team colours used throughout. Graphics: The Pre-Game Announcer's picture frame has been altered to be more consistent with the design of similar elements throughout the game. Graphics: Ron Barr image restored to be closer to original. Arena Names: All up-to-date as of December 2023. Pre-Game: Match-up position names have been simplified to “Forward,” “Defence,” & “Goaltender.” Above: When EA released Rewind (left), they kept the same colour palette as the original, despite decades of new teams and new team colours. I've optimized this restrictive colour palette (right) so that all teams now look much closer to their authentic colours. Furthermore, typesetting has been improved in all banners to also be better than Rewind. Rink Graphics: Colour Palette has been altered to improve the audience affect with more uniform tonal contrast, improve the accuracy of the team banner colours, and to give the nets more realistic colouring. Sprites: Audience members design and animations have been refined. Graphics: Goal light & animation revised. Graphics: Instant Replay Reverse view inconsistencies fixed. Graphics: Minor refinements throughout the arena. Rink - On the Ice Graphics: Ice Colour lightened slightly. The darker colour was giving me eye strain. Graphics: Centre ice logos updated, adapted from NHL Rewind designs. Graphics: Face-off circles modification. (author unknown) Graphics: Net re-drawn to the most recent (2013) NHL proportions, with an updated goalie crease. Graphics: Trapezoid area lines drawn to NHL scale. Graphics: Glass & stanchions behind bottom net revised to be symmetrical and parallel to glass & stanchions at the top, horizontal seam in top glass has been removed, and on-ice reflections of stanchions have been fixed throughout. Above: There have been hundreds of refinements to the rink design. Beyond the big obvious things like the redesigned bench area and time keepers, there are far more subtle touches like the symmetrical glass re-design at the bottom, the updated net designs, and the refined audience member designs & animations. Rink - On the Sidelines Graphics: Bench area completely re-designed, including refined animations, and the addition of animated coaches and backup goaltenders inspired by @slapshot67. Graphics: Time-keepers added in, and time-keeper area Stanchion misalignment fixed. Graphics: Bench, Penalty Box, & Time-keepers area Stanchions modified to be consistent with the Sideboards view. Sprites: Bug fixed that would stack multiple Visitors players in the Penalty box incorrectly. Above: The original (Left) benches had floors coloured like the ice, and the players chirped with unhinged jaws, with no supervision from a coach. Over time (Centre), fantastic changes were made by slapshot67, adding a more realistic floor, fitting in a coach and a backup goaltender! I've built on this work (Right) completely re-designing the bench area, including re-designed players and refined animation, an animated coach, and more. Plus, a new more three-dimensional puck design! Above (Botton Left): I really liked The Sauce’s wide take on the EA logo (Centre), as well as the bevelled style of the original (Left). I’ve mixed the two styles together, and refined it to better fit the allocated vertical space. The Sauce’s excellent ROM is shown here for relative comparison only, no criticism implied of his inspiring work. Rink - Sideboards view Graphics: Sideboards Bench, Boards, Glass, Ice, Stanchions, etc. revised. Graphics: Scoreboard Banners refined to improve typesetting, and colours modified for clarity and consistency throughout. Graphics: Sideboard Scoreboard has custom drawn NHL logo. Graphics: Side-boards Score-Keepers added. (Based on the SNES version) Sprites: Zamboni driver revised to better match the perspective of the side-boards. Sprites: Player in Penalty box refined, and placement revised. Above Below: The original Zamboni driver (Left) looked like a small ruddy-faced hunchback. I re-designed him to fit the style and perspective of the scene better, adapted the design of the scorekeepers from the SNES version to match, improved the design of the player in the penalty box (who disturbingly had no lower body in the original), and have made hundreds of minor refinements to the audience, animation, bench, stanchions, the light refraction on the edge of the glass, etc. Above Top: Beyond the improved banners, the scoreboard features brighter lettering and scores along with custom drawn a modern NHL logo. In-Play Sprites: Player design was revised to more accurately accommodate the wide range of uniform colourations for all 32 NHL teams. Tests were done with demo play, and final colour decisions were made to give the most accurate impression in motion, and not necessarily what looked the best in stills. Sprites: Face-off animations revised. Sprites: Players given grey composite sticks, because grey pixels have better puck feel, more flex, and are lighter weight. Sprites: Goaltenders masks revised to reveal their faces. Sprites: Player Helmet colour patch. (@clockwise) Sprites: Player Eye, Boots & Gloves, and Stick Tape patches. (@clockwise) Sprites: Improved Checking animations patch. (@clockwise) Sprites: Player stick animations refined. Sprites: Puck design & animation revised. Graphics: On-Ice Player Numbers changed to white for better legibility against the ice. Graphics: On-Ice Player indicator (star) for Player 1 lightened to be less conspicuous and increase relative on-ice contrast for the Player 2 indicator. Graphics: Penalty box player colour error fixed. (Slapshot67) Above Top Row: The original face-off animations had a linesman that was looking in the wrong direction (Top Left & Centre), freakishly long & thin stick blades, stick shadows that would overlap incorrectly (Top Left), disproportionally dark shadows that sometimes overlapped the image frame (Top Right), a frisbee instead of a puck, and some rough detailing on the players. Above Bottom Row: I’ve painstakingly gone through the 108 possible graphic combinations that can occur during a face-off, revised every issue I could find, re-drew the sticks to be more realistically shaped & taped, and perhaps most importantly, turned the linesman’s head to face the right direction. We all need to do our part to improve NHL officiating. Rosters Rosters & Lines: Updated based on extensive 2020–2024 regular season player usage data. Rosters & Lines: 800 total players have been included, covering the 25 players (14F, 8D, & 3G) with the most ice-time in 2023-2024 on each team. Above. 192 official NHL headshots used in-game), all individually cropped and colour graded for visual balance. Ratings Team Ratings: Team attribute & overall ratings updated as per the end of Dec 19, 2023 regular season data. Player Ratings: Underlying system has been changed from the default 1-6 scale to a 0-15 scale for more accurate differentiation of players. (@smozoma) Player Ratings: ustom player ratings based on a mix of real-world data and gameplay oriented parameters. The goal is to make gameplay more contemporary, and individual player performance more realistic. Player Ratings: Custom overall rating formula. Player Ratings: More parity between the best and the worst of the league, with all players having a minimum 52 rating before Hot/Cold variance. Player Ratings: Weight scale modification patch. (@smozoma) Player Ratings: Edit lines bug fix patch. (@smozoma) Player Ratings: Hot & Cold variance is hidden from the menus, so you will have to feel which players are hot or cold through gameplay. (@smozoma) Behind the Scenes: Rosters, ratings, and lines are based on extensive real-world data and advanced analytics. All of this is conformed to custom ratings distribution curves, which give the gameplay its unique feel. This single most important feature can't be shown in stills. You have to play it to feel it. Gameplay Controls: Goalie control can now be accessed immediately by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller. (clockwise) Gameplay: Goalies without the puck can move slightly farther towards centre ice. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Goalies can hold the puck very slightly longer before the play is whistled dead. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Body Checking and Aggressiveness have been balanced to reduce the penalty rate from the original, and approximate the real body checking and penalty rates of each team in the 2023–2024 season. Gameplay: Hot & Cold range of variance has been reduced by ~25%, and the frequency of variance has been reduced by ~50%. Gameplay: The "goal" area of the net has been reduced slightly, making it more difficult to score, and more likely that you will hit the post. Gameplay: Player Speed Burst set to 25% of the original, for a more realistic feel and higher difficulty. Gameplay: Custom Stamina Depletion & Recovery rates. Gameplay: Weight / Checking bug fix patch. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Second-Assist bug fix patch. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Overtime set to 5 minutes, Penalty Shots set to 20 seconds. Player Ratings: Attribute rating distributions have been careful set and thoroughly tested to produce a faster more contemporary feel to puck movement & gameplay, with better goaltending. Stars of the Game: New custom formula. Above Right: The Timekeeper design has been adapted from the SNES version, and modernized with touchscreens. The players in the penalty box have been re-designed (and errors fixed), the puck & animation have been redesigned along with a "translucent" shadow, and the scorebox has been nudged off to the side. Above: Note how in the original (Left) the player one indicator is distractingly very high contrast, while the player two indicator is much more difficult to see with low tonal contrast. Brightening the colour of the ice (Centre) helps, but then the already muddy looking player numbers become very difficult to see. I’ve re-balanced the colours (Right) so that the player one indicator is quieter while still being easy to see, the player two indicator is equally easy to see, and the the player numbers are much clearer to see against the ice. The excellent Naples ROM is shown for relative comparison only, no criticism implied of their superlative work. In-Game Overlays Graphics: Linesman & Referee pop-overs refined. Graphics: In-Game Timer logo has been re-drawn. (based on @Sauce's design) Graphics: Score Clock and Line Change overlays relocated. Graphics: Line Change Energy bars have been re-drawn to have an inverse quasi-logarithmic gradation. Graphics: Overlays for Shoot-Outs, Penalty Shots, Goals, and Injuries revised. Graphics: Instant Replay controls graphic revised. Graphics: Stars of the Game overlay re-designed. Text: "Cross Check," "Face-Off," and "Fight Instigator" renamed to "Cross-checking," "Face-off," and "Instigator" as per the official NHL rulebook. Above: Various evolutions… Updated ice markings, including a to-scale trapezoid area and crease. The Net has been re-drawn to closely match the current NHL proportions, and to slightly reduce the scoring area. Improved sprite designs, including details like the Goalie’s mask now showing a bit of their face underneath (Right). The Stars of the Game overlay has been redesigned, along with the underlying selection formula. In-Game Menus Graphics: NHL & NHLPA Logos re-drawn. Graphics: "Hockey Night" Banner slightly re-coloured. Hack: Player Cards bugs that would causes crashes upon cycling through Cards for WSH (and possibly also VGK & WPG) have been eliminated. Hack: Player Stats now showing Checks instead of Penalty Minutes. (@smozoma) Text: The “Change Goalie” option for “no goalie” is now in ALL-CAPS for greater visibility. Extras Box Art: Matching box art was made! The artwork is high resolution, print quality, and stays very close to the original North American box design. Player Ratings: The distribution includes a CSV with all the player ratings. Thumbnail Art: The distribution includes thumbnail artwork for popular emulators. Known Issues The Main Menu and Player Cards do not show saved User Records, in order to prevent crashes that on these pages with Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg. User Records may incorrectly store user data if playing with Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg. Builds are tested with Genesis Plus 1.7.4.15 and Genesis Plus GX 1.7.5-RC1 r24-10-2021. If you are having any technical issues, you may want to try one of these emulators. If you are reporting a technical issue, please note the exact console or emulator version that you are using for me. Future Wish-List I'm not sure how much time I will have to work on this in the future, but if I did find more time, here is what I would like to focus on next… Interface: Alter the range of displayed values for player ratings. Gameplay: Increase the wrist shot speed. Gameplay: Increase the puck ice friction slightly. Gameplay: Reduce the force with which pucks rebounds off the boards, etc. CPU play: Increase the goaltenders lateral stopping abilities, reduce five-hole stopping effectiveness. Gameplay: Enable line changes to be initiated without possession of the puck, preferably with a dedicated button. CPU play: Prevent the goaltenders from skating into the trapezoid areas. Gameplay: Decrease accuracy of One-Timers. Gameplay: Reduce the passing speed slightly. Gameplay: Reduce the energy cost for each time a speed boost is used. Gameplay: Enable players in the Penalty Box to re-generate energy as if they were on the bench. Gameplay: Improve logic for how icings and offsides are calculated to use puck position instead of player position. CPU play: Program the CPU to pull the goalie when trailing by 1 - 2 goals (currently only pulls with a two goal deficit). Graphics: Redraw Sideboards Referee to better match the art style of everything else (requires "de-compressing" shared tiles.) Graphics: Improve the comparatively low visual quality of the on-ice officials throughout (requires "de-compressing" shared tiles.) If you are able to help me with any of these changes, please let me know! Credits This project was built decades of work by the NHL94.com community, and never would have been possible without them. I’m sure there are more contributors than I could ever possibly know, let alone acknowledge, but I will do my best… Contributors This ROM contains contributions from the following individuals… Brodeur30 Rink & Net collision logic. chaos Hot/Cold variation logic. Team Attribute bonus logic. Clockwise Goalie Control with a six-button controller. Player sprites boots & gloves colour patch. Player sprites eye colour patch. Player sprites helmet colour patch. Player sprites hockey tape patch. Player sprites improved checking animations patch. Dervin10 Roster extractor & importer tool development. Drezz Team uniforms Yoke colour isolated. kingraph Animation block logic. Sideboards modification logic. Stars of the Game modification logic. slapshot67 30 to 32 team ROM re-structuring. Bench backup goalie hack and original design. Penalty Box player sprite colouring fix. smozoma 0–15 Player Rating scale patch. Checking / Weight bug fix patch. Credits editing logic. Displayed Ratings bug fix patch. Goalie range of motion. Goalie puck hold time before whistle. Period lengths logic. Player Overall rating formula logic. Player Stats Checking patch. Player Weight scale modification patch. Second-Assist bug fix patch. Stars of the Game formula logic. Tony H. Stopping & Crossover Rate logic. wboy 28 to 30 team ROM re-structuring. Default settings logic. Player photo logic. Player energy depletion & recovery rates logic. Rink modification logic. Speed burst rate logic. NOSE tool development. Author unknown Face-off circles graphic modification. Team uniforms colour restructuring. Special Thanks to… @Drezz - selflessly sharing original work & resources. @Jkline3 - tips, resources, & candor. @kingraph - tips, resources, & encouragement. @naples39 & @Sauce - inspiration. @Sean - tips, encouragement, & inspiration. @smozoma - utterly invaluable tips, resources, tools, & support. @von Ozbourne - brainstorming, resources, wit & wisdom. …and everyone at nhl94.com who tested Betas or provided feedback. Extra Special Thanks to… Ena - for nothing less than everything. I hope you enjoy!
    16 points
  2. Hey guys, Here is the updated ROM with the 2017-18 rosters. I'll add more details later, but if you're new to updated ROMs: -This is a 32-team ROM (updated teams, player cards and graphics by Slapshot67) -Updated rosters for 2017-18 season (rosters by Skip). Lines were accurate as of 10/8 (except for Vegas). Went ahead with Vegas "best lines" -Weight bug is fixed (heavy guys are harder to knock down) -1 minute penalties (except for injuries = 2 min penalty) KNOWN BUG: The menu screen will freeze if the player cards begin to cycle for team #31 - Winnipeg. This really was a fun ROM to put together. We hope you enjoy! NOTE: The tourney ROM has continuous OT. I ran some simulations with the ROM (w/ 7 minute periods) and teams were getting 30 shots on goal. It was actually not bad to watch! -Skip NHL18skipV1.zip NHL18tourneyV1.zip
    16 points
  3. Hi everyone! So, just like in past years, I am posting my NHL94 2021 edition ROMs (various updates throughout the season). About the ROM: *32 teams. Seattle Kraken are included. The team contains players from the Seattle Metropolitans circa 1917-1919. *The ROM is based off of the Slapshot67 32-team template. *60 Min. OT. *The ROM has the "weight bug fix". *The "stamina hack" is available on the Playoff Version only. The is a non-stamina hack playoff version as well. *The ROM has Clockwise's sprite patch. *The rom has the WAS/WPG freeze bug. When corrected, it causes an issue for the playoff mode. If you use Kega Fusion, it will not freeze the player cards for those teams. *Uniforms have been updated for Calgary, Ottawa, Buffalo and Colorado. Calgary and Ottawa are going retro this season and Buffalo is returning to their royal blue color. Colorado will wear blue helmets and pants. The retro Sens and Flames logos have been added for team selection and center ice. *Lines/d pairs may not accurate, in several cases, especially, for teams who have coaches who change them every five minutes. Feel free to change them to what you'd like them to be. The opening night players are all there for you to select. There are some "taxi squad" folks as well (but not all). *Injured/COVID-affected players expected/rumored to be returning during the season are in the active rosters for line changes. If someone is confirmed as being out for the season (Kucherov, for example) they will be on the roster but inactive for anything but NLC. UPDATE - 5/19/21: Kucherov has been added back into the active roster in the Playoffs Edition. Anywho... enjoy! The ROM: v1: Posted on 1/14/21 (start of regular season) NHL94 2021 V1.bin vPO: Posted on 5/19/21 (Playoffs Edition) NHL94 2021 vPO.bin vPO with SH: Posted on 7/5/21 (Playoffs Edition with Stamina Hack) NHL94 2021 vPO with SH.bin
    14 points
  4. *** UPDATED V1.1 below *** What started as a quick and dirty little project to scratch the itch for modding NHL 94 into a Hockey Night in Canada themed ROM, became a full scale experimental playground. This is the first release of... Based on the 1990 - 1991 season, this mod recreates the league from opening day: October 4th, 1990. Using the famed "Hockey Night in Canada" branding from the late 80s, this ROM features a number of new innovations. A completely revamped intro theme, using the iconic HNIC theme instead of the traditional NHL94 theme. A completely custom main menu screen (featuring the 89-90 cup finalists) Team and player introductions by the famed PBP commentator, Bob Cole (on a completely customized late 80s powder blue HNIC themed background!) In-game menu screen edits (timekeepers, Zamboni & scoreboard branding, team banners, fonts) In-game menu changes - HNIC branded custom backgrounds, colours and fonts Player Cards brought to you by EA Sports (in conjunction with the NHL and PRO SET trading cards) Era specific centre ice logos (shown here: Northlands Coliseum logo in Edmonton) Player sprite modifications for more colour variation and uniform accuracy (shown here: MTL blue helmets, no shoulder stripe tied to arm/sock stripe colours) Cleaned up large heading font (GOAL!) and HNIC/CBC branded scoreboard (bottom left) Molson 3 Stars of the Game (Molson was a HNIC title sponsor in the 80s-90s) The hot-shot rookie goaltender takes on the tried and tested former cup champion. (over 500 original old-school player portraits ingame, as close to the 1990-91 season as possible) Modified goaltender graphics (pads, trapper and NEW masks) ...and many more tweaks and graphic surprises and ideas based on the great work of folks like @clockwise @Jkline3 @AdamCatalyst @Sean@kingraph @smozoma and more... Included in the package: A custom updated version of NOSE 1.2c beta with additional options to properly change colours in any "Drezz" sprite hacked ROM. ---------- Some quick notes about this ROM: - This is version 1.0 of the mod. There are bound to be some weird glitches in there somewhere. If at any point you encounter them, please report them to me and I'll see if they can be rectified or improved upon in subsequent patched releases. - The rosters are based on THE BEGINNING of the 1990-1991 season. Trades and Free Agent Signings were valid up until the 4th of October, 1990. A playoff edition featuring player re-assignments to NEW teams will be released next. - Team strengths and player overalls/stats were based on the results of the END of the 1989-90 campaign. If you are disappointed at the rating given to X player, please note that ratings were based on how players ended the previous season. Rookies will have lower ratings, regardless of historical significance (Jagr, Blake, etc). There is a good chance the same player will have accurately expected ratings according to their effort in the 1990-1991 campaign in the followup PLAYOFF EDITION version. - There are a large number of hacks to this ROM. The intro theme. Custom background and splash screens. In-game sprite overhaul Player portraits for ALL 500+ players Team banners Fonts The ROM was modded to create the illusion of playing Hockey Night in Canada from the early 90s as opposed to being a crummy ROM hack of NHL 94 with HNIC graphics. I hope it transports you back in time to a period before modern expansion, the rise of salary caps and the glory days of hockey's heroes like Lemieux and Gretzky. Enjoy. - Drezz HNIC 90-91 Season v1.1 (NHL 94).zip
    13 points
  5. Alright. First off, sorry this one is a bit late, but in our defence, sometimes life happens at the most inopportune times. Cutting to the chase, it's time @Jkline3 and I submit: NHL 2024 - '94 Edition To start, while I haven't seen any mention of this being the 30th anniversary of this all-time classic in any of the modern releases, [if you're into that sort of thing] it seemed wrong not to address it in some manner. Also, NHL Network continues their "sponsorship" in this edition. The main menu background didn't change, but some other things have. Since Ray Ferraro left NHL Network, the search was on for another former player turned host that we can call on for riveting in-depth pre-game analysis, and Dave Reid was classy enough to return our call. With the new season, the playoff format is restored so anyone could win it all! Some minor tweaks to the game menu graphics, where one can view their lines with the updated player rosters and custom player ratings. Zamboni guy improved his posture and changed his sweater. As well as the new player cards. Yes, I may just be trying show off the new photos at this point. With the discontinuation of the Reverse Retro program, this year's edition sticks to the regular home and away kits. As well, this version incorporates a new 3-Star calculator thanks to the amazing tutorial work by @AdamCatalyst [It's hard to justify giving the goalie credit for the shutout when he only faced two shots all game] Obligatory under the hood and minor graphical stuff: Original custom player attribute stats based on NHL24 updates. Original JKline player sprite mod based on helmet patch for more accurate and varied uniforms. Tighter puck collision on boards and net making for pucks that hit closer to the boards sprites and a slighter smaller scoring area on the nets. Pucks that also feature original customized sprites that change with team colours. The nets that those pucks can go in have also had their sprites redrawn. Weight bug fix is applied. SmozROM Ratings consistency fix - player ratings will match hot/cold overall. Freeze Bug applied so no player stats and player name on second line. User Records set to "ON" can still cause crashes with Vegas, Washington and Winnipeg so caution is advised. Expanded goalie roaming area. Go out to the edge of the trapezoid or out to the face off dots to cut down the angle. Goalie can also carry the puck out to the blue line before the automatic whistle. [if play isn't blown for holding the puck too long] Yes we know that the goalie can technically go to the red line, but that would mean having to figure out how to assess delay of game penalties and that's not likely to happen. Goalie Y-button control hack applied. Edit Lines hack for any player to play at any position. Great for 4-1 Power plays. Benches have been edited so the coach mod has been removed. EA Sports watermarks have been updated to modern logo. NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v1.0.bin NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v1.2.bin NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v2.1.bin
    12 points
  6. Hi All, A rom that I wanted to work on, for a while, is an update to the original/classic. A 1994 post trade deadline roster/playoffs edition, if you will. But, I also wanted it to have some of the look and feel of the original. It's important to note that some other folks have had a run at this concept rom, so I am not a pioneer. However, there are things that I wanted to do differently or, perhaps, be the first to do to the classic version. So, below is what you need to know about this rom. THE ROM * This is was created using WBOY’s 30 team rom. * It has the weight bug fix applied to it. I can also provide a version without it if requested (PM me). * The rom contains the 26 teams from the 1993-94 season plus the 1993 (Campbell & Wales) and 1994 (Eastern and Western) all-star teams. * It has the Clockwise helmet/sprite patch AND the original goalie crease, faceoff circles and no trapezoid. It does have coaches on the bench, officials in the penalty box area and the new red goal light graphics. A little of the old and a little of the new. NOTE: If you apply the helmet/sprite patch to any rom, it automatically assigns that rom the new/modern goalie crease and trapezoid. So, it had to be undone in this case. SPECIAL THANKS GOES TO JKline3 WHO HELPED "RESET" THE ROM TO HAVE THE ORIGINAL RINK LAYOUT USING HIS JEDI POWERS! He is a good soul who said he didn't want/need any credit. Well, too bad, you're getting it. You helped me with that particular request so that I could focus on everything else and make this happen. Thanks homie! * Unlike my recent/current season roms, I didn’t use the Smozoma patch for the edit lines rating bug/3 stars fix for this rom. I want to leave that up to folks to do themselves if they want it added in vs leave it like the original. * Unlike the original version, each team now has a structure of 14 forwards, 8 dmen and 2 goalies (with the exception of the all-star teams). THE PLAYERS * Much like my recent/current season roms, I added actual headshots of each NLC player. None have helmets or masks on, in their portraits. You get to see just how ugly these guys are and how bad the hair styles were back then (see Jagr, for example). I went with images circa 1992-1995. This was quite a chore to find these as the online images are mostly low rez scans. I did my best to clean them up. * Player Attributes are based off of end-of-season stats for the 1993-94 season. I edited all 624 players in one way or another. My 0-6 tier structure for attributes is very close to the original rom as far as distribution. I kept a side by side comparison spreadsheet when doing edits. * Like my modern era/current season roms, shot accuracy and pass accuracy are based on “per game” stats, not season % (as there is no season mode). Offensive awareness is based on points per game. Unlike my recent/current season roms, this version is strictly based on 1993-94 stats. I didn’t do a 3 year average as I do with my modern era ROMs. * Rosters are post-trade deadline. * As Cam Neely and Pat Lafontaine, to name a few, didn’t play in the 1994 playoffs, due to injuries, they are not in the active line-ups if you use line changes. They are, however, in the 5v5 NLC mode. * Several missing players and some rookies have been added. A name like Nathan Lafayette may not mean much to you but to many Ranger fans he made many of our hearts stop, in the third period of game 7 of the Finals, when he “hit the post!” He was not in the original version. THE TEAMS * Teams are ranked by the order of how they finished for 1993-94. Same goes for OFF and DEF team ratings as well as PP, PK, Home and Away. You can review these by using EARE. * Lines and d-pairings are confirmed as having been used, at some point, during the final months of the 1993-94 season and/or playoffs. A lot of research went into this detail which included watching a ton of old game footage. Feel free to change them as you see fit. * While jersey layouts don't mirror the actual versions, in several cases, the colors that I used are pretty close to the official team colors. I used two websites that provide official team RGB colors, per season, so that I could match them up (as much as possible) in NOSE. Helmets, as mentioned earlier, are corrected due to the patch. THE PLAYOFF BRACKETS * I included the playoff brackets for 1993-94. I also created a second set of brackets that include the ten teams that didn’t make it into the playoffs. THE ART * Center ice and team selection logos are the official team logos for the 1993-94 season. Unlike the original, the center ice logos are NOT stretched to add more detail. They are they official sized logos. * New title screen art. Hmmmm... I wonder why I chose this particular image? I hope that you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed working on it. It was fun to relive this special season. If you see any mistakes, please let me know. Cheers! Version with 99 Minute OT (except for Playoff Mode) NHL94 Playoff Edition.bin Version with 10 Minute OT NHL94 Playoff Edition - 10 Min OT.bin Player Ratings NHL94 Team and Player Ratings.zip
    12 points
  7. On Wednesday, 5 October 2005, the very first nhl94online.com Classic season kicked off. That makes the Fall 2020 Classic season the 15th anniversary season. It is simply stunning that the community has stuck together (even if old-timers like me went away for a long, long time...) for this long, as there is certainly no divinely ordained reason for this community to exist. So let's all thank Evan Eldredge once again for having the crazy idea back in the mid-2000s of devoting an *entire website and forums* to a decade-old video game and then the even crazier idea of organizing an online league. Tecmo Super Bowl did it first......but NHL '94 does it best.
    12 points
  8. Hi everyone! It's that time again... As with past years, I am posting my NHL94 2022 edition ROM (various updates, to come, throughout the season). I'll start with Preseason and post additional versions as the season progresses. About the ROM: *32 teams. Seattle Kraken are included. *The ROM is based off of the Slapshot67 32-team template. *60 Min. OT. *The ROM has the "weight bug fix". *The ROM has Clockwise's sprite patch. *The rom has the WAS/WPG freeze bug. When corrected, it causes an issue for the playoff mode. If you use Kega Fusion, it will not freeze the player cards for those teams. *Uniforms have been updated for Arizona (both home and away). *Lines/d pairs may not accurate. Not all players will make the roster due to limits as well as some injured players will be back and that's why they are not removed. If you notice any mistakes, please let me know... enjoy! Season ROM - V1 (posted 10/13/21) NHL94 2022 v1.bin Season ROM - VPO (posted 5/1/22) - END OF REGULAR SEASON/PLAYOFF VERSION NHL94 2022 vPO.bin
    11 points
  9. ROM: NHL95_34_Team_ROM.bin This is an editable 34-team ROM for NHL'95 (hack details in this thread). At this time, you can't play the season mode (it'll crash on player stats), but can create custom ROMs for exhibition play, or playoff play. I figured I would make this like wboy's tile molestor screenshots, but with text that you can copy/paste to make it a bit easier. First, in order for this to work in NOSE, you have to add the following text (and save) to the roms.ini file: [GM T-50856 -34] Comments=NHL 95 - 30 Team ROM OriginalROMProductCode=GM T-50856 -00 Teams=34 1st splash screen TM Offset: 1CE1D8 Palette (decimal): 1928696 2nd splash screen TM Offset: 1C4C6A Palette (decimal): 1890442 Title screen TM Offset: 18DAB2 Palette (decimal): 1657522 Title Screen Logo TM Offset: 195240 Palette (decimal): 1665216 Team Start Menu Logos They are all 4D6 (hex) in size, so you can use relative location in TM of 4D6 and press F5 to repeat to scroll through easily. 19A99C 19AE72 19B348 19B81E 19BCF4 19C1CA 19C6A0 19CB76 19D04C 19D522 19D9F8 19DECE 19E3A4 19E87A 19ED50 19F226 19F6FC 19FBD2 1A00A8 1A057E 1A0A54 1A0F2A 1A1400 1A18D6 1A1DAC 1A2282 1A2758 1A2C2E 1A3104 1A35DA 1A3AB0 1A3F86 1A445C 1A4932 Palette: 1723904 Size is 544 (12 x 34). Each palette is in team order 1-34. Take special note of colors 1-7. Team Center Ice Logos Each is 36A (hex) in length, so you can use relative location in TM of 36A and press F5 to repeat to scroll through easily. 1AE50A 1AE814 1AEB1E 1AEE28 1AF132 1AF43C 1AF746 1AFA50 1AFD5A 1B0064 1B036E 1B0678 1B0982 1B0C8C 1B0F96 1B12A0 1B15AA 1B18B4 1B1BBE 1B1EC8 1B21D2 1B24DC 1B27E6 1B2AF0 1B2DFA 1B3104 1B340E 1B3718 1B3A22 1B3D2C 1B4036 1B4340 1B464A 1B4954 Palettes will be the home strip offsets in NOSE. Meaning, the center ice logo must use the same palette as the home jerseys strips in NOSE. The location will change with any change in team data. I suggest anyone modding the ROM to change the strips/logos first before changing team data as the following palette locations are pretty handy. These will only work if you haven't changed the team data: 1733388 1734108 1734842 1735500 1736216 1736884 1737588 1738298 1738912 1739612 1740346 1741072 1741780 1742400 1743092 1743742 1744474 1745178 1745854 1746568 1747262 1747936 1748612 1749260 1749884 1750584 1751320 1752092 1752818 1753538 1754178 1754850 1755604 1756358 Menu Banners TM Offset: 142910 Palette (decimal): 1345168 Scoreboard Banners TM Offset: 1B4C6A Palette (decimal): 1810826 1995/2018 Stanley Cup Champions TM Offset: 197176 Palette (decimal): 1676822 Player Cards TM Offset (3bpp linear): A2C42 Palette (decimal): 663022 Each card is 36A (hex) apart, and they use the same palette, so easy to skip through by using relative Go To and F5 in TM. Starting with Team 01 through 34, each team has 6 cards - G, LD, RD, LW, C & RW. The names that are associated to these player cards are determined by the team best line, the line used when the game is played with no line changes (NLC). Thanks @wboy Music Table Offset: C60 Same as '94, each team has 6 music slots, one byte each. 1st # - face off music 2nd # - power play music 3rd # - 2nd period random music 4th # - goal music 5th # - penalty kill music 6th # - 3rd period random music If anyone wants to figure out the description of each music block, let me know. 30 - Let's Go Band 31 - Here We Go 32 - Charge 33 - 34 - Sabre Dance 35 - 36 - 37 - Beatles - They Say It's Your Birthday 38 - 39 - 3A - 3B - 3C - 3D - 3E - 3F - 40 - 41 - 42 - William Tell 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 - 4A - 4B - 4C - 4D - 4E - Montreal (Halte la Les Canadiens sont la) 4F - 50 - 51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - 55 - 56 - 57 - 58 - 59 - 5A - 5B - 5C - 5D - 5E - 5F - 60 - 61 - 62 - 63 - 64 - 65 - 66 - 67 - 68 - 69 - 6A - 6B - 6C - 6D - 6E - 6F - 70 - 71 - 72 - 73 - 74 - 75 - 76 - 77 - Change selectable teams 85EAB - Player 01 85EAC - Player 02 Change selectable teams for playoffs 85F92 85FE2 85FF0 87A14 Any questions, just let me know.
    11 points
  10. I guess since no one else has spoken up yet, I'll alleviate any concerns by saying that we are in the middle of something. Still a fair bit of stuff to do before it's ready, but suppose I can share this for the "hype". PRE-ORDER NOW! For Spectacular Bonuses! All 32 officially unlicensed NHL teams! A complete set of 16 bit graphics! All 16 of them! Zero Thousand N/A Chel points! FREE Membership to NHL94.com forums!* *sign up required. not affiliated with Electronic Arts, Sega Enterprises or the idiot making this post.
    10 points
  11. I guess I'll start with the obvious. "What? But you two don't do NHL stuff!" True, normally we leave that to the other guys, but admittedly we started this project when it seemed that there was going to be no updated NHL ROM for this season. And admittedly it took us a while to complete, since you know, life stuff. But to whip out a tired old cliche; At the end of the day, we figured that third place was okay too, and we had gone in a different enough direction that this is more a companion piece to the other great updates that @AdamCatalyst and @seamor have released while we were dillydallying. To that end, @Jkline3 and I would like to submit: NHL 2023 Reverse Retro '94 Edition Defining Characteristics: Every team is geared up to use their Reverse Retro uniforms. Alternate uniforms are given preference when opportunity presents itself for whichever uniform is not the RR. Team Select screen features Reverse Retro logos with uniform background. The Team Select screen also features art changes like new "Home" and "Away" banners with colour sections adapted to the team's uniform colour. Trade Deadline Edition features a new background with a special thanks to @Drezz And some new branding and adverting for the community. New player sprites for more versatility and accuracy in how team uniforms are presented. Might have to fix that ref staring off... Every player gets a player photo. From the first line cover athlete to the obscure third line winger. Logos and fonts also got an update too. So. Many. Photos.... Was originally even going to try the colour photo trick, but the team photographers were so wildly inconsistent that this proved a fools errand. Presentation brought to you by: Ray gives his pre-game analysis of newly minted Islander Bo Horvat [rosters updated as of 01 Feb, 2023] I keep wanting to call that place USB Arena... Main menu lineup scrolling has been expanded to allow viewing of the entire roster. And all those damn pictures. In addition to guys going to their new teams, we'll say "several" players also got some colour adjustments to their photos. Player benches reduced to original size so no coach, but kept the goalie and grey rubber floor. Some teams had to use some creativity to get the on-ice logos to look right. Team banners got flashy new fonts too. Zamboni repainted with modern EA logo. ... same Cup though. Probably a bunch of other minor things that I don't recall anymore. Under the hood stuff: Original custom player attribute stats based on NHL23 updates. Weight bug fix is applied. SmozROM Ratings consistency fix - player ratings will match hot/cold overall. Freeze Bug applied so no player stats and player name on second line. User Records set to "ON" can still cause crashes with Vegas, Washington and Winnipeg so caution is advised. Tighter puck collision on boards and net making for pucks that hit closer to the boards sprites and a slighter smaller scoring area on the nets. Expanded goalie roaming area. Go out to the edge of the trapezoid out to the faceoff dots to cut down the angle. Goalie can also carry the puck out to the blue line before the automatic whistle. [if play isn't blown for holding the puck too long] *NEW* Goalie Y-button control hack applied. *NEW* Edit Lines hack for any player to play at any position. The three stars calculator hack didn't seem to play nice in our games, so we left it out. Might revisit it in an update if it seems like it needs fixing. Glass still breaks [okay, it's just been a long time since I've managed to break the glass, so I'm just balancing the space and keeping a shot for posterity.] Probably forgetting something... well let us know if I missed some info or credits. Hope you all enjoy it. Ah. Remembered what it was. Went through and made sure that every possible divisional home and away matchup was possible in playoff mode. NHL2023 RR94 Ed - V1.0.bin NHL2023 RR94 Trade Deadline Ed.bin NHL2023 - 94 Edition TD.bin NHL2023 RR94 Playoffs Ed [v3].bin NHL2023 94 Edition PO [v3].bin NHL 2023 RR94 SC Finals Ed [v4].bin NHL 2023 94 Edition SCF [v4].bin
    10 points
  12. Recent breakthroughs developed the necessity to Revisit this one, but then the question was what to call it. It's not an update since the original 30-team game was abandoned in favour of a ground up Rebuild with 32 teams. So what "Re" word applies here? Remake? Remaster" Redux? Rewind? Nah. On second thought, to paraphrase a '90s icon, "That previous one was just a mic check." Or maybe "Retcon" is the word I'll use now. So yeah, you might find some other version on the interwebs out there, but that one isn't the Real version. You might call it a prototype, or a poor excuse for a hack that was put together by some hack, whatever. Time to Reload. Back in 1988 SNK released arguably the best baseball game ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was loads of fun back in the day [as long as your Nintendo's 10NES chip didn't erroneously flash the memory and erase your save] and despite the engine being reused for three more, less successful, NES entries, as well as seeing two pretty solid, but much less charming sequels on the NEO•GEO MVS and AES systems, which were later given NEO•GEO Pocket/Colour ports, it remains a classic to this day. So in reverence to that game, we're going to try to fix the story of what the hockey version would be. The backstory for this one is that it was released in 1992 by Romstar [SNK's North American distribution arm in the late '80s/early '90s] on the Sega Genesis, the first Hockey Stars features many recognizable teams and player names from it's baseball contemporaries as well as familiar box art. Although it looks like it was completed with some of the prototype art as screen photos. Eh well, these things happen. On to some familiar art... Okay so some of the assets were good enough to keep from the prototype. Including the trademark stark white splash screen and "Be a Champ" words of encouragement. Might have taken the advise of reformatting the title screen to the more common English layout. The main menu got a face lift thanks to some amazing "behind the scenes" work and calls back to design elements from some of the baseball games, while the Pre-game intro screen has some fixes and a new subtle background. Teams are still divided up by league; You will find mention of the "Exciting", "Fighting", "Professional" and "Legends" leagues in the team intros. These are not exclusive in Versus play as in the NEO•GEO releases, but will determine what division you play in during the Playoff mode. Although not as sharp as you will find on AES hardware, full colour cartoony depictions of player photos are still present and take their art style from the previous "Professional" game. And just as in most other SNK games, the pre-match presenter has another SNK character making a cameo in Athena from Psycho Soldier. Got her moved down to line up nicer with her text block though. The jumbotron gets a Stars-y facelift and the arena looks bigger, while the classic Zamboni returns with a perspective shift. Each player has an individual photo and stats you can look up. The fixed View Player screen gets a treatment similar to the NES games, although the NES wouldn't have been able to handle the colour shifting. In another similarity to the Baseball games, player stats seem to be directly imported as they are wildly different. Meaning that play-style can vary quite drastically even among line mates. Some may wish to play with line changes off and create a "super line" of each team's best players, but if you are looking for the added challenge of having to adapt to each player's varying abilities, you may want to keep line changes on. As an aside, as one of the now six "Create-a-Team" options, the Turtles are the "Veterans" and submitted the old photos. While each of the other teams take their skill set theme from the original baseball game as well. The Playoff Cup from Professional makes a return, only this time it is put on a pedestal as hockey deserves. The colour coding now makes sense as each "League" is contained to a divisional playoff format and the faint watermark on traditional green is carried through. There's more of that SNK branding... And since "Stars" is in the name they get some adjustments and prominent features as well. At least the 3-stars icon isn't another SNK logo. AI shooters could use some help though. There, that's a little better. Hockey Stars 1 [1.2].bin
    10 points
  13. NHL 94: 2022 Edition by Adam Catalyst v6.0 updated 2022 06 12 Hello there friendly strangers, After seven months of work, here is the final major version of my NHL '94 ROM. I set out to try to make the most refined and realistic modern version of NHL '94 that I could muster, and I’m thrilled to be able to share this with you. Here are the top reasons you might want to give it a try… Gameplay Revisioned The gameplay has been adjusted for a more realistic modern hockey feel, with harder to score goals, easier to hit crossbars and posts, more realistic speed burst, fewer penalty calls, custom energy depletion and recovery rates balanced for more realistic line rolling and shift length, and player ratings that have been carefully calibrated for more realistic gameplay on the ice. Furthermore, two bonus patches have been included, so you can easily modify the more realistic ROM with a Rookie mode for easier to score goals, or an Arcade mode for those who want faster gameplay and less realism. Rosters, Ratings & Lines Up-to-date custom rosters, ratings, and lines, built on smozoma’s 16-point player rating system (the original game was limited to a 7-point system), all based on extensive 2021-2022 regular season player data. Graphical Refinements The most obvious change is the move to composite sticks, but there are hundreds of graphical refinements beyond this, including title screens, logos, banners, player photos, scoreboard, audience, face-offs, player sprites, scorekeepers, Zamboni driver, and more. The goal was to bring the most graphically refined version of NHL 94 ever made, while remaining faithful to the spirit of the original art direction. And so much more Of course there is the weight bug fix, but also a custom weight scale, less variance in Hot/Cold rating randomization, immediate goalie control by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller (clockwise), a custom 3-Stars of the Game rating formula, a Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg Menu & Player Cards crash fix *, and more. Every single feature & modification is documented below. I would love it if you would give it a try, and leave me any feedback! cheers, -Adam NHL 94 [h] 2022 AC v6.0 - 2022 06 12.zip p.s. If you are Clockwise, Kingraph, Naples, The Sauce, Slapshot76, Smozoma, or anyone else who has contributed to making ROMS for nhl94.com, I would be so flattered if you were interested in lifting any of my mods for your own. I would happily send you my source files, including Tile Molester bookmarks and palettes. Features & Modifications Title Screens Graphics: EA logo revised. Graphics: High Score Production revised. Graphics: Splash image replaced with EA NHL 22 Austin Matthews photo. Graphics: Masthead re-drawn to match EA NHL 2022 lettering. Title screen Logos removed. Credits re-coloured & edited. Above Top Row: The original face-off animations had a linesman that was looking in the wrong direction (Top Left & Centre), freakishly long & thin stick blades, seemingly random black pixels on some frames (Top Left, Calgary uniforms), disproportionally dark shadows that sometimes overlapped the image frame (Top Centre), stick shadows that would overlap incorrectly (Top Right), and a frisbee instead of a puck. Above Bottom Row: I’ve painstakingly gone through the 108 possible sprite combinations that can occur during a face-off, revised every issue I could find, re-drew the sticks to be more realistically shaped & taped, and perhaps most importantly, turned the Linesman’s head to face the right direction. We all need to do our part to improve the state of NHL officiating. Main Menu Settings: Default teams set for the 2022 Stanley Cup finals. Settings: Playoff brackets updated to 2022 seeding. Settings: Line Changes default set to on “On,” because that's how I roll. Graphics: Team Logos updated, with official colours relatively mapped to the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive colour space. Graphics: Team Banner colours adjusted to be uniformly consistent with the logos. Graphics: Player Photos all updated with the NHL’s 2022 images, cropped & colour graded. Hack: Bug that would causes crashes upon cycling through the Player Photos for Vegas, Washington, and Winnipeg has been eliminated. Please note, this comes at the cost of preventing saved stats from showing under player names. Typesetting: Player names centred vertically. Main Menu: Re-wording of a couple menu options for greater clarity. Above Right: All logos were revised or re-drawn by hand, and matched for visual weight. Official team colours were relatively mapped to the Sega MD/Genesis colour space, and banners were matched to key logo colours, with some minor re-wording in the menus. Pre-Game Graphics: Play-off Banner colours modified & dithered to look much closer to the authentic colours used in the menu screens. Graphics: The Pre-Game Announcer's picture frame has been altered to be more consistent with the design of similar elements throughout the game. Graphics: Ron Barr image slightly refined. Arena Names: All up-to-date as of January 2022. Pre-Game: Match-up position names have been simplified to “Forward,” “Defence,” & “Goaltender.” Above: The colour palette available for Playoff Banners in the original game (Left) is extremely limited, but with a little trickery (Right) the banners now look much closer to the authentic team colours within these restrictions. Arena Graphics: Audience colours throughout have been slightly adjusted to have more uniform tonal contrast. Sprites: Audience members throughout have had a myriad of minor errors fixed. Graphics: Ice Colour lightened slightly. The darker colour was giving me eye strain. Arena - Sideboards view Graphics: Scoreboard Banner colours modified & dithered to look closer to matching the Menu Banner colours.. Graphics: Sideboard Scoreboard has re-drawn NHL logo. Graphics: Side-boards Score-Keepers revised. Sprites: Zamboni driver revised to better match the perspective of the side-boards. Above Right: The Scoreboard Banners have been re-coloured using dithering to better approximate the official team colours. Furthermore, Banner lettering and Scores were made brighter, a modern NHL logo was drawn, the audience was tweaked, and the Zamboni driver and Scorekeepers were revised… Above: The original Zamboni driver (Left) looked like a small ruddy-faced hunchback. The driver (who is closer to our point of view and should therefore be larger) would seem conspicuously tiny when he would pass in front of the audience (or any players in the penalty box.) I loved slapshot67’s adaptation of the SNES scorekeepers graphic, so I simply gave it a minor revision (Right), and then matched the style and perspective of the Zamboni driver to fit the scorekeepers and the perspective of the scene better. Arena - Ice view Graphics: Centre ice logos updated, adapted from NHL Rewind designs to match the perspective of the ice. Graphics: Goalie crease outline modification. (Author unknown) Graphics: The Creases now have texturing like in the original NHL 94. No self-respecting goalie doesn't chew up their crease with their skates. Graphics: Bench coaches refined. Sprites: Bench players “chirping” animations refined to be less cartoonish. Graphics: Score-keepers added in. Graphics: Horizontal seam in the glass has been erased. Graphics: Bench area modifications. (slapshot67) Graphics: Bench backup goalie hack. (slapshot67) Graphics: Net re-design. (slapshot67) Graphics: Goal light modification. (slapshot67) Graphics: Face-off circles modification. (Author unknown) Graphics: Trapezoid line modification. (Author unknown) Above Right: It's 2022, far past time to move to composite sticks. This image shows an example of how all players were coloured to emphasize a consistent sense of depth, with more realistic shadows and highlights. In-Play Sprites: - Sprites: Uniforms have been coloured to have consistent official colour use, and a greater sense of depth with as realistic as possible colour shifts for shadows and highlights. Tests were done with demo play to try and give the most accurate impression of how team’s look in motion, and not necessarily what is the most accurate in still. Lighter shadows under the players complete the look. Sprites: Face-off animations revised. Sprites: Players given grey composite sticks. Graphics: On-Ice Player Numbers changed to white for better legibility against the ice. Graphics: On-Ice Player Star for Player 1 colour was change to have less contrast against the ice, and to be less distractingly conspicuous compared to other visual elements. Graphics: On-Ice Player Star for Player 2 was left the same colour, but because of the adjustments to the ice and player one star, the player two star now appears more distinctly. Sprites: Goaltenders masks tweaked to reveal their faces. Sprites: Puck and its shadow revised. Sprites: Player Helmet colour patch. (Clockwise) Sprites: Player Stick tape patch. (Clockwise) Sprites: Improved Checking animations patch. (Clockwise) Sprites: Player Eye colour patch. (Clockwise) Sprites: Player Boots & Gloves colour patch. (Clockwise) Above Right: The Scorekeepers in-play have been revised to consistently match the art style used for the Scorekeeper in the Sideboards view. Also, they have been modernized with touchscreens! Above: Note how in the original (Left) the player one indicator is distractingly very high contrast, while the player two indicator is much more difficult to see with low tonal contrast. Brightening the colour of the ice (Centre) helps, but then the already muddy looking player numbers become very difficult to see. I’ve re-balanced the colours (Right) so that the player one indicator is quieter while still being easy to see, the player two indicator is equally easy to see, and the the player numbers are much clearer to see against the ice. There's also a new puck, and revised puck shadow. The excellent Naples ROM is shown for relative comparison only, no criticism implied of his superlative work. Rosters Rosters & Lines: Updated based on aggregate 2022 regular season player usage data. Rosters & Lines: 800 total players have been included, 25 players per team (14F, 8D, & 3G). Above. 216 official NHL 2021–2022 headshots (only 192 included in-game), all individually cropped and colour graded for visual balance. Ratings Team Ratings: Team attribute & overall ratings updated as per end of 2022 season data. Player Ratings: Underlying system has been changed from the default 1-6 scale to a 0-15 scale for more accurate differentiation of players. (smozoma) Player Ratings: Custom player ratings based on the characteristics from EA’s NHL 2022, modified using a mix of real-world data and gameplay oriented parameters. The goal was to make gameplay more contemporary, and individual player performance more realistic. Player Ratings: Custom overall rating formula. Player Ratings: Much more parity between the best and the worst of the league, with all players having a minimum 52 rating, ranging to a maximum 94 for McDavid, before Hot/Cold variance. Player Ratings: Weight scale modification patch. (smozoma) Player Ratings: Edit lines bug fix patch. (smozoma) Above: Here are the top sixteen players rated a 90 or over. If you don’t see your favourite player here, I guarantee I rated them an 89! Gameplay Controls: Goalie control can now be accessed immediately by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller. (clockwise) Player Ratings: Attribute rating distributions have been careful set and thoroughly tested to produce a faster more contemporary feel to puck movement & gameplay, with better goaltending throughout. Gameplay: Body Checking and Aggressiveness have been balanced to reduce the penalty rate from the original, and approximate the real body checking and penalty rates of each team in the 2022 season. Gameplay: Hot & Cold range of variance has been reduced by ~25%, from a displayed maximum variance of -9/+8 to -7/+6. Gameplay: The “goal” area of the net has been reduced slightly, making it slightly more difficult to score, and slightly more likely that you will hit the post. Gameplay: Player Speed Burst set to 25% of the original, for a more realistic feel and higher difficulty. No more winning every loose puck race. Gameplay: Custom Stamina Depletion & Recovery rates. Gameplay: Weight / Checking bug fix patch. (smozoma) Gameplay: Second-Assist bug fix patch. (smozoma) Gameplay: Overtime set to 5 minutes. Stars of the Game: New custom formula. Above: The original (Left) benches had floors coloured like the ice, and the players chirped with unhinged jaws, with no supervision from a coach, let alone a backup goaltender. Over time (Centre), utterly fantastic changes were made by slapshot67, adding a more realistic floor, fitting in a coach, and a perfectly matched backup goaltender! I've built on this work (Right) by getting rid of the leftover teal coloured shadow behind players leaning forward, drawing more realistic shadows on the players arms and back as they move, setting consistent mouth colours with a more realistic “chirping”, and refining the coach to match the other sprites a bit better, with a more realistic shadow too. Above (Botton Left): I really liked The Sauce’s wide take on the EA logo (Centre), as well as the bevelled style of the original (Left). I’ve mixed the two styles together, and refined it to better fit the allocated vertical space. The Sauce’s excellent ROM is shown here for relative comparison only, no criticism implied of his inspiring work. In-Game Overlays Graphics: Referee pop-over refined. Graphics: Linesman pop-over revised. Graphics: In-Game Timer logo has been re-drawn to match the old EA Star logo in the style of the original graphic, but wider and smoother like The Sauce’s excellent version, and shorter to fit the allocated space better. Text: "Cross Check," "Face-Off," and "Fight Instigator" renamed to "Cross-check," "Face-off," and "Instigator" as per the official NHL rulebook. Graphics: Line Change Energy bars have been drawn to use an inverse quasi-logarithmic scale, more representative of ideal shift length and degrading player performance. Graphics: Instant Replay controls graphic revised. (author unknown) Graphics: Custom Stars of the Game icon and revised typesetting. Above: From Left to Right, various evolutions… 1. The Goalie’s mask has been revised to now show a bit of their face underneath (Right). 2. When the crease got modernized (Centre) it lost the texture of the original (Left). I’ve restored the original texture into the modern crease (Right). 3. There was originally no Stars of the Game icon, and a simplistic formula for choosing the stars. A couple of excellent patches later, and we have a stars icon (Centre) and a better formula! I've built on this (Right) with a new star icon, revised typesetting, and a new custom Stars of the Game formula. In-Game Menus Graphics: NHL & NHLPA Logos re-drawn for greater authenticity. Graphics: “Hockey Night” Banner slightly re-coloured to be more visual appealing to me personally. Hack: Bugs that would causes crashes upon cycling through Player Cards for Washington (and possible also Vegas & Winnipeg) has been eliminated. Typesetting: The “Change Goalie” option for “no goalie” is now in ALL-CAPS for greater visibility. Above: The Player Cards system (Left) developed bugs over time, as the ROM was expanded from 28–32 teams. Looking at a goalie for Vegas or Washington would immediately crash the game (Centre), until now (Right). * Extras Gameplay: An optional Arcade Mode patch has been included, for those who prefer faster action. Gameplay: An optional Rookie Mode patch has been included, for those who are still learning how to outsmart the CPU. Artwork: Matching box art was made! I did one very faithful to the layout of the original Genesis release, and one with the front slightly re-arranged in order to have an image frame better suited to the official EA photo for this year. Known Issues * Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg Player Cards may crash if User Records are turned on, and there are stored goaltending statistics for these teams. A potential fix was being investigated, but is not at a workable state. For this reason, User Records are recommended to be left off. * User Records may incorrectly store user data if playing with Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg. Future Wish-List I’ve run out of time to work on this project, but if I did find more time, here is what I would like to focus on next… Gameplay: Reduce the rebound rate of the puck to be way less bouncy. Gameplay: Enable energy Recovery for players sitting in the penalty box. Line-Changes: Enable line changes to be initiated without possession of the puck, preferably with a dedicated button. Gameplay: Improve logic for how icings and offsides are calculated to use puck position instead of player position. Gameplay: Prevent the goaltenders from skating into the trapezoid areas. Sprites: Redraw Sideboards Referee to better match the art style of everything else (requires “de-compressing” shared tiles.) Gameplay: Program the CPU to pull the goalie when trailing by 1–2 goals (currently only pulls with a two goal deficit). Gameplay: Reduce the energy depletion rate for Speed Bursts. Gameplay: Increase the amount of CPU Body-Checking without increasing the amount of penalties called. Sprites: Improve the comparatively low visual quality of the on-ice officials throughout (requires “de-compressing” shared tiles.) Penalties: Rename “Cross-check” to the proper “Cross-checking.” Penalties: Re-name “Roughing” period that causes an injury to “Illegal Hit.” Player Cards: Eliminate the crash that occurs on player cards for Washington when user records are turned on, and the goaltender has saved stats. User Records: Restore system to be as fully functional as possible. Player Sprites: Restore some player sprite shading details that have been lost from the original. If you were able to help me implement any of these changes, please let me know! Credits This project was built decades of work by the NHL94.com community, and never would have been possible without them. I’m sure there are more contributors than I could ever possibly know, let alone acknowledge, but I will do my best… Contributors This ROM contains contributions from the following individuals… Brodeur30 Rink & Net collision logic. chaos Hot/Cold variation logic. Clockwise Player sprites helmet colour patch. Player sprites hockey tape patch. Player sprites improved checking animations patch. Player sprites eye colour patch. Player sprites boots & gloves colour patch. Dervin10 Roster extractor & importer tool development. kingraph Scoreboard graphic hack. Stars of the Game graphic hack. slapshot67 30 to 32 team ROM re-structuring. Scorekeepers graphic hack and original design. Bench area graphic modifications. Bench coaches hack and original design. Bench backup goalie hack and original design. Net graphic re-design. Crease graphic revision. Goal light graphics revision. smozoma 0–15 Player Rating scale patch. Credits editing logic. Edit Line Ratings bug fix patch. Player Overall rating formula logic. Player weight scale modification patch. Second-Assist bug fix patch. Stars of the Game formula logic. Weight / Checking bug fix patch. EARE tool development. Tony H. Stopping & Crossover Rate logic. wboy 28 to 30 team ROM re-structuring. Player photo logic. Player energy depletion & recovery rates logic. Speed burst rate logic. NOSE tool development. Author unknown Face-off circles graphic modification. Trapezoid line graphic modification. Goalie crease graphic modification. Special Thanks to… kingraph - tips & resources. Sauce - resources for rosters, ratings, and lines. smozoma - utterly invaluable tips, resources, tools, & support. …and everyone at nhl94.com who tested Betas or provided feedback. Extra Special Thanks to… Ena - for nothing less than everything. The ZIP contains the ROM, release note, and optional patches. NHL 94 [h] 2022 AC v6.0 - 2022 06 12.zip
    10 points
  14. Well, a massive thank you to the organizers of this tournament. @halifax, @smozoma and everyone else that helped organize and keep things running smoothly, like @TecmoJon and anyone who chipped in. The tourney gets better and better every year, and without you guys, this community would be nowhere near what it is. For me personally, this weekend could not have gone any better. Entering three tournaments, and winning three tournaments, including the big one, is just unbelievable and completely surpasses any hopes and expectations I had. When someone asked me about my chances of winning, I said they were about 33% for Griffey, 33% for 2vs2, and 10% for King (at most). I’m no mathematician, but I think that means the likelihood of winning all three was literally 1%. I feel like I won the lottery. Friday night was a blast. I was pumped to have a solo weekend to play retro sports games, meet a bunch of you guys I’ve only ever played online, and see the guys I already know and love. Thank you to everyone who got me a drink. @TecmoJon I still owe you one. Many laughs were had. Good times! For 2v2, I was very fortunate to have @annatar as my teammate. A consummate professional who weathered some storms and captained our way to the championship. Thanks bud! We may not play 2v2 the conventional way, but we score some pretty nice one-timers! Shout out to @angryjay93 and @TecmoJon who played amazing, beat us once, and gave us a good run in the championship game with a low, low score of 2-1. Griffey was tons of fun and I wish it had a higher profile and more of a following. @Stantonator is a natural; despite not being familiar with Griffey, he gave me a scare early on with a four run lead that I had to surmount. But after that it was smooth sailing as I did not lose a game. I figured I’d meet @TheWiz84 @angryjay93 or @halifax (or maybe even @Mooney) in the semis and the finals, but I never had to play any of them! Instead I had to play the local ringers who were actually awesome players. Apparently these guys still play the game. They knew things about the game that I did not. My semis win was a walk-off double in extra innings and I think the final game was 0-0 until the last inning when I strung some hits together and won 5 or 6-0. It was nice of the venue to let us finish after hours. It was hilarious when I won and turned around and there were only like three people there! @halifax handed me the trophy and we left immediately. As for the King tournament itself, what a rollercoaster it was. My round robin was not good. @TheProfessor and @TecmoJon both beat me and the games weren't even close. I was not feelin' it, at all. And due to my very average 4-2 record, my playoff path was set to be extremely challenging. I got matched up in round 1 with @angryjay93 one of the toughest tacticians in the game. I must have smartened up because I think I won 5-1 and 3-1. But I still feel like he subconsciously wanted to be done with SNES so he could go win another GENS trophy. Next up was another legend, @kingraph. We always have these super tight-checking battles that go down to the wire. I was fortunate to surmount a game 3 deficit to squeak by. I feel like we had the same kind of series in Vegas. After that, it was @TheProfessor who was actually my slight favourite to win the whole thing if I had to pick someone pre-tourney. He has the hometurf advantage, tons of online wins, and he's always near the top of the King results. Anyway, at that point, we had to start playing on the stage/stream, which is always nerve-wracking. But again, I somehow pulled that one off and got the wins. Next was @dangler who just absolutely dummied me. He mercied me 8-2 TWICE in a row!! On the stream, in front of my poor family. I don’t know what happened. I just got dangled, HARD. Then I had to play @koke_45 in the "losers" final. He took game one 5-3, but then I buckled down and only allowed one goal in the next two games. Against one of the most dangerous scorers, I consider that a major accomplishment. I think knocking Roenick out for game three might have helped me! But then again, Joe Murphy is pretty much on the same level as Roenick, right @halifax? The finals were a bit of a blur because at that point, I was getting delirious. Tired from a long day, and a late night Friday. But I’ve watched the stream a couple times now so I have some idea of what the heck happened. Winning three of four against @dangler is a tall task under any circumstances. Especially with that kind of pressure, and after he had just mercied me twice. But I guess I got some hot teams, I had some success/luck with the double-pad stack, and I got some timely goals. In the final game, I was losing at some point, but I didn't really panic. I think because I was already happy with my weekend, and because I have already suffered the most heartbreaking loss imaginable (see Vegas, 2017). When the final whistle sounded, it took a while for things to set in. I felt like there was no way that it was actually over, that I actually ended the tournament with a win. It took a while. I STILL don’t have the full perspective on what happened. To beat the two GENS giants, and three of the top five SNES players, is pretty huge. This field of competitors, even without Mikail, was outstanding. I have been wanting to win one of these badly, ever since the first was announced in 2015. This game, this hobby, is admittedly a big part of my life, as it probably is for you if you're reading all this. So, it feels GREAT to be King! I’m so fortunate to come away from the weekend fully satisfied. It’s rare in life that things work out so well so I gotta savour this. But I think even if I finished top 12*, I still would have been very pleased with the weekend. I had so much fun. I really appreciate that everyone in this community loves this game as much as I do, and that you continue to play and travel for these tournaments! You guys all f**king rule! Cheers! *maybe top 8 Note : if I didn't mention you here, it's not because I didn't love seeing you. It's because you didn't fit into the narrative.
    10 points
  15. Thank you all for your continued input. Which is making my free time outside work difficult since these are all great projects and ideas. Just to be clear there is no peeking order here. When I complete them, I complete and post. Some have some requests that might have never been done, and will take some time do to finding the right information to mod. Keep providing your requests. They all will be fulfilled in some way or time. If you want to see your mods come along quicker, here is what I need directly from you. Images The breakdown of the league you want (Teams if there is a limit, since not all roms can be expanded right now) Some sort of roster breakdowns. Below are the ones Ive begun taking on, but will be completed. @Hope NCAA Live - Yes this will be one I will be completing. Just found all the logos and rosters and will be completing soon. @Sargon NBA Jam TE - Already in the works, found all the players, images, ratings and logos. Just need the time to put in. @jnc121978 @EmpireBowl @dunkle93NHL series (95/96/97/98) are time consuming projects, especially ones like OHL, WHL, QMJHL, World Cup. Unless, Im getting support from other members to help. I recently completed one for EIHL with @MonkeyHead @LaTormenta where they provided the rosters, ratings, jersey kits, images and I did the editing. We worked well. That is what I need for the other leagues. Since, there isnt much members who have expanded outside 94. 95 is starting to get love thanks to @smozoma @kingraph @Asher413 @Sauce @Jkline3 and others who have helped me progress. But the other years 96/97/98 will be needing some time to dive into each one. @DeterminedApathy @dunkle93 XFL/CFL/WFL rom - This is on my radar as there are alot of football games, but not many that can allow modding easily. The one I determined is NFL Primetime since Ive already modded all the logos, jerseys and the rosters are easier to do since it was the very first mod attempt I tried over 10 years ago. @Tabs3121 NFL Blitz PS1 - Sorry man, but this one is a back burner as of right now. But I will get to it. Just time is all I need to get others Ive started done first. @mack Triple Play Baseball - Sega -- Will have a 2021 roster update completed before opening day with the player stats as well If time permits. @dunkle93 World Series Baseball - Will be getting a NCAA mod. Ive already begun it. @Nabby202099 KHL 2010 - WIll be done, but not until I can complete a base rom for all the leagues I find are interesting to do for. I've completed a KHL 2021 rom that you can find it below and provide your input for the 2010 season. @Cutter The CHL rom can be done and if you can come up with the 30-34 teams you want (their year that you want represented). @HITTER42 Madden 98 - Im actually working with the editor creator for this mod to speed thing up. Hold tight and it will be completed. KHL _21 (95).bin
    10 points
  16. UPDATE: NHL20 V2 has been added to the BOTTOM OF THIS ORIGINAL POST - (excel sheet in zipped folder). Player rating and roster updates, player card changes (thanks Slapshot!), line change updates, team rating adjustments. I will update the playoff brackets on the trade deadline edition. Be careful, the original ROM is still above the screenshots (new ROM at bottom). Slapshot also added the board sound patch courtesy of Brodeur30. Hello, Here is the NHL94 ROM, updated for the 2019-20 season by me & Slapshot. Special thanks to @slapshot67 for his work on graphics and player cards! Below you'll find the ROM and Excel sheet. Excel is in the zip folder, which shows player ratings, "Skip's ratings", etc. Player rating updates based on last year's performance, roster changes, some new player cards, playoff brackets to reflect actual 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Let me know if you find any errors! Notes: -This is the 32-team ROM (updated teams, logos, player cards and graphics by Slapshot67). -Updated team rosters for 2019-20 season (rosters and player ratings by Skip). The 32nd team is still the NHL'94 Hall of Fame team, with original NHL94 ratings! -Weight bug is fixed (heavy guys are harder to knock down), and this ROM uses weight + checking = hitting ability -1 minute penalties (except for injuries = 2 min penalty). You can do 5, 7, 10 or 20 minute periods. -Hot/Cold is accurate in the pre-game screen and in edit lines. NEW for 2020 ROM: 50th anniversary center ice logos for Buffalo & Vancouver. ROSTER NOTES: 3rd line is usually a mashup of best players on a team's real 3rd & 4th lines. Tried to keep scoring lines as they are in real life, or how they "should be" when players return from injury. Dustin Byfuglien is not included on Winnipeg's roster. KNOWN BUG: The menu screen will freeze if the player cards begin to cycle for team #31 - Winnipeg. There is no known fix for this. TOURNEY ROM has continuous OT. The regular ROM has 5 minute OT. (I'll add this later) Zip folder has excel sheet with all players listed, including the NHL94 HHOF All-Stars roster, and Ratings list for all 32 teams. -Skip NHL20.bin NHL20excel.zip NHL20v2skip.zip NHL20v2.bin
    10 points
  17. Wanted to wait for the dust to settle a bit and give myself a little time to reflect on the event before I offered my thoughts. First and foremost, to the man, the myth. the legend, @halifax: I tried my best to arrive a little early on Saturday to help out in the event that you needed any of the CRTs' I brought, or the consoles and controllers. But when I arrived, everything was already well in hand. That's a testament to how well everything was laid out and planned for. Even with all the moving parts you had to deal with, it never seemed stressful. I know I thanked you profusely for setting everything up and hosting a great event and I meant it. Everyone here really appreciates you and the amount of effort and dedication it took to pull everything together. The fact that we couldn't drink and the food truck didn't come through is unfortunate, but that's just life. Can't expect everything to be perfect. Really enjoyed our series as well, though it's tough to lose on a penalty shot like that. I felt like the '94 gods were smiling on me after you had 3 penalty shots in game 2. I think I spent all my beginners luck on our series as @Fed tuned me up pretty good in the next round. I can't say I'd do nearly as well if saddled with the same task of running this tournament. We are all fortunate to have you as a leader of this community. Great job; you have a lot to be proud of. To the current belt holder and Genesis NHL'94 champion, @kingraph, congrats on your first of what will probably be many titles! I know there's a lot of pressure and expectations coming in with you being one of the most feared and revered players and you rose to the occasion big time. It was a treat to watch you play on the big screen in the greatest NHL'94 series I've ever had the pleasure of watching. You're a great guy and I enjoyed chatting with you as well. @angryjay93 getting that 3-peat would have been epic, but you're a legendary player nonetheless and it was great to watch you in the finals and pick your brain a bit on the game. I've had a chance to see the final game 7 a few times from the stream as well. Bit of a bad break in OT with the mass of humanity that was right inside the blue line above the left face-off circle. Looked like you were going to get a break out of the zone but the puck squirted free and Sakic got that one-timer off from the high in the slot; it's a 50/50 chance of being a goal. Didn't want to see either of you lose but we could't ask for anything more than a game 7 in OT with you two. The 2on2 marathon session till 5am was a blast and I was in stitches. I probably would have needed a doctor had I laughed any harder. Great to finally meet you as well. Great guy. @smozoma it was great to play against you in our series and finally meet you after all of the help you've given me over the years. I don't think we've played in a playoff-type scenario since 2009 in the NHL91.com playoffs. Really felt like I had you dead to rights after our first game, but you battled back and overcame a two goal deficit to send me to the losers bracket. Yuuuuge upset against Raph as well. I know all of us were pulling for you to go deep and maybe even into the finals. It felt like it was your day at one point in the tournament and you were gonna be the cinderella story of KO94-4. Great job with the brackets and taking care of all the hardware related issues, too. You're a pillar in the community and I can't imagine what it would be like without you here and all that you've contributed to this game. @IAmFleury'sHipCheck one of the big highlights of KO94-4 was finally meeting you and being able to hang out. It's easy to see why you're so well liked. The, 'EA special' was in full effect in our series and I didn't have an answer for it! At least I got a pass shot by you from center ice, which is somewhat redeeming. I never play well with Calgary for some strange reason. Have to think that having all of those exis with AJ played some part in that. Awesome personality, awesome guy. Can't wait to see you in the next one. @Coffey excellent job with the stream. Hiccups always happen during these type of events but it turned out great and it really added to the atmosphere. Helping you get that big CRT in your car it really hit me how much you had to do for this. Thanks so much. Seeing you rotate jerseys throughout the event was really cool, too. Would love to have the chance to do a little color commentary on the stream next time around. @jer_33 @aqualizard @AtomicRaven @stantanator great to meet you guys and chat a bit. Everyone was really laid back and easy to talk to. Hope to see you in the next one! Also, Stanton better have his legal name change to Stantonator complete by KO94-5. @Mikail, whose forum handle I can't remember. What a stone cold killer! I remember talking to some of the SNES buds and how everyone was saying that the field was pretty wide open during the tournament. Apparently not! Watching him chilln-like-a-villain leading up to the finals with @DAF he was on his own, eerily silent. I just gave him a wide berth so he could focus on getting ready. And even with his hand cramping up he still swept a great player like DAF. I chatted with him for about 10 mins after the final since I really don't know the guy at all and was curious as to how he picked up the game and got so good at it. He told me, growing up, he played his brother and his brothers friend every time he played. So, it was actually two-on-one every game! He said that, "they would just screen the goalie and I had to find a way to win." If that isn't a proving ground for getting great at NHL'94, I don't know what is. He also said on stage that he, "has the bug and wants to play online." If there's anyway I can talk you into partaking in the Genesis side, I'd be happy to . Super nice guy, well deserved win on your second title. Congrats. @Bob Kudelski @Fed @annatar really enjoyed chatting and playing with the SNES buds. I have a lot to learn but I did enjoy the games I played. I will work on my game in hopes of being more than cannon fodder for top level players on Super next time around. @Slapshotsean @Mort @DPS great to hang with you guys. Congrats on winning the Jam title. You guys are absolute gamers, balls to the wall. The 2on2 session till 5am was worth the trip alone for me. You guys have to be there next time. @CamKneely always a brides maid never a bride no more. Congrats on being the inaugural and reigning Duke of 94 champ! Even if it did feel kinda like I was watching you play quarterback for playground kids on both teams. Sorry I could't get some 2on2 games in with the two time 2on2 champs. We didn't get going until after midnight and you had to be at work the next day. Great to finally meet you and we gotta have you back at the next one. @segathon it's not too late to join us. There is still good in you. I can feel it. As far as the venue goes, I thought the stage and broadcast/stream booth really added to the gravitas of the games, and being able to sit back and watch the tournament unfold on the big screen was awesome. It really felt like a legit eSporting event. I'm not sure where the next one will be held but it will be tough to top that aspect after playing on a big stage. Big props to Waves, they were very accommodating and I hope they have big success with their facility into the future. I'd really like to help out more next time around. If it's more hardware, or whatever, you can count on me. I'm great with design and can design t-shirts, promo vids, logos or whatever need be. I just want to make sure this keeps rolling along. Will definitely contribute more to the raffle next time as well. Would have liked to get some 2on2 going for Genesis and SNES during KO94-4, though there really wasn't any time for it. Please delegate the task to me for managing a 2on2 tournament if it's too much to handle in addition to the classic tournament. It could be interspersed during classic games in bracket play if we want to add it. I'll bring all necessary hardware so that 8 players can play at a time. To all the great guys I've played and chatted with over the years that I didn't get to meet: @donnybrook @HABS @Freydey @Zalex @IceStorm70 @CoachMac @Evan @Brutus @Uncle Seth @kgman @chaos @McMikey @The Russian Rocket @hokkeefan @skip @slapshot67 @mack and others that I haven't mentioned because this post is entirely too long.You guys are sorely missed and I really hope you can make it out to the next one. Also, I will spare no blood or treasure to get @wboy to one of these. I'll wrap up by mentioning that some of the community members said they were eager to finally meet me and have me as a part of KO94-4. It was a bit humbling and overwhelming for sure. I hope I didn't disappoint anyone. All I can really say is, I'm just a big kid who hasn't outgrown his love for this game and I hope I never do. ggs
    10 points
  18. So I’m on a conference call at home when my wife shows me this note: So i put put my phone on mute and say “Baby, you get an icestorm everyday of the week”
    10 points
  19. UPDATE: I'm dropping an updated version of my ROM rosters as of 12/15 (ish). I've been picking at the rom continuously, and this mostly a ratings update for how certain guys are performing this year, with updated starting lineups/ photos as well (some teams like Vegas, STL really needed updates!). So I've hardly any time to test, but the time is now for release. Details: -All 31 NHL teams with up-to-date logos/uniforms/lines/ratings (thank you slapshot!) -player portraits for all no-line-change starters -custom/anniversary center ice logos for teams that use them this year (CAR, DAL, TB, DET, NYR...) -Weight bug fix -speed burst at 75% of original rom -accurate arena music per team (default in slapshot 32-team rom) -ice/bench graphic hacks (default in slapshot 32-team rom) -known bug with 32-team rom -- GAME WILL CRASH IF CYCLING THROUGH WPG (TEAM 31) PORTRAITS ON MAIN MENU Please let me know if you find any bugs or errors. Enjoy! EDIT: Re-upped v 1.1 with minor roster/player tweaks and corrections. Barring any major problems, this is final release. NHL 2018 by naples39.zip naples39 NHL94 rompack.zip NHL 2018 1.2 by naples39.bin
    10 points
  20. I was waiting to announce this, but me and my team of artists I have completely re-done the game in unreal engine with polygonal graphics. With a little extra work, we will also have photorealistic coaches on the bench, 4 officials on the ice, and accurate team goal horns. Also adding AHL, KHL, SHL, and national teams. 50/50 if we can have every NCAA team as well. ROM will be free and 512kb download.
    10 points
  21. THIS. IS. MARCH! Hi everyone! I have FINALLY finished the complete overhaul of the music, logos, presentation, and rinks of this ROM and I am excited to share the results. I haven't merged the regions for the superset yet, but in the spirit of the conference playoffs, here are the east and west ROMs in a .zip. The branding on the ROMs has changed from ESPN+ College Hockey Gameday to NCAA Hockey 23: Road to Tampa Bay. Only the ECAC and Hockey East are on ESPN+, so the fictional NCAAtv covering games felt like a much more natural fit. Integrating Unique College Assets Team branding has also been shifted to embrace two unique aspects of college sports - rankings and mascots. When possible, a mascot was either emphasized or replaced a team's current logo. NCAAtv Presentation The pre-game experience has been updated with new background graphics (thank you @Drezz) and new background music (thank you @smozoma, Stompin' Tom Connors, and The Alan Parsons Project). Colby Cohen replaces Barry Melrose, because the imaginary NCAAtv network wanted a college hockey alumni doing pre-game. In-Game Experience The in-game experience has been changed somewhat radically - stats have been entirely recalibrated, the crowd wears team colors, center-ice logos have been turned, and organ music has been redone to have more modern songs or college arena/band classics. Lines are as accurate as possible. Line charts were taken from CHN Now app. The most noticeable change will be stats - I did a preliminary round of ratings based on season and per-game numbers and then followed that up with a sweep through each team to ensure greats felt like greats and no one who will be an accountant in two years time plays like a future NHL legend. ________________________________ Download here! NCAA Hockey 23 - Road to Tampa v1.0.zip ________________________________ Dev Notes - There will be no outdoor patch or "expansion pods" for the foreseeable future - I cannot watch 62 teams and make notes on 20 players. If a player you like has bad ratings, it is because he has bad counting stats. Stats were generated using counting stats put on a percentile scale and then placed in a custom range of overalls for each stat that was different across positions. A manual sweep was conducted to accommodate for injured players or D3 games. Goalies were rated manually.
    9 points
  22. This was a dumb idea. But as it is my habit for doing weird and/or esoteric stuff, the question started off innocently enough. "What if there was a game where you play in a beer league, that is sponsored by actual beer companies? I mean... Breweries used to have teams back in the day... granted then so did factories, offices and banks." "Except instead of real company teams, you make it play like a typical beer league." "Yeah this is already sounding silly." "No, it's sounding funny and awesome and you have to do it." "I *have* to eh? Ah what the hell..." So with that mindset, we dive into: The backstory on this one was that, while developing IIHF Hockey [1991] for the Genesis, a small section of Team 1920 was unwinding with a few brews after hours and thought it would be funny to use the game engine to make a beer league game. This breakaway group called themselves the "Twist Cap Division" and did the work in their free time, which they had some of since crunching wasn't as prevalent back in those days. They took 22 of their favourite beers and named teams after them, subbing them in for the international teams. Bottle caps made for great logo references and a Beer League Hockey logo displaced the EA Hockey League logo because never mind them. The idea was that these guys would never play in a big arena, so the smaller community centre look was used for the pre-game team preview screen. Playoffs were divided up and Easter eggs were thrown around willy-nilly. Just assume that everything is an Easter egg. Such as the black and white Elsinore brewery teams. If you've seen Strange Brew, you know exactly how well these guys play hockey. The kids today might be tempted to call this team the "Dark Souls of Hockey", but they aren't *that* bad. Broadcast sponsorship was "provided" by local channel C-BRU - Channel 13. Fittingly, the beer leaguers are playing for glory and a golden trophy. Based on a real trophy, which is just a regular keg painted glorious metallic yellow. The actual golden trophy was the stuff inside it. This was a dumb idea. Please enjoy responsibly. UPDATE: Version 1.1 features corrected the bench players, so they wear the same uniforms as the guys on the ice. Beer League Hockey 91[1.3].bin Beer League Hockey - 40oz Edition[1.3].bin Disclaimer: This game was based on the PAL port of EA Hockey [1991] as I am apparently obsessed with the extra speed and arcadey physics that it provides. For best results, set your device to 60hz NTSC.
    9 points
  23. I have fixed the playoffs bug in NHL95. You can get a fixed version of the game here. If you don't know what this is about: There was a game-breaking bug in NHL95 that made it so you missed the playoffs if you got 128 or more points in the regular season. (See some discussion about that in this other thread) I made a short video covering the fix The short story of the bug is that the programmer accidentally used some CPU instructions that only work for numbers up to 127. I switched them to use the instructions that work for numbers up to 255. If you have a season you've already started (but haven't started the playoffs yet), the fix will work for it (you don't need to start a new season) There are 3 different ways to get the fix here. You just need 1. I recommend getting the fixed ROM. Option 1 - Download Fixed ROM Here is the fixed ROM (complete game file). You can play this file in any emulator software, or on original hardware with an EverDrive cartridge: NHL95-PlayoffsFix.bin Option 2 - IPS Patch Here is an IPS patch for if you want to update the ROM yourself: NHL95-PlayoffsFix.ips Option 3 - Game Genie Codes And if you want to use the fix on an original cartridge on an original Sega Genesis, here are the Game Genie codes to use: MUST DO before beginning playoffs: ATDA-AA6T - Disable Checksum (if you don't do this one, other codes will cause game to refuse to load) ADLT-WE7L - Playoffs Fix 1/2 ADLT-WL7R - Playoffs Fix 2/2 OPTIONAL: AANA-WE4E - Standings Fix 1/2 AANA-WL4J - Standings Fix 2/2 I verified these in an emulator, so I am just assuming they work on real hardware. You only really need to enter the first 3 codes once you finish the regular season, but before selecting the "Move on to playoffs" option. The last 2 codes just fix the standings display, so you would use those ones during the regular season to see yourself at the top of the standings -- but they aren't needed for the playoff seeding. If I made a mistake in the game genie codes and it doesn't work, I'm sorry. I will test it out when I can. Game Genie is in the mail.
    9 points
  24. Been too long since completing something, so I figured I'd put the more ambitious projects on the back burner and bang this one out. After getting the most and least recent [as of 2022] versions of the Olympic hockey tournaments, figure there is no harm in bouncing around a bit. So, for the next retro review... Presenting: Released in late January 1994, and with the Olympics no longer doubling as the World Championships, this was one of two international tournament ports for the '94 season, and third game overall in this incarnation of the game engine including the original NHL game. 3rd party developer Team 1920 is continuing to partner with the IIHF and featured 1994 Olympic mascots Kristin and Håkon on the splash screen. Prior to the banning of official National Team iconography by the IOC, team logos are allowed to be featured. The IOC did make sure however that there was no shortage of ensuring that you know that this is an Olympic game by making sure their Rings emblem got in there too. The official broadcast sponsor for this year's games was CTV in Canada, with lead presenter Rod Black getting the nod to present the games here as well. While the Lillehammer logo's "snow drift" was copied over to the team banners, the Olympic Rings logo got copied over to everywhere else. Just in case you might have forgotten what game you were playing. All teams play out of the same two arenas in Lillehammer and Gjovik, and the 1994 Olmpics "hockey player" logo that was featured at center ice is adapted well here. More Rings for the Stars. Obviously a tournament mode for the Gold Medal is featured in the game. With only 12 teams taking part, some teams are given a bye in the first round. A cleaner look with blank bye rounds would have been nicer for this, but it is clear that the limitations of the game engine influenced the presentation. Each team gets full player cards, plus a bonus. In addition to the twelve teams that competed at the Olympics, teams from Great Britain, Japan, Latvia and Poland, [that competed against eventual winner and final qualifier Slovakia in the pre-qualification tournament in Sheffield] are available for exhibition and a "Re-write the Road to the Championship" style mode. While not originally featured in Playoff mode in the demo copy sent for evaluation, it seems the sneaky devs went ahead and unlocked them for the the final release. Final score: 3/5 Rings - A bit of a lazy art asset swap, but still has the same solid game play of a main EA release of those days. Olympic Hockey - 1994 Lillehammer.bin EDIT: Upgraded the non-qualifier's attributes to match the more "arcadey" [faster] feel intended for this game. Olympic Hockey - 1994 Lillehammer 1.1.bin
    9 points
  25. My turn to talk about the weekend I spent 14 years of my life running a yearly retro game tournament; I have the benefit of an inkling of what @halifaxand @smozomawent through over the course of the weekend. The tournament, with big help from @UltraMagnusand the generally polite and accommodating members of the community, went off without any major issues. That can only happen from hard work, dedication, and a love of doing something right for a huge group of people. Big thanks and appreciation for the work those guys put in to make the tournament a huge success. On to the boring part..... I flew in on Air Canada on Thursday and managed to get to the AirBnB in enough time to get some games in with @Scribe99 @danTML7 and Szpakman just as a nice welcome to the weekend. The Friday events were awesome and well run, due to a family issue my original partner @DanKcould not make the tournament, so I was saddled with this @angryjay93guy for Super Nintendo 2 v 2. By staying out of his way, we managed to snag a 2nd place finish in the tournament which was a nice bonus. Saturday dawned with us in the AirBnB running behind for the morning, though we made it in time for the tournament's start. I hit my goal in the Genesis tournament, sneaking into the backdoor of the King Bracket before bowing out almost immediately. But as a bonus, I got to play Smoz which was incredibly fun. In the Super Nintendo tournament, I managed to surprisingly cruise through group play taking a single loss to @TheProfessorand Bob Essensa's skate blades 4-3. I upset the future champ @Bob Kudelskiin a Rangers/Kings game that - unfortunately for the rest of the field - I was never in any danger of losing and led him to refocus his efforts. Bracket play opened against @Stantonatorand this is where I wish we had the series on stream. First game he called Boston/Pitt - I grabbed Pitt, both teams were equally matched, and I managed to pull out the game 1 win. I called Washington/St Louis for game 2 (a personal favorite of mine and @annatar) and Stanton grabbed the Caps. For most of the game, he kept me out of reach, scoring timely goals, securing his defensive zone, and playing well. I managed to claw back to a one goal deficit with 40ish seconds to go and a center circle faceoff. Stanton won it, got the puck to Bondra, and decided to (and I agree with this decision) use Bondra to just play keep away from the center of my zone and run out the clock. Somehow, Jeff Brown and Garth Butcher managed to catch that little guy and check the puck away from him. A pass to little Nelson Emerson kick started a race toward his goal. Ridley failed to square up Emerson, Hatcher and Iafrate were just out of position, and Stanton was caught between trying to hit Emerson and take Beaupre. I managed to sneak a short side deke just inside the post and hit the game tying goal with 3 seconds left on the clock. I personally thought Stanton was going to either a. have a heart attack, b. break a chair, or c. kill me . Fortunately, he refocused and won the game in overtime. Game 3 was a Rangers/Kings call, I grabbed the Rangers as I did against BobK and managed to see out the series win. That moved me on to play @koke_45 one of the more scary players to face in any setting. While I gave a good account of myself in a Montreal/Toronto matchup, I just didn't have the chops to keep up in his preferred Quebec/Edmonton matchup. I'll get him one of these days. That knocked me down into the loser's side where I won my first game against Rooster in a Winnipeg/Toronto matchup before having to face Annatar. As he said above, he has a small score to settle with me and chose a Winnipeg/St Louis matchup. My run of using big, slow-ish, skilful-ish teams ended with a 4-1 defeat to a good friend. And that is really what this tournament was about meeting all of the people I have known only as names and the occasional face/voice behind a screen. It was an amazing experience meeting Szpak, Kaze, Sebe, Scribe, Mr T, Thrillhouse, KingRaph, DanTML, Corbett, AngryJay, Annatar, BobK, Koke, Dangler, TheProfessor, Gambi, Mooney, SlipperyPete, Stantonator, Skankhunt, Halifax, and Smoz. I know I missed out on meeting some other people, but I know I will see them at the next one and the one after that and the one after that..... (Oh, and I finished 4th in the Genesis 95 tournament with UltraMagnus and Segathon pointing out who I should play next over and over again until I was done)
    9 points
  26. I wanted to write up a bit of a recap here of my SNES tournament while I still remember some of what happened, it might be boring but thanks for humoring me. If I don't mention someone, I probably just forgot to but it was genuinely nice to talk to everyone I did interact with over the weekend, and I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to everyone! Overall, it was a great weekend. Have to say big thanks to @halifax for everything he does - I can't overstate how much the community is in debt to you for putting together these live events and bringing so many of us together. It's also always a personal pleasure to see you and hang out, even though you're usually busy organizing or playing. I'm just happy I've been able to attend so many of these tournaments. Kudos to @smozoma as well who I can tell you spent a lot of time loading up his car with consoles, cables and TVs - along with doing lots of other stuff over the course of the event - to help make this thing happen. This was my second time at Waves and it is (was ) a super venue, we had all the space we needed, great setups to play and stream, and it was nice to be able to grab a beer or a bite without venturing out. Great to run into some of the old guard like @IAmFleury'sHipCheck who also seems determined to attend as many live events as possible. Love to see it and always amazing to chat even though we didn't have a ton of time to hang out. Likewise @kingraphwho is a fixture at these things and always has a smile on his face. Also wanted to shout out some of the folks who came from afar like @Stantonator who has a great attendance record representing the west coast, as well as some of my nWo buddies @TecmoJon @angryjay93 @Gambi and @koke_45 (too sweet). There was a good showing from the Maritimes too with folks like @dangler @Mooney and @slipperypete making the trip, great to meet dangler again after KO94 2 and put faces to names for the others. Mooney also showed he can put away the beers like a champ, I know you are doing the east coast proud. The community right now is just a great bunch of guys and like I said, there's too many others to mention so I'll just say it was great to meet everyone, whether it was SNES or gens people. I drove in on Friday and we did the 2v2 and it was a ton of fun. Nice to bring home some hardware with @Bob Kudelski. I don't really remember too much about our games except for the final where we sqeaked out a 2-1 win over angryjay and Tecmo with a nice passing play. I don't think it was very attractive 2v2 but we got the job done. Saturday was a fairly late start for me as I didn't sign up for Sega so I slept in and got over to the venue around noon to play some exis with @dangler and @koke_45, unfortunately those ended up being some of my best games of the day, should have saved those for when it counted! I started my tournament off with a loss to @McMarkis who always plays me tough. I can't remember the teams but I think it was a one goal game. I then got a much needed result against angryjay who is never an easy out in SNES. I won the rest but we had some bumps along the way, I was losing to The Professor's son who has come a long way with his game but managed to turn it around. I also had a 2-1 win over Yepster where he called EDM-SJ and I only barely won, lol. I think group D was a tough bunch of players, or maybe the overall quality was just really high! My other games were against Johnzors and StreetMage and I did manage to get a mercy in the last game which really helped my goal difference. But it wasn't enough, I finished 5-1 along with angryjay and McMarkis and I had the worst goal difference of the three of us. That put me on the top half of the bracket with dangler who was coming in as #1 seed. First I had to get through sickfish who had also gone 5-1 so I knew I couldn't take him lightly. He won the first game 4-3, I can't remember the matchup, but now I was definitely sitting up and taking notice. I was able to get some momentum going after that and I won 7-1 and 6-2 to ease through, but I was sweating after game 1! That meant last 8 in the winner's bracket and I had to face dangler in a 1 vs. 8 matchup. I normally play dangler pretty close but he can be so deadly if he gets hot, so I knew I'd have to be playing at my best. I wanted to call mid tier teams against him (the Mikail treatment) to try to slow the game down and we went NYI-PHI (I think) with him picking the Flyers. There wasn't much between us in the game and it went to OT and then almost to the end of OT after I couldn't bury a couple chances. He scored with 4 seconds left to take game 1, brutal. Real tough to get back in the right mindset after that but no choice. I'm already forgetting the matchups but I think it was something like MTL-WPG and I want to say I took the Habs. If you have a better memory than me please correct me. But I managed to get hot and it was a pretty easy win, 7-3 in the end to set up a decider. I went against my better judgement here and didn't pick another lower tier matchup, going for WSH-LA. I still think that's a good matchup, but he took the Kings and definitely got the most out of them. It was never really close, I lost 8-4 and got knocked down to loser's. My first elimination game was against @TheWiz84 (another guy I was happy to meet, a great new addition to the community and a solid bud) and I don't remember the teams but we both put some goals up on the board and I ended up making it 10-4 to move on. That set me up for a grudge match against my good buddy Tecmo who got the better of me in the last online King. He was actually higher seed after killing it in the RR, so I had to pick a matchup and again I don't know what teams I picked (he probably does, since he is way better than me at remembering these things). I had to play pretty tight and take my chances, it ended 4-1 and I was happy to inform him after that our lifetime record in King games was now 1-1. Now I had to wait to see who was going to be knocked down from winner's, and it ended up being The Professor who always manages to be a gentleman as well as a super tough opponent. We played on stream but unfortunately it wasn't a great game for the neutral. I picked a NJ-STL matchup, something I felt pretty confident about. I guess I expected him to give me NJ, but he didn't, and I ran into a red hot Claude Lemieux as well as Prof's usual precise play. I kept trying to get behind the net with Janney to feed someone out front and he kept reading the play perfectly. 4-2 loss and my day was done. All that remained was to see how things were going to unfold for the last 4 of Prof, dangler, koke and Bob Kudelski. Not exactly a shocking group to make it to the end, although I had hoped to knock one of them out. Dangler was on a heater and ended up mercying Bob in both games in winner's final, and probably thought he had one hand on the trophy. Bob really had to dig deep to then come from behind to beat koke in a best of 3 before playing some of the best 94 I've seen him play when the chips were down. A bunch of us got up on stage to watch the last couple games and both guys were giving it their all. Really impressive stuff. Ultimately it was Bob who edged it with some super clutch goaltending and I was happy for him. Felt like redemption for that famous Vegas final. Dangler played great and will probably win another one of these if he wants to, I know what second place feels like though bud. Was a pretty relaxing end to the night as we were about to get kicked out of the venue and I had a long drive back on Sunday so nothing much else went down. I was hoping to be top four going into the weekend and I ended T5 so I guess that's close - it doesn't feel like a total success but I also can't really complain as the top guys are just so good now and we had 7 out of the 9 guys in A league at the event. I'll be back!
    9 points
  27. Thanks Bahhhhhhhhhhb. Big thanks to @halifax and @smozoma for putting this thing on. They say, "if you build it, they will come", and that's all well and good, but someone still needs to build it, and you sure do lots of the heavy lifting. I mean look at Metaverse. Their budget is basically... their entire budget more than YOUR budget, and we almost had more active users over the weekend than they did! Arrive at Pearson airport super early, 9am Thursday, same time as Scribe. We meet up and share an Uber to a random Internet cafe because our airbnb doesn't allow entry for another 7 hours LOL. We end up paying $20 in Chinatown for an hour of internet and two sodas. We don't even use the Internet. We end up firing up my laptop and playing exis for about 2 hours. Nobody says anything to us except a non-english speaker who mumbles "you guys.... smart" as he sees us playing on our own computer. I'm still confused, but we nod and continue. Scribe won 4-3 in the BO7. We head back to our airbnb finally, and szpak meets us there with BEER! But even better, he brings a perfectly sized CRT tv. We jam out another 20 exis as TecmoJon and KingRaph finally arrive. As an aside, moving from CPU to CRT was a shock for both scribe and I. I didn't ask others, but it felt different than online. As a plus though, it went away pretty quickly, and nearing the start of night 1, and I can say that scribe, myself, and TecmoJon were all feeling pretty good. Raph having only played a few times in the previous few months was a touch leery. But frick, he's starting from a different place than us dregs. We run out to get some minor groceries and supplies for the next few days, and then head to Waves Gaming for night 1 of 2v2 and some early group play. I personally didn't play any round robin games that night. I was just walking around, taking it all in. Saying hi to the likes of corbett, mr. T, thrillhouse, kgman, sebspakaze, for the first time IRL was amazing. I think I hugged everyone. Maybe everyone but corbett, kgman, and sebe. They just didn't strike me as huggers. Apologies if I'm wrong, hug me twice next time if you want. Thinking that from the typically accepted list of top 10 NHL94 Sega players, the only 3 missing were schmidt/plabax/seth/tick, odds were stacked against me. But still, those guys better be there next year. Raph and I were called to do our 2v2 matches and we were off and running. I didn't jot down any of the games, but we crushed mr. t and Thrill in the round robin, but on our way to the finals, they gave us the biggest scare. we were up a few late, and they kept coming back. with 10 seconds left, somehow mr. T gets a semi-break, flips in the PERFECT rebound try, and grabs puck....... crossbar. everyone watching couldn't believe it. whole place erupted. The finals was vs. scribe/corbett who also had a good time on the way to the finals. Sadly it was only a best of 1. It was so quick and done, we didn't have a chance to really even try new things and learn from mistakes, but was I happy to win it? OH YEAH!!! next year, I'd like it to be a blind entry process where you just enter and you're matched with an automatic partner (skill based matchmaking). It could even take up an entire half day. such a high entertainment value. have its own dedicated stream. Anyways, thanks Raph for the carry, but it was more about HIS raw skill; we had amazing chemistry and made some cool plays and saves. The other 2v2 started going then, as well as some Sega matches. everyone was wrapped up at the moment, so being at Waves was pretty cool because I could just hop onto one of their gaming computers and play some rocket league. it felt way better on their comp, so now i'll be going through that rabbit hole to find out what's wrong with my comp. probably time for new vid card. When we were all booted out at midnight, I screamed "HEY EVERYONE! WE HAVE A VERY SERIOUS DISCUSSION THAT NEEDS TO OCCUR. IT'S ABOUT TO CLOSE, AND WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT WHERE WE'RE ALL GOING AFTER THIS." nobody said s**t. So feeling like the dude that held up his hand for a high five and was collectively shunned by 30 hands, I said nothing more. NEXT TIME, I would like there to be a planned but optional event after each day because degenerates exist that want to get 4 hours sleep each night because we can sleep when we're dead, and we travel with the boys to PARTY!!!!!!! A small consolation was that we headed back to our airBNB, got a few more hours of exis and conversations with scribe, tecmojon, and Raph, and had a nice decent sleep. WAKEY WAKEY toast and bac-ey. I woke up the boys with some coffee, and some bacon/tomato sandwiches, which incidentally was quite better than day 2 breakfast of choice for Raph..... unbuttered brown toast. we hopped off BRIGHT AND EARLY to get to the vent already like 15 minutes late. haha. Sorry Halifax. and I mean it. at 1015am you could already feel his stress. I could read his eyes and face "oh man, no way I'm gonna pull this off. way too many events, not enough time". But in no time flat, we had our intros, country photos, and group brackets ready to go, and vague instructions on what to do. Being adults, we eventually found our way to a TV, found an opponent, and started to play. I do think there's an opportunity here for some of us to bring our 10+ aged children next time, and have them work each group. Making sure there's no downtime between systems. That's what caused us to go so much later. Halifax can only call so much. Downtime between games is ok, but not like 10-20 mins. Take a piss, grab a beer, 2 mins, get your next game done. Anyway, I digress. Here's what happened to me in the round robin. Game 1: Fella named LHX. I think I heard he was a 95 guy perhaps. He chose QUE/DAL. I picked DAL because I know how to use their unique players better, at least that's what I told myself. This guy caused havok like no other. I was down 1 early, and he just kept slapping it from all angles and checking well. It took me until midway through to find my bearings. I was able to get a couple slappers, eased up on myself, and then I think I got a pass shot, and I knew it was going to be a good day. WIN 4-1 Game 2: Gentleman named Handzus. The name sounded very familiar. He picked LAK/DAL, and having just PLAYED as Dallas, I thought let's mix it up. So I figured I'd run standard Sandstrom at C, but after he pumped a few one timers wide, I subbed him for Robi at C, and was able to mount a comeback to win 4-2. Game 3: Ben Fisher - He starts talking right away about how he's not good as some of the other guys, and hey, that's both the point of these things, but also can be a downer for some. I would like to see some changes on this in future to keep these things going and growing. Anyway, I'm away this time, and call STL/WSH - he picks WSH (sadly), but I figure I know enough about STL to bring in a win. Again I go down, but this one is more high flying andback and forth. I end up winning 6-4 in a fun one. I played Robert as well, but I messed up my notes and forgot what happened, but I won. So I was 4-0 and feeling good, but knew I had two hard matches still left. Game 5 - don't need to say much. It was angryjay93, and probably the most hilarious thing happened. we were talking about all his games being 6 goal wins so far, so my goal was to be the first. I set a micro goal of getting the first goal. I actually DID get the first goal, and made a HUGE save near the end of P1. he yawns audibly, I chuckle, and he gets 7 in a row and we are at the 430 mark of third. he says "are we done here?" and we both laugh and I say no f**k you, we finish. I get one back, but lose 8-2. He chose the matchup of PHI/EDM. I took PHI and he Klima'd me with 6. Game 6 - szpakman rolls on over to play my final round robin game. We normally go pretty even online. I call the "bait" matchup for TOR/CGY, thinking I know how to neutralize him with TOR, but I was just wrong. he rolls me over 4-1. I finish the round robin at 4-2 and I'm on my way to the upper bracket. What I'm NOT expecting is for them to say "first round playoff matchup is danTML vs. kgman". my stomach dropped. the kgman that went 6-0 and +31 gdif? I REALLY wanted this to be on stream, but they kept saying we were behind, so we had to just play. I tried to stream and record, but the TV we were on was so tiny, that the phone had to be too close and just got in the way. I thought he was getting antsy to play, so I just said f**k it. Game 1 – I pick WSH/HFD, he goes WSH and wins 4-2. It was close, nice plays all around, but I thought I was in it still. I realized I needed a little something extra by this point, so I head outside and have a quick hit of my cannabis vape. Heartrate slows, focus intensifies. I run back in. Game 2 – he picks WPG/LAK. I chose WPG for the speed. He played McSorley which was odd to me (weight bug), and I think I was able to overwhelm the team with speed. Still, I'm up 1 with a minute left, and ice it twice. Then, 15 seconds left with goalie pulled and Gretzky at C, Gretzky floats the slowest one timer over Essenza to send us to OT. Early in OT, I do a rebound goal with Davydov who was on fire, and he pots it for the win. I run outside for another hit. Game 3 – I pick EDM/PHI. He picks EDM. It’s clear from the get-go that Klima isn’t functioning well. For anyone who knows Edmonton sans Klima, they are akin to maybe like a SJ or OTT. Anywho, then Klima takes a penalty, misses the net… It’s 1-0 for me after 1. Early in 2nd period, Klima gets injured for game. Lights out. Pot a third one late, but kgman had trouble figuring out what to do against a speedy Eklund. With nothing working, the game coasts to an anti-climactic 3-0 win. A few came to thank me for sending him to the losers bracket, making their upper bracket path a touch easier. Next up was Sebe. It was a glorious overtime loss, to send me to the loser’s bracket. I suggest you watch it here though. You can speed through the breaks. I took a cannabis break after game 1, but I was gone so long because I thought someone stole my phone (hint: it was streaming our game the whole time LOL) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1626263850 After losing that, it was time for Smozoma in the loser’s bracket. This time, I wanted to do a reverse Toronto bait, choosing PHI vs. TOR, but Smoz screwed it up and took PHI. Another intense overtime loss, and the sad reality that my day was done finally set in. This was on the KO94 stream on that day around the 5 hour mark. The best part was like 7mins into OT, and yet another crazy save or miss, I hear someone in the crowd say "WHAT IS THIS GAME EVEN?!?" and I lol'd so hard. After the loss, I was feeling pretty down. I put my headphones on and played rocket league for a couple hours to calm down, and then it dawned on me that I can play rocket at anytime, but this was my only chance to make some more connections and watch some amazing 94 action. So that’s what I did. I went around challenging ppl to exis, watching some streams, commenting, cheering, and having a grand old time. I gained a ton of respect for @Bob Kudelski this tourney. I care about SNES bud. It's a worse game, but because I like you and all the others who play it, I care too! I tried again to get everyone to go to a bar or out for sushi, and nobody spoke up, so I figured everyone was tired. By the time we got back to our Airbnb, it was nearly 2am. I warmed up some bacon, and brought out the ketchup chips and all-dressed chips, and we stayed up another hour just talking about our nhl94 theories, while raph jotted down ideas for his podcast. That might have been my favourite hour of the entire weekend tbh. All in all, most of the NHL94 guys seem like very mature and well-adjusted men, but also very fun-loving and polite. And I offered tons of free weed to everyone I met, but only @Stantonator responded positively by offering me some of his in return haha. I order my weed by asking what will put me to sleep. He asks for the strongest. We wake up the next day to a message from Raph saying he left to airport and wished us well. The rest of us chatted another 2 hours while we waited for Airbnb checkout time. We had to leave szpak’s CRT TV in the garage. I figured they wouldn’t notice until we were ready to grab it. Instead, they nearly immediately text me a picture of the TV and leftover beers LOL. Oh well. I went to the airport early and started writing this. Only funny things there were running into Halifax at a nearby gate, and Scribe randomly giving me the edibles he didn’t eat, and I took them without considering travel limits. So I walk up to the security screening and say “I’m concerned about the amount of cannabis I have on me.” Ended well though, but really it's just hilarious from like 3+ years ago where I'd be in jail right now. All in all, I had a great time and I learned SO MUCH that I want to use forward and hopefully join the team of Halifax and smozoma to help provide some needed administration and acceleration. I have SO many ideas, but I want to wait until everyone does their write-up, and everyone does their survey, and then incorporate my event and marketing ideas into things, and see what I can do. Had a wonderful experience meeting everyone and playing some games with NO LAG!!!!!! I'm in for every event from now on. Nothing will keep me away, except the cold cold hand of the specter of DEATH (knock on wood).
    9 points
  28. Well, I had originally started this a while back ans set a goal for myself to see if I could complete a set of games before the Olympics started. Then stuff happened, bla bla bla... You know what they say about best laid plans... So since the actual rosters version of this idea is in a bit of development hell, [The fact that some countries waited until very late to announce their rosters didn't help matters either] I figured I might as well pull a AAA move of releasing what I have now, and just patch it later. </caveat> With the development Orpheus-ian journey finally over, I figure the best option is to just post the complete series in one place. Updates to be spliced in, like for starters, the complete array of title screens. Hey, games take a while to make, the idea for this one started back when NHL players were still supposed to be going, in spite of you-know-who's smarmiest efforts. Wait... three game? Yeah, why not. So there are differences. Like these: Splash screen is even more a bit cluttered with all of the groups that were needed to sign off on this. Default to last Olympic finalists, Non-Russia gets a new logo which fits in well enough with the ISO-3 Code/flag team selection icons. Small changes here. Most notable is the inclusion of new Qualification Round countries as playable teams. Replay the final qualifying round and re-write history. Speaking of history, figure I would mention that in light of contemporary world events, despite being someone whose great-grandparents emigrated from Ukraine to Canada, I do prefer historical accuracy over revisionism. I did however change the reference to the ROC team as only ROC. I did decide that Qualification round team Belarus was expendable, so I dropped the Group D team in favour of Group H Ukraine because screw it, I can. The women's side didn't enter a team, but being currently ranked 40th means that they wouldn't have fared very well or really be playable anyway. In lieu of being able to figure out how to hide some sections of the playoff bracket, bye-round teams get the double-up effect. Luckily, having enough spots for playable and non-playable versions of the same teams means that there are no first round mirror games. Playoff mode is expanded to allow for regular 12 team [men's] or 10 team [women's] bye-round infused format, or take one of the lower ranked teams straight from the Qualifying Round to the Medal Round and win it all. Like in PyeongChang, the three major sports networks in Canada are sharing a small team of presenters and announcers comprised of members of CBC, TSN and Sportsnet. Former CBC and TSN, now with Sportsnet, commentator Chris Cuthbert was selected to be the play-by-play guy. Not much change on the men's side [other than lower overall ratings] but to make things equal, Olympic pre-game presenter Kate Bierness is present as the Olympic pre-game presenter. You will likely notice the crowd. I had originally intended on an empty area look, but was unable to come up with an empty seat sprite that I was happy with for the sides of the area. So, since this is just a prototype, we'll just say that the dev team figured that we'd be able to have people in the stands by now. I'll just figure out something else for the real-rosters version. Still couldn't do much with the crowd that I was happy with, so we'll just ignore that. It was nice that the default arena palette worked so well with the Beijing 2022 logo. And in spite of the gobs of money the inferior Sportsnet was attempting to throw around, broadcast branding went to the classier CBC Sports. You even get to have a game end in a stupid shootout like the IIHF if you like. ....and go back to the main menu screen. Another in lieu of, being able to figure out a formula to select the single best player of the game from each team, we have five rings for the three stars. Nothing really different to point out with this screen, so I'll just mention that teams now have an as-accurate-as-possible-to-Nike's-craptacular-unfit-for-hockey-uniforms-design-aesthetic sprite colouring. Sadly, some of the player sprites don't look that great, but then neither did the real life players! Similar to how in my 1920 Olympic game, when I inadvertently predicted the official name change of Czecho-slovakia/Republic to Czechia, [I just used the traditional shortened name for the sake of fitting less letters] the prototype China team was based on the KHL's HC Kunlun Red Star roster. Including a Chinese guy named Jake? [who yes, is a relation] It does kind of show the mockery of the IOC's "passport=nationality" rulings as well as highlight how the IIHF had to make concessions to avoid embarrassing a hockey program that is about 20 ranks and three and a half divisions out of their element. Oh well, play as these guys [or one of the Qualification Round teams] for "extra challenge mode". One benefit to the "official releases" is that unlike the prototype, IIHF.com had 99% of the player photos right there. Automated image editing for the win. And for the teams that didn't qualify, I just used the default man/woman graphic like they did. While the Women's side was actually quite straight forward, I feel that ratings may be contentious in the men's side. This is mainly due the the difficulty in comparing player stats with either tiny sample sizes, or from vastly different quality of teams and leagues. I'm happy with the disparity though, so maybe I'll just call it the "Dark Souls" of Hockey games. Olympic Hockey - 2022 Beijing-N.bin Olympic Hockey - 2022 Beijing-M.bin Olympic Hockey - 2022 Beijing-W.bin
    9 points
  29. How the forgotten man was found: Recently I was perusing NHL Reference and thought I'd go over to take a look at the 92-93 Los Angeles Kings roster . The Kings are one of my favorite teams in the game and I was curious to see how players like Luc Robitaille, Wayne Gretzky, Tomas Sandstrom and Kelly Hrudey performed. As I was scouring my way down the roster, I noticed a name that I recognized but couldn't quite put my finger on. As I thought about it a bit longer a new thought occurred, the fact that this player was not included in NHL '94 despite playing 49 regular season games. With this thought in my mind, I was determined to discover the player who played the most games in 92-93 without making NHL '94. This is the story of John McIntyre. John looks a little surprised to be remembered. Don't worry bud, I got your back. Who is John McIntyre exactly? McIntyre wen't in the 3rd round of the 1987 draft, 49th overall to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Playing as a center in the OHL for the Guelph Plates, it took a bit of time for McIntyre to get his game going as he scored a mere 30 points in 47 games during his draft year. As an over aged player in junior McIntyre scored 30 goals and 56 points and he earned a cup of coffee in the AHL with the Newmarket Saints. The following season McIntyre spent 6 games in the "A" before getting called up to the big show where he would be able to ditch bus rides for the majority of his career. Once in the NHL, John was able to establish himself as a defensive minded 4th line center who loved to get in on the fore check, skate hard, and lay big hits while occasionally dropping the mitts. He would ply his trade in the NHL for 6 with years with 4 different teams (Toronto, LA, Rangers, Vancouver) with 91-92 being his career year (5G-19A-24P-115PIM). 1995-96 would be his last year in pro hockey as McIntyre finally had to gut it out in the AHL with the Syracuse Crunch for 53 games before calling it quits. After all was said and done, McIntyre played 351 games, potting 24 goals and obtaining 54 assists for 78 points and 516 penalty minutes. Why wasn't McIntyre on the Kings NHL '94 roster? McIntyre played 49 games, which placed him 15th on the Kings roster for most games played during the 92-93 season. That is more games than Dave Taylor, Corey Millen, Tim Watters and even Wayne Gretzky! Problem was, McIntyre was traded before the end of the season on March 22, 1993 to the New York Ranger for Mark Hardy and a 5th rounder. Hardy himself played 55 total games that season and made the Kings '94 roster as the 6th highest rated defenseman. With NHL '94 being released after the 92-93 season, it simply would have been no longer accurate to include McIntyre as a member of the Kings. Why wasn't McIntyre on the Rangers '94 roster? This is where things get a bit more involved as McIntyre made it into 11 games with the Rangers before season end, this left him at 31st for most games played as a Ranger during 92-93. On the whole, McIntyre played 60 games, this is more than fellow Ranger forwards such as Phil Bourque (55 games), Jan Erixon (45 games), and Steven King (24 games). All three of the listed players made the '94 cut, seemingly at the expense of McIntyre. Looking further down the list, one will come across the name Mike Hartman, he played a mere 3 games with the Rangers but he as well made the '94 cut. Digging a bit deeper on Hartman, the answer to his inclusion becomes a little less murky as he played 58 games with Tampa before being traded to New York on the same day that McIntyre was acquired. This leaves Hartman with a 61 to 60 games played edge over McIntyre, that appears to be the reason for the choice of Hartman over McIntyre. Could this have been avoided? Forgetting McIntyre could have certainly been avoided, but at what cost? In regards to Bourque and Erixon, I would be inclined to include them as part of the Rangers '94 roster as they were a part of the team the entire year. The amount of defenders could have been reduced by one to allow for an extra forward, but all 8 Ranger players included did play a fairly vital role with Lowe coming in as a mid-season acquisition and Leetch missing a large chunk of the season with injuries. This leaves us with Steven King who scored 12 points in 24 games as a rookie. King, was signed out of college and turned into a decent prospect that was producing in the "A" but he was left unprotected during the 1993 Expansion Draft. King, ended up being selected by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim thus leaving him unavailable for the Rangers during the upcoming 93-94 season while McIntyre remained property of the Rangers. This is where things get even hazier, the release date of NHL '94 is still a bit of a mystery with release being estimated around September-October of 1993. It is difficult to say when exactly rosters were finalized but McIntyre was claimed by the Vancouver Canucks on October 3, 1993 during the waiver draft. It is possible that rosters were finalized after the draft, thus making McIntyre even more of a mystery man as he was on his 3rd team in 7 months. Despite his vagabond ways and King's emergence with the Rangers, it would appear that there was a clear remedy to the problem. King, in addition to making the Rangers '94 roster also made the Ducks '94 expansion roster. For some reason the '94 powers that be felt it would be deserving to include King twice as opposed to McIntyre once despite McIntyre playing over twice as many games as King during the 92-93 season! Is anyone else forgotten on McIntyre's level? No and it's not even close. The next two players with the most games played to not be included were Vladimir Vujtek and Hubie McDonough with 30 GP each. Vujtek floated around the world for nearly 20 years eventually accumulating 110 NHL games. McDonough on the other hand put together a career with 195 NHL games but none of them came after 92-93. Several players with lesser careers and far fewer games played in 92-93 were included in '94 but that is possibly another story for another day. For now, let us recognize the most forgotten man of NHL '94, John McIntyre. You will be forgotten no longer.
    9 points
  30. NHL 95 enthusiasts I'd like to thank @wboy, @slapshot67, @kingraphand @smozoma up front, as Ive learned so much from these gentlemen. As 90% of the hard work was found by these guys. I've completed a NHL95 2020 update that includes the following: Updated rosters of all teams as of August 2nd, 2020 (https://www.capfriendly.com/depth-charts) Updated logos, center ice and banners for all team including "Seattle Kraken" (2020 Top Prospects), "All-Stars" (The top players from 2020) and the "Legends" (Top all-time players from NHL.com) If there is anything that can be added please let me know. NHL95 2020.bin
    9 points
  31. I recorded a tutorial video last night that shows how I record my gameplay in RetroArch and then edit the file in order to create animated GIFs:
    9 points
  32. This guy is brilliant and helpful.
    9 points
  33. Being one of the select few individuals to make it to all 5 NHL events that Troy @Edge of '94 Midwest has put together, it is incredible to see how far we have come. Every year the production value, quality of the competition, contributions from the community, and the fun experienced at the event goes up. If for some reason you are on the fence about these events, you need to jump right off that fence and get involved immediately. Win, lose, or draw you can not beat the amount of fun to be had at these events, bring your friends and make a day out of it. We enjoy a good time as much as we do good 94. This time around I had a very pleasurable experience from beginning to end. Moving the location for tournament from Green Bay to Minneapolis allowed for me to have a direct flight, a rare luxury for me to most of these events. No longer do I have to do the Sacramento-Phoenix-Atlanta-Minneapolis-Green Bay red eye flight the evening before a tournament. I felt so good about this trip that I even left the sunglasses at home. Once I arrived at the Moxy, I knew we were in a good place because I saw a few different NHL 94 setups in the lobby that were adjacent to the in house bar. Can't ask for much more than that type of setup. The discounted room rate was a great touch as these rooms really suited my style with their simplistic yet comfortable design. The location was fabulous as we were just a couple blocks from the venue and we were surrounded by a wide array of cuisine and drinks. I played a couple games before heading out with @IAmFleury'sHipCheck and his brother to one of the local spots for some high quality Italian food. By the time we got back to the hotel lobby it was getting a little late, I opted to stay away from the exi and 2 v 2 in an effort to get to bed at a reasonable hour. In retrospect this may have been a mistake as I instead was engaged in a conversation with EA, his brother, and KingRaph. During this conversation two girls from the bar were walking our way, the one girl who was a little less drunk than the other and almost literally dragging her friend out the door made eye contact with us and proceeded to say "My friend really wants to make out tonight but not with any of you!!!" Suffice to say, I was crushed by this revelation and I retreated up to my room shortly there after where I cried the night away thinking about my wasted opportunity. The next morning I got up early, got a coffee and some breakfast before heading over to the venue to help set things up for the tournament. I thought I was arriving pretty early and had a lot of heavy lifting ahead of me but boy was I ever wrong. By the time I arrived, things were already moving along smoothly, Trojan, Leif Eriksson, Darik Aho, Mort, Hank the Tank, and others were already well ahead of schedule at ensuring we would have an amazing tournament that day. There was the massive projector screen that allowed anyone and everyone within the venue to see what we were streaming on youtube. We had plenty of high quality CRTs, consoles, and controllers just ready and waiting for everyone. And oh yeah, there were also holograms and pyrotechnics! This event just continues to impress every year, I can't say enough about the thought and quality that goes into every aspect. The tournament itself was a blast, I had a really competitive group that included @danTML7, TecmoDPs, and @Scribe99. Getting to play with Scribe was a pretty big deal for me as he was one of the OG's from this site as he joined back in 2005. There was a time where Scribe was my main exi partner and it was incredible to see how much he still enjoys playing the game even though he hasn't been online for sometime. The man could still play as I sneaked out a win in group play and played a tight 2 game playoff series with him in bracket play. Mort also had an incredible showing and really impressed me with his play in our semifinal playoff matchup. This was all preamble though as I encountered Raph in the finals yet again. The last 2 GENS finals losses at Green Bay and the overtime loss in our 7 game epoch at Toronto were still fresh in my head. I did a little something different with my training this time around as the weekend before I went to visit @CoachMac up on the Nevada side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We took advantage of those mountains as he and I literally climbed a couple different mountains, a small highlight real can be found below. Seriously though, we climbed mountains. And that's after we had been descending for a few minutes! My mettle was tested quickly as Raph won game 1 decisively and was up 2-0 early in game 2. I was able to reset mentally after that and the rest is all history. Raph and I hope to have some video breakdowns for everyone to view sooner rather than later as we want to try and share our thought process with the rest of the community. Raph and I are certainly rivals but the time is near where I think some other people will start making finals appearances of their own. For the time being, the frequency at which we face each other in the finals has been incredible and we may not ever see anything quite like it again. The SNES tournament was a rip roaring good time, the happy hour really spiced things up as the drinks were flowing around freely. Raph had my number that go around as I was unable to sweep the day and defend my SNES crown. We certainly had an incredible group of guys all contribute to a weekend that won't soon be forgotten. I want to thank @LeifErikson and Darik Aho for playing a huge role in helping make this tournament happen. Also thank you to The Shield for contributing all sorts of prizes to this event, I don't think I saw anyone walk away empty handed and we have you to thank for that. Major shout outs to the travelling folks @jer_33, @danTML7, @seventieslord, EA, @Votaw, Mort, DPS, Phil from Dmen Tap, @Mitch Kramer, Kevin Cabarello, and @kingraph. It is with your presence and your faith in these events that we are able to grow something from very humble beginnings to what we have here today. And lastly, thank you again to @Edge of '94 Midwest, you put on an absolutely incredible event and I can't wait until next year as I know you will do everything in power to make it another memorable experience.
    9 points
  34. This was my first real live tournament with competitive competition. I had went to one in my city and placed 3rd for Sega, and then joined the online league about 6 months ago, and worked my way up and lost in the finals of B division, and even won a few in A division, so I was feeling pretty confident. We arrived at the Moxy and they effed up my reservation and gave away my room with the 4 twin beds to someone else! I was about to become Canadian enraged, which means passively aggressively saying "eh" a lot, when they offered me a second room at no charge!!! So for $79/night, I got 2 rooms for myself, my bro, my buddy, and 2 kids. It worked out well. That place was happening!! So I put the kids to bed, and came to meet everyone. Played one exi with Toronto against a guy who turned out to really hate Sega so I won 8-1ish (what up Hank!?), but he really loved Dr. Mario. I am the #1 ranked Dr. Mario player in Regina, SK, Canada, so I figured I'd give him a chance at redemption. He won 8 of 9 before I could take no more. Wow. I have a lot to learn there. Immediately jumped into 2v2. Me and @kevincabarello were an amazing team! sniping one timers out of nowhere and defeating @kingraph and his partner twice in a row, along with another group. We were eventually defeated by Raph, but we had our moment. I believe we actually shut them out. Raph hasn't been shut out since 2002 I think! Everyone started clearing out around 1 and I kept trying to keep the night going, but nobody else wanted, so I went back upstairs to get a good night's rest after buying the boys some fireball and Jager! As you can see, Raph loved it a lot!! Woke up refreshed, and had some hotel breakfast and made the short walk to the Pour House Uptown. Played a couple exis on the CRTs to warm up. Things were rocking. I was definitely nervous. Heartrate was up and hands were jittery. I was smiling ear to ear when I heard my national anthem sung by @Edge of '94 Midwest Troy... But I wish I had read the sheet that said "you aren't going to win the first time you attend. You should focus on winning one game" because alas, I did not. My goal coming in was actually to lose to Raph or AJ in the semis. I thought that was very possible based on my previous online play. But I had a very hard draw with @Scribe99 @angryjay93 Eric and TecmoDPS (Daniel Slattery). But I only knew AJ from online play. I chose to play him first to get that loss out of the way. When I went down 5-0 in the first, I was worried, but I managed to stave off the mercy win and lose only 7-2. I thought "hey man, you're still in good shape! He's probably going to win all his other games by 6 goals, so you're technically in 2nd!" Next, I went for the 5th seed Eric so I could build up my ego and get an easy win. Fail. He won 2-0. This is fine, I told myself, as my next opponent was also 0-2. There's no way I'm the worst in this division, after playing over 1000 games in the last 6 months online. We have a very defensive battle between @DPS and myself. We go to OT 1-1. All I gotta do is win, and with my low goal differential, even 1-3 should be enough to make top 16. Nope. He wins it in OT. Time to take a break, do something different. I order a burger and she asks me how much pink I want in it. That s**t's nasty. In Canada, it's illegal! Anyway, I order my WELL DONE cheeseburger and find out they don't have paralyzers in USA, they are called Bulldogs. So I grab one of those, double... Then another double... then when I try to get one more, she tells me it's 2-4-1 time for happy hour. Still undetermined whether or not those were doubles also, but I got another 2 and then another 2. I wasn't drunk for my last game when I lost that also in overtime to Scribe, but as it rolled into my "Joes" division matches, it was starting to hit me. First series against an amateur, and I had to purposely make sure I didn't win by 6 to be polite. Then, match 2 against Eric again who shut me out in group prelims. Game 1 he shut me out until midway through third. that was 5 and a half periods that he shut me out. He's no "JOE" if you ask me! I scored one or two, but he won that I think. I took it to game 3 where he dismantled me. I won something, but didn't remember until I saw the pic. Watching Raph and AJ duke it out for Gens was incredible. I wish we could have had it to go best of 7! I continued those drinks, and played my SNES matches. I don't remember much of that, and then I did colour commentary and don't remember much of that. Then my phone died, so I couldn't google random facts about players anymore. That's when it hit me.... the bulldogs weren't happy with me. I spent the next 90 minutes in the bathroom and definitely did NOT miss the group photo and have to photoshop myself in later... any similarities to the pic above are strictly coincidental. Someone told me that I went 3-1 in SNES and even won a playoff round. I'm shocked, but maybe I have a future in SNES? All told, we drove 2500 km on the trip (y'alls religious billboards are HILARIOUS, call 1-888-83-TRUTH for evidence!), and I went 0-4 in prelims and 3-3 in B division, scoring 23 and allowing 23 in my main system (Genesis), and had a total blast. 100% would do again. The people are some of the purest gems in the world. Would give you the jersey off their back. Talking to Americans about politics was sure interesting. I'm a massive Bernie Sanders supporter. Many Americans I met seemed to love Canada, but hated simultaneously both Sanders and Trump. Sanders' platform is basically to make USA more like Canada. It's only socialism in as much as your school system, roads, garbage collection, fire department, medicare, medicaid, policing, social security, etc....... Every time someone wants to make a change that actually helps the people, the billionaires will brand them as socialist or communist. Don't be fooled! I wish America the best outcome possible in November, and I really hope you all make the right decisions between now and then on the candidate. Hope to see you in NYC! Much love from Canada.
    9 points
  35. I just published an interview with Michael J. Sokyrka, who did much of the music for NHL '94. You can see it here: http://puckjunk.com/2018/12/21/interview-michael-j-sokyrka-nhl-94-music-composer/ Thanks for reading!
    9 points
  36. Hey everyone, I've been working behind the scenes the last month or so to get an NHL '94 Youtube channel and live stream going. On this channel I hope to provide content on the following items: -Live Game Analysis -Team Breakdowns -How to Videos -Challenges vs. Computer -Various other items that may arise While my Youtube channel may not quite be ready to start producing regular content, I have been working on some test footage which I have just posted this morning. This test footage consists chiefly of some games with MikeGartner that I played at CoachMac's house last night. What make this footage different from regular game recordings is that this footage also has Coach and I on camera analyzing the game as it plays out. While we have had commentators at our live events, I don't think we've ever had the game broken down by the person playing it as it goes on. I'm hoping this unique angle of live analysis gives other people better insight of the action. I just uploaded a couple videos; one contains myself and Mike Gartner playing 5 summer league games with the 2nd containing an exhibition game between Coach Mac & Mike Gartner, you can use the links below to view it on Youtube. A lot of this is a work in progress and will improve over time but I think it's a good first step. One thing I would really appreciate in all of this is the input and support of the community. In the end I want this content to be an extension of us and our community so it is vital that you guys get involved. How you can get involved can take various forms. The first thing that can be done is so subscribe to the channel and if you want to go a little further by commenting on my videos or giving a thumbs up (or thumbs down) then that would be really helpful. Also, please feel free to send me a PM, e-mail, or post on the forums requesting a video on a specific subject. I'm open to helping anyone with anything because I want to help the level of play here continue to rise. I also want to help anyone who is either getting back into the game after a long break or who is a total noob. Oh and before I forget, don't fret my SNES buds, I plan on having SNES specific content as well. You will not be forgotten in all of this. So again, things are a work in progress here and it will get better moving forward. If you get the chance, please check out the videos, I would appreciate any support I get from the community here to help this project grow. And oh, one last thing before I go. Coach and I also tested out the live stream by playing our 10 summer league games. Please feel free to check it out and leave a comment! https://youtu.be/02Z3Agp7aHk
    9 points
  37. Hey guys, here is the 2017 Trade Deadline ROM! I hope you like it. Slapshot67 - Thanks for everything! **EDIT - I added a playoff version of the ROM. Has a few changes to rosters (tried to get all players playing in the playoffs right now), but it also has the real tourney tree instead of the projected tree, as an option. I made penalties 1 minute long (except for double-minors). Enjoy! Updates for 2017 ROMs - All are WBF (Blitz style) ROMs -Player Cards for every starter on every team -Added Anniversary logos for Toronto, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles -Bench Graphics (backup goalie, coach) & Bench Carpet -Goal Light -Net Fix -Ratings changes for teams & players (excel file w/ ratings in zip folder) -Added a few playoff matchups based on this year's current standings -The Excel file will give you all of the player ratings, with an extra rating that shows how likely a check will be successful with a player. It uses weight + checking rating to give a "checking ability". Somebody figured out that a check is likely to be successful if they check a player with a weight a full digit lower than the checking ability. For example: PK Subban has a 8.9 checking ability (slightly abv average for a Dman), Shea Weber has a 14.1 (really high), and Erik Karlsson has a 5.4 (pretty low). If Subban attempts to check an 8 weight, he may have some issues, but he will usually knock down a 7 weight. Weber can knock down anyone 13 weight or lower, so he is the beast. Karlsson will have trouble knocking over anyone who isn't Johnny Gaudreau (not literally, but he will not be a C checking player). NHL17TradeDeadline.bin NHL17skipDeadlineFinal.zip NHL17Playoffs.bin
    9 points
  38. This thread will be my notes and attempt to expand NHL'95 to a 34 team ROM. Before I start, I'd like to thank @wboy, @slapshot67, and @smozoma up front, as just about all of my hacking knowledge has come from them. I will try to give credit where appropriate, but 95% of this will be one of those guys. So my initial thoughts are as follows: Expand the '95 ROM from 2MB to 4MB to create room for more teams, graphics: Not needed, enough empty space to use in 2MB. Also going over 2MB creates RAM issues. Find the team data and move it to a new spot in the expanded ROM. Create data for 34 teams: DONE! Change the team pointers to the new data: DONE! "Decompress" graphics (logos, banners, player cards, etc.) - DONE! Change pointers to the new graphics - DONE! Make '95 recognize the new teams/graphics, able to select in menu - DONE! Figure out how the season data works, incorporate into 34 teams - WIP Same with trade player and other unknown '95 stuff ADD: Music, figure out how to make sure the music works for new teams - DONE! So here goes. I expect this to be a pretty long project, with many bumps along the way, but ultimately fun.
    8 points
  39. Advice for Modders, Meddlers, and other Creative Rabble-Rousers (last updated 2024 01 03) Getting Started Start with as clean a ROM as possible. This will make it the easiest to edit, and puts you in the position of having the most creative control. I recommend starting with either the 28 or 32 team templates, and/or an original verified [!] good ROM dump. Beyond being able to accommodate more teams, the templates have the advantages of many of the graphics already being "de-compressed", which will make editing much easier. Just note that the templates are not "clean", in that they have some elements modified or removed that you may want to preserve or restore. I sometimes find myself going back to the original ROM to verify how things originally were. Basic good practices: Make sure that you have a file versioning and naming syntax system, as well as an automated backup system. Document everything that you do. Go slowly at first. When in doubt, change one variable at a time. Read lots of forum posts and do the tutorials. Even ones that you think don't apply to you. Valuable knowledge can be found in unexpected places. Don't be afraid to start over, multiple times. If you've documented things, this might go shockingly quickly. Learn from Others Review the detailed tutorial posts that folks have taken the time to write, the newer the (usually) better. The more you see the entire picture, you start to see patterns. The more patterns that you start to recognize, the faster you will get, and you will start to be able to make off-the-books discoveries of your own. Play lots of other people's ROMs. Take notes. Don't blindly apply pre-made patches to your ROM. Run a comparison after patching, to see exactly how the code has changed. Try to understand what was changed and why. Imitation is an underrated form of learning. Look at what others have done (and you admire), and then try to re-create it yourself. The process of manually recreating something is an invaluable learning process, where you can build explicit and implicit knowledge. Furthermore, even if you start with imitation, you will naturally make different specific choices along the way that will eventually lead to it becoming your own thing. Don't re-invent the wheel if you don’t need to. As a counterpoint to my advice to start with as "clean" a ROM as possible, or trying to manually imitate things, don't be shy about ripping off code from other people's ROMs. But always give credit where it is due. And if in doubt, give credit. You should clearly know when something was the result of your labour alone. Share what you know. But also share what you have found, but don’t understand. The more the community knows, the more than community will be able to help you. And your loose ends might be someone else's treasure. Getting More Done Use a comparison tool (I use “Beyond Compare”) to help isolate relevant differences in code from one person's ROM to another. By comparing ROM "A" and ROM "B", I've been able to sometimes make new discovery "C". This is my #1 tip for anyone. Consider using a prioritization model, such as MSCW, where you define what a release Must do, Should do, Could do, anger very importantly, Won’t do. Further to that last one… Give yourself limitations. This can be just as important as goals for some people. Develop efficient testing routines. This can take up a lot of time. Stop and think about re-designing your workflow from time to time. Personal Development Get off the computer. A good idea to play, then work on paper. All tools and interfaces have biases that effects us. Find the ones that wrk best for you and/or change things up to help you change up your thinking and doing. Make big picture decisions about art direction, creative direction, colours, etc. Give yourself both strategic guidance and limitations. Figure out what you want to do before you do it. Unless you find yourself stuck with indecision. In which case, just start doing it, and figure out what you want later. Make mistakes faster. Figuring out how much time to spend planning and critically evaluating plans versus just mindlessly doing is a lifelong challenge. It’s easy to waste time either which way. In my personal teaching, I personally find that most people over-think things. Push yourself to mockup up ideas as quickly as possible. If it’s a good idea, that will show up in a terribly rough mockup. But there is no way to know for sure until it is tried. Consider separating your personal creative process, your personal critical processes, your personal technical execution process, and your personal skill building processes. “Creatives” who work alone sometimes face paralysis from trying to think through too many roles at once. If you are an army of one, consider role-playing through different steps. For instance, when you’re creative, create with reckless abandon. Do not pre-judge. When your creative session is up, hand it to your critical self, and assess what is working, what isn’t, and give your creative self directives for the next creative session. This may sound silly, but trust me, I’ve been teaching young designers for over a decade, and this compartmentalization can be extremely helpful. Specific Areas of Interest Before editing player sprite uniforms, be aware that different ROMs have already changed the layout of the colours on the uniforms. This is a huge amount of work, and your ROM might benefit from taking the player sprite tiles from another ROM. You Amy also be able to make the changes that you want more easily by “diffing” two different sets of player sprites, in order to isolate key elements or colours… …Speaking of Colours Make sure that you are familiar with basic colour theory using a Hue, Saturation, Value model. Understand that human beings perception of tone is much more consistent than their perception of hue. Furthermore, we are much more sensitive to contrast of tone than contrast of hue or saturation (hence why we use 4:2:0 encoding in video etc). So, when making colouration decisions, you usually want to err on the side of prioritizing tonal relationships over accuracy in hue over accuracy in saturation. This usually looks better. You can toggle your screen into black & white mode to review the tonal values. “If your colours don’t work in black & white, your colours don’t work.” ® When selecting your colours, it is very helpful to have an overall concept of the colouration that you are looking to achieve. For instance, should it look realistic? Like watching a game in person? Vibrant? Like watching a game on TV in the current day? Like watching archival footage of a game? Like it was shot on film? Shot on video? A great example of this is @von Ozbourne's Olympic Hockey 1920 ROM. Consider your colours holistically. Put together a meta-palette of all the colour palettes in your ROM. I found this approach extremely valuable in setting the overall look and feel. When you track the relationship between the pink colours of players faces, the pink colours audience members faces, and the pink-ish highlights on red sweaters etc., you are able to make decisions that have a more immersive holistic impact. You might consider something like this as a start: While it is useful to look at the official colours for team logos, etc. understand that the colour that you see is not the same thing as the colours that are specified. There are all kinds of other factors that affect our perception of colour, including the lighting that it is shown with, the texture of the fabric the colour is applied to, any mediating lenses or recording mediums, etc. If going for anything other than an unnaturally vibrant presentation, you will likely want to skew those official colour values towards your intended art direction effect. Aside from collecting official colours, you may also want to collect image references for the colours that you are trying to achieve. For instance, grabbing a bunch of screen captures of recent broadcasts of Leafs home games will depict the blue colour of the Leafs uniforms differently than the official RGB colour values. You can use tools like the built-in “Digital Color Meter” on a Mac to sample the colour values used in the photos. Use a large aperture size to average the values in a range of contiguous pixels at once. Furthermore, note what you are sampling (sweater shadow, helmet highlight, etc.) to get a sense of how those official colour value transform in an image. If using official colours, you will inevitably come across scenarios where it is unclear what the Sega MD / Genesis equivalent will be. In general, I would advise in always “rounding” colour values in the same direction for relative consistency, but in some case it may be desirable to have exceptions, when considering the overall colour palette of your ROM. Further to the last tip, you will inevitably also encounter scenarios where you will want to darken or lighten an official colour in order to depict shadows and highlights on a players uniform, or anti-alias a logo, etc. Again, I would advise to make these adjustments with relative consistently for a more immersive effect, but you will also want to consider your art direction etc. It can be helpful to understand that in real-life colours look less saturated than when shown on a back-lit display like a television. Furthermore, in real-life a medium tone colour will usually appear to de-saturate (towards black) as less light is applied to it, and conversely appear to saturate more heavily as more colour is applied to it. However, eventually when too much light is applied it, it will again appear to de-saturate (towards white). When watching a game on a screen, the colour-grading on the broadcast (as well as the colour grading on the display device) can sometimes diminish this effect by compensating with more saturation, particularly in shadows. I don’t recommend importing images into TileM and using using TileM to reduce or assign the colour palette, as it often does a mediocre job. I highly recommend defining the colour palette in TileM or Retro Graphics Toolkit or similar software, and then assigning those colours manually in software like Photoshop for much higher quality results. Hand coloured (and had-drawn) almost always looks better than auto-coloured or (auto-digitized.) Tools that I Don’t Use, but I Do Recommend EA NHL Specific EARE (Smoz’s “EA Rom Edit” utility) https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/10443-eare-ea-rom-editor-for-nhl94/ Libre Office Calc (free spreadsheet software) https://www.libreoffice.org Microsoft Excel (more powerful spreadsheet software) https://www.microsoft.com/en-CA/microsoft-365/excel Tools that I Do Use EA NHL Specific NOSE (Wboy's “New Old Skool Edit” app) https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/26368-nose-latest-version-download/ NHL Hockey Roster Tool (tool for quickly exporting / importing rosters too and form CSV) https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/11779-tool-roster-extracterimporter-tool/ Smoz's Patch Applicator (quickly and easily apply some popular hacks and patches) https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/12181-tool-hack-applicator-aka-smozrom/ Rosters, Lines, etc. Apple Numbers (any good Spreadsheet apps will do. Every one has some uniquely valuable tricks, but lack some functions that others have.) https://www.apple.com/numbers/ Table Capture (utterly invaluable browser plugin for scraping data) https://www.georgemike.com/tablecapture/ Text Sniper (useful for quickly grabbing any text / numeric / tabular data from a web page) https://www.textsniper.app Visuals Adobe Photoshop Desktop (Bitmap editing, Dithering, Image Comparison, Rasterization, and nearly anything image related) https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html Adobe Photoshop Tablet (manually drawing / editing dithering with a stylus.) https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop/ipad.html Apple’s Digital Color Meter https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/digital-color-meter/welcome/mac HivePal (Palette editor) https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1182/ Retro Graphics Toolkit (Dithering, Palette editing, and other specialized tasks) https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-Graphics-Toolkit/tree/master TileMolester 0.16 https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/109/ Coding, Testing, & Export AFS FIX CS MD 32X (checksum fixer) https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1610/ Beyond Compare (file comparisons and more) https://www.scootersoftware.com I can’t stress this enough: I have personally found file comparison software an utterly invaluable tool. I use "Beyond Compare" almost as much as I use my HEX editor. This enables me to isolate mods, quickly change variables, search for things way more effectively, debug way faster, and do a much higher level of quality control. I’m still discovering new ways that it can speed things up. Genesis Plus GX (more accurate Genesis emulator) https://github.com/ekeeke/Genesis-Plus-GX Hex Fiend (any Hex Editor will do) https://hexfiend.com OpenEmu (best emulator choice if you are on a Mac) https://openemu.org MultiPatch (best patching utility if you are on a Mac) https://projects.sappharad.com/multipatch/ Sega Genesis Mega Drive ROM Analyzer (great for reviewing header info) https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1344/ Sublime Text (any good text editor to edit TileMolester XML or similar files) https://www.sublimetext.com More Please! Got any advice, tips, tricks, or other insights that you're willing to share? Please leave a post below!
    8 points
  40. Wait, no rosters to research and painstakingly rate? Sign me up! The goal here was to use EA Hockey for the purpose of exploiting the PAL 50 Hz refresh rate on the NTSC 60 Hz CPU setting. The fun part is that the resulting 20% boost in frame rate also affects the physics. Add in that every player has juiced stats [with a little variation based on the slight differences in attributes in the original game] and you get a game that plays at a frenetically fast and furious fun filled pace. [Seriously, I played this throughout the week it took to make, then loaded up a standard NHL 93 game and it felt like the ice was molasses.] Unfortunately, I forgot that the two separate penalties for winning and losing a fight was not programmed in until '93, otherwise I could have made the trademark move of "2 minutes for losing a fight" and the victor gets off scot-free, but that one feature didn't outweigh the trade offs. And shout out to @CoachMac and @The Dopefish for coincidentally mentioning EA Hockey, as the total teams/teams playable in playoffs edit was something I was trying to figure out just as the Coach gave me the answer. [I actually went with less. It will make sense in a minute] And finally, much like the original Blades of Steel NES port was known as Konamic Ice Hockey in Japan, this 16-bit sequel also has a North American and Japanese version just for fun. On to the retro review screen caps. Uh, ignore that. Really, Konami actually made this game. North American and Japanese title screens. Enter "the code" to unlock six additional teams! Different text as Romaji is typically all-capped. And the Japanese version still uses the same colours regardless of being the home or away team. For the North American version, the body and striping is reversed so all away teams are in grey for greater contrast. Although some all-colour games look nice too, the problem is when you play intra-squad games and everyone is dressed the same. National teams are playable in exhibition mode only. Japan is featured in the Japanese version, but the assets for the U.S. team were still included in the ROM data for an easy localization. Both versions have the return of the original eight Canadian and United States club teams, plus eight new cities to round out the expanded playoffs. Shameless in game ads also make their return. All your friends will want it. What better way to respond to a three goal deficit than with another fight. [Using the 'C' button a lot will prompt quite a few] It can get excessive if you let it. What better way to celebrate a comeback than running a guy and starting a fight? Celebrating scoring the game winner in overtime by running a guy and starting a fight obviously. It doesn't even need to be in overtime to celebrate a win. And in the finals the ticker is finally gone so you can seen the shamelessly branded Zamboni. Play with line changes on for a new challenge. Line 1 is the base stats, Line 2 is the speed line, Line 3 is the bruisers. All stats are the same for each player on a line except for one or two "unique" players. Numbers are taken from notable players pre-1990, [when the game was released] with the occasional number making it onto two rosters. So #9 on Detroit can fight #9 on Hartford. Or #9 on Chicago can fight #9 on Winnipeg. Or #99 on Edmonton can fight #99 on Los Angeles. [just kidding, 99's unique stat is that his fighting is a 1] Couple other Easter Eggs in there, but that covers most of it. UPDATE: Version 1.1 features corrected the bench players, so they wear the same uniforms as the guys on the ice. UPDATE: Version 1.2 has fourth period length activated and selected player star and off screen pointer edit. UPDATE: Version 1.3 finally fixed that penalty box player socks issue. Blades of Steel 2 [US]1.3.binBlades of Steel 2 [JP]1.3.bin
    8 points
  41. This is a list of all Genesis roms (non-hockey) that are found all over the forums. Links to the original source have been added to give credit to the creator/authors. This will allow you to see the changes as well as the content included. If I missed something to be added, please reply below and I’ll update this list. Football NFL Primetime 2021-22 created by UltraMagnus Tecmo Super Bowl III '21 created by UltraMagnus Tecmo Super Bowl III '20 created by UltraMagnus Madden 2017 ('93) created by Goldglv Madden 2016 ('93) created by slapshot67 NCAA 2011 (TSB3) created by Drunken_1 NFL '09 ('98) created by SabreDance Baseball Triple Play Baseball Gold '21 created by UltraMagnus Triple Play Baseball Gold '20 created by UltraMagnus World Series Baseball '20 created by UltraMagnus Basketball NBA Live '21 (98) created by UltraMagnus NBA Live '21 HWC (96) created by kdubmods NBA Live '20 (98) created by UltraMagnus Soccer FIFA Soccer 2020 ('95) created by TA_Marcos_Translations IN PROGRESS ROMS FIBA '19 (Nba Live '97) modding by TA_Marcos_Translations NBA Jam TE by Ultramagnus World Series Baseball '21 by Ultramagnus NCAA WSB '21 by Ultramagnus Madden '21 by Ultramagnus Editors John Madden Football Editor created by Goldglv TecmoSuperBowl Editor 2000 created by Flash EmuWare Presentation
    8 points
  42. Alright I said I would start posting these before this year was out and since there is just over 24 hours left, I should probably just do it. Introducing the IIHF Hockey series. The idea was to make each of the NHL(PA) games for Genesis into its contemporary IIHF version. Complete with period correct art style, team assets and players. Ultimately the goal was to make it look like something EA might have released back in the day. Rosters, for the most part, have been taken from each year's World Championships. Some provisions were made in cases where say, some teams only had one goalie, so I borrowed a backup from that year's Olympic roster, or had to improvise some data because apparently no one found it important enough to record what sweater numbers the Estonian National team wore 26 years ago... what the hell eh? I start with IIHF 94. [Full disclosure, this is actually the third version of this game I'd made as the first was a foolish attempt to mod an original NHL94 ROM. Soon after I discovered that 30-team ROMS was a thing and made a second while I was just learning the craft and used an old Blitz league ROM to train on. I found a couple of critical errors, mainly how player cards were set up and some colour palette issues that were in the base ROM. Rather than keep polishing the dorodango, I opted to start over using my improved skills on a clean wboy 30-team ROM. I am much happier with the results] Some features: This game includes the top 30 international teams based on their finishing position after the 1994 World Championships. The Ice surface has been reverted back to its original 1994 goodness. Player ratings were a bit of a contentious issue, I opted to use as many player stats as was available in the original game and basically based everyone else off that. Player cards are almost complete [Who knew that finding 26 year old photos of South Korean hockey players would be almost impossible?] but at least even the "default player" pics are all unique. Many starting line ups were based on who actually had a photo available. No mind was paid to whether teams were in the "A", "B" or "C" pool as far a play offs go. I toyed with the idea of patches like weight bug and helmet sprite, but decided to stick to the default, again for the period correct feel. Might revisit that later. Anyway, here are some previews. Addendum for the series: I'm going to post the "Final Cut" updates here for the entire series as they are reworked. Again, thanks to @EagleXIII for all his help in resolving those nagging anachronisms. IIHF Hockey (91) F4.bin IIHF Hockey 92 F4.bin International Hockey 93 F.bin IIHF 93 F.bin IIHF 94 F.bin IIHF 94 CE F2.bin IIHF 95 F.bin IIHF 95 WCE F.bin IIHF 96 F.bin IIHF 97 F.bin IIHF 98 F.bin IIHF 99.bin OR IIHF 99 - [Widescreen Edition 1.2].bin IIHF 2000 [10AE].bin -
    8 points
  43. With one big project out of the way, it was time to finish another one. So we're going to frame this one as a retro review. With the "wild" success of Hockey Stars, [the hockey version of the critically acclaimed Baseball Stars on the NES] SNK decided to release a follow up two years later. This one however drew more influence from Baseball Stars 2 and Professional for the NEO-GEO AES and MVS systems respectively, as opposed to the Baseball Stars 2 port for the NES. [which was actually just a re-skin based on the original Baseball Stars engine with some features stripped out] But enough of the history lesson, this review is about... Based in a different engine from the original, this game has all of the favourite teams from the past games, plus four additional custom teams for 34 in total. The pregame amble features this old guy. For context, he was also the commissioner in Baseball Stars 2. I guess he got fired or decided that he wanted to be involved in a more exciting sport. While the entire roster no longer has individual player photos, the starting lineup still has wonderful images. [with character art adapted from the same game, and with cameos from other SNK titles] Starting a game you have a menu screen that looks like an old familiar jumbotron with a lot of statistics and options in addition to accessing line and goalie changes. Full roster stats and ratings are available for picking your best line[s] as line changes can be turned on or off in the pre-game options. The branding should be noticeable by now, and it carries over to all the stats screens as well. The Playoff mode supports single game and best-of-7 play. The Championship trophy seems to have been removed from its tall base since the previous incarnation. Wonder if there was a scaling issue in the new engine. While the pregame announcer gives individual names to the home team's arena, like the baseball games, the art assets are not individualized for each team. Judging by the amount of detail in each teams' logo, I doubt it would translate well to the smaller scale anyway. SNK did take the opportunity to add more branding in case you weren't sure who developed the game you were playing. Winning playoff mode treats you to your victory on the front page of the national sports page with a close up of the large gold "loving cup" style trophy. While the reduction in player profiles is a bit of a let down in this new entry, SNK figured they would make up for it with added features like Signing, Trading, Releasing players and even a Create-a-Player options. And to top it off, a full season mode. Much like a college style season, games are played almost exclusively on weekends, with some back-to-back home-and-home series to add to the drama. Seasons are a 32-game affair, which is nice and quick especially since you can play every single game if you want, allowing you and your friends to pick their favourite team and face off in the same season for the Championship. If 32 is still too long a season for you, the season can be ended after any day, and with each team playing on the same days, games played in the standings will be equal for all teams on any day. At the end of the season, regardless of how your team fairs, you will be treated to an awards ceremony where the best players are awarded a gold medal of excellence. Nice touches like that make the game feel like a real season and not something completely player-centric. To cap it off, the game offers Practice and Shoot-out modes to test your skill. There also seems to be some Easter eggs in there for fans of SNK games as well as some general pop-culture of the '80s and early '90s. In the interest of full disclosure, there are some instability issues with this game, likely due to the added teams and players and it being considered to be rushed out in prototype state in order to meet publisher obligations. This, as well as the Genesis losing ground on the new SNES at the time, would appear to have affected sales at the time, leaving the game a bit of a rare gem for collectors. A solid 7/10 Hockey Stars 2 [v1.2].bin Leaving the old version here. Pre some minor graphical fixes and puck collision set for slightly more difficult scoring. Hockey Stars 2.bin And now I have to do this version too. Hockey Stars 2 [v1.3] Wide Screen.bin
    8 points
  44. Leaving this one up for the aversion to George Lucas-ing the thing, but if you happen to come across this one, please note that there is a better one out there. Back to the past... But first, since tis the season. Twas the night after Christmas, and all through the house, No more creatures were stirring, not even the mouse-r. The stockings were empty, the tree, it lay bare, In memory of loot that used to be there; The children were finally snug in their beds, No more talking of whatever popped in their heads; And mamma was snoring and I on my laptop, Thinking "just one more thing, then I will nap... pop" Recalling the games played throughout the day's chatter, Defeating the bosses like it was no matter. Now the finishing touch should be done in a flash, I pick the controller whose buttons we'll mash. Just a quick test of the new-finished show, Fire up the game by the monitor's glow, Then, what to my critical eyes should appear, But a miniature ref, and ten tiny players, With a flick of the thumb, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment I'd have a hat trick. More rapid than... something else fast, goals they came, And he whistled, that ref, and displayed their name; "Now, center now, wingers now, defence and goalie! Go, Shoot it! go, stupid! go, save it you... goalie! To them hit with a check! now into the wall! Now bash away! crash away! dash away all!" In the overtime frame, off a shot like a missile, The game it was over, and the ref gave a whistle, We'll play it tomorrow, the kids and I might, HAPPY GAMING TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT! Pardon the indulgence. Now for another with the retro game review. Back in 1988 SNK released arguably the best baseball game ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System. You may remember it as: With the shift to licensed league based games, it has been mostly forgotten aside from retro-re-releases, but at the time it did spawn a series of games with both Baseball Stars and Baseball Stars 2, Legends of the Diamond and Little League Baseball: Championship Series all being released for the NES while being based on the same engine. Another Baseball Stars 2 was released for arcades via the NEO•GEO MVS, which wasn't a sequel to the NES game as much as it was of Baseball Stars Professsional , a launch title/pack in for the NEO•GEO MVS and AES systems. Two more ports were released for the NEO•GEO Pocket/Colour. That's a lot of bla bla bla about baseball, but wasn't this supposed to be about hockey? Yes. So what about that hockey game? Released in 1992 by Romstar [SNK's North American distribution arm in the late '80s/early '90s] on the Sega Genesis, the first Hockey Stars features many recognizable teams and player names from it's baseball contemporaries. Including the trademark stark white splash screen and "Be a Champ" words of encouragement. Teams are still divided up by league; You will find mention of the "Exciting", "Fighting", "Professional" and "Legends" leagues in the team intros. These are not exclusive in Versus play as in the NEO•GEO releases, but will determine what division you play in during the Playoff mode. Although not as sharp as you will find on AES hardware, full colour cartoony depictions of player photos are still present and take their art style from the previous "Professional" game. And just as in most other SNK games, the pre-match presenter has another SNK character making a cameo in Athena from Psycho Soldier. You will not have any trouble identifying the developer of this game. Team names are also on brand. Each player has an individual photo and stats you can look up. It can be considered lucky that this is the only screen that features this intense of a watermark treatment. In another similarity to the Baseball games, player stats seem to be directly imported as they are wildly different. Meaning that play-style can vary quite drastically even among line mates. Some may wish to play with line changes off and create a "super line" of each team's best players, but if you are looking for the added challenge of having to adapt to each player's varying abilities, you may want to keep line changes on. The Playoff Cup from Professional makes a return, only this time it is put on a pedestal as hockey deserves. The colour coding now makes sense as each "League" is contained to a divisional playoff format. You can play a traditional Best-of-7 or Single Elimination tournament. There's more of that branding... Finally the gameplay, it was described to me as simultaneously "perfect" and "clunky" so make of that as you will. It seems to be both reminiscent of the vintage hockey games of the era, while also adding that layer of challenge due to the wildly different character attributes typical to the SNK titles. At least the 3-stars icon isn't another SNK logo. I don't like to give number reviews, but I will rate this one as "Recommended" during this World Juniors season. Hockey Stars v1.1.bin
    8 points
  45. To Genesis Sports Enthusiasts!!! I'm aware that NHL94' website is mainly for the NHL series, but with the recent news that Tecmobowl.org is no more (RIP). This is one of the last places people, gamers, modders, and anyone for a debate can go and tickle that itch. This post / project is to get some help on some of the games that are long over do for a refresh/overhaul. Triple Play Baseball (I've managed to get it cleaned, and rosters updated, especially without the dreaded "Ghetto City" or Jim's, or Frank's TEAM.) World Series Baseball (I've updated all the rosters (attributes as well), found the logos. But needing help on main screen, and some other aspects) NBA Live 98' (I've updated the rosters last year (all manually), but 96' has an editor which makes things a lot easier, I'm working with the guy who created it to see if we can get one for 98') Tecmo Super Bowl 3 (I've updated the rosters (attributes), speed up the game, able to find the logos. but need help on the screens.) I know this probably is a waste of time, since @Drunken_1, the master of SNES TSB3 is overhauling that game to be more of original game TSB4!!! PrimeTime Football / NFL 98 (I've done some modding there, but need some help to get the rosters completed and an overhaul of the helmets) Madden 98 (I've played with the rosters, but TSB is far better) PM or share as this is more to reach out to fellow enthusiasts and try bringing up closer with games we love....and updated features and rosters. Below are the games I've started and would love input or suggestions (I.e. NCAA alternatives). Also, at the very bottom, is the NCAA TSB that I found, can't remember where. But Ill give to @MT Remix and @JstoutLogic as they were the ones I found in the game. Bill Walsh College Football '95.bin Madden NFL 98.bin NFL 2020.gen Triple Play Gold 2020.bin Tecmo Super Bowl 3 '20.bin World Series Baseball '20 (98).smd NCAA-TSB 2019.zip
    8 points
  46. I hope this is the right spot in the forum to post this. For a little over a year, I've been working on a tabletop arcade project. I decided to do an NHL 94 theme. Enjoy and feel free to ask any questions about the build.
    8 points
  47. some good news, I found out how to limit teams showing up on the "EA Hockey Night" animation and the "Other Scores" screen, one issue is you can't go below 18 teams or it will crash. the first example I took my NHL 78 rom and went to location 00018032 and changed 701A to 7012, now only those 18 teams will be shown, no N/A the second example I took NHL20 and changed 701A to 7020, now all teams will be shown.
    8 points
  48. the 90's are finally here NHL 90.binNHL 91.binNHL 92.binNHL 93.binNHL 94.binNHL 95.binNHL 96.binNHL 97.binNHL 98.binNHL 99.bin Next updates will be other scores N/A fix proper ice layouts proper arena music convert 94 to 93 and add fight ratings
    8 points
  49. I use OpenEmu and wanted nice box art so I made this. There's the PSD as well in case anyone wants to edit the year, image, etc, later.. NHL 94 2019.psd
    8 points
  50. A while back I was curious as to looking at how players were rated in the original NHL 94, so as to keep my hacks more or less playing like the original ROM. I made these charts but never had a moment and organization to upload them, but here they are now. The zip files contains images for the distribution of each player attribute, skater and goalie. The groups are further separated by offense/defense, and starter/backup for goalies. I won't clutter up the post with all 22 images, but it's crazy seeing how low the overalls are. Nearly every backup goalie is rated between 40-50 overall! About 45% of defensemen are ~48 OVR, and about 30% of forwards are the same. Only about 15% of forwards break 80 OVR. There's lot of little tidbits you can find as well: -Fs and Ds aren't rated all that differently in most categories, but D are better hitters, with WAY worse shooting accuracy -About 80% of D have either a 2 or 3 on speed (FYI, original rating scale was 1 - 6, with 6 being 99 in game, and 3 being 40-60 in game) I can't say I match these distributions in my ROMs, but I think it's interesting to look at. OG ratings.zip
    8 points
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