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 [DRAFT] View From the Booth  v.2 

Dec 31, 2017

  Welcome to the year-end edition of the official NHL94.com newsletter. We hope to keep everyone informed of all that is happening in our gaming scene, with a top-down look at events, leagues, forum happenings and Discord chatter. The view from the broadcast booth is often worse than some cheap seats in the arena, but journalists require a sweeping vantage point to see everything that is happening in the game. It seemed a suitable name for a newsletter that hopes to provide a bird's eye view of NHL94 and all of it's retro hockey siblings, so take a minute to get caught up with this edition of  View From the Booth 

Congratulations to 2017 Bud of the Year@slapshot67! [Forum thread] He managed to code a 32-team Genesis rom that allowed the community to create updated 2017-18 post-expansion roms. I took this opportunity to ask Mr. Shot67 a few questions. It turns out that Slapshot is not his real name, he's actually a fine Canadian fellow from Saskatchewan named Shawn. He would rank himself as an average NHL94 player, who has little interest in online leagues, preferring instead to play at home with friends. He's been a member of NHL94.com since 2006, but admits to lurking around these parts for about a year before joining and searching out modding resources on the forums. A love of NHL93 and NHL94 convinced him to join the site, mainly with interest in creating classic teams in the rom. As would any youngster, he admits to trying to take the easy road first, writing a letter to EA Sports asking them to do it, but oddly never received a response. He praises @wboy's NOSE program, as well as resident mad scientists modders @mack and @smozoma for helping to earn his modding badges, but credits a lot of reading and ultimately trial and error for his modding successes. I did ask if NHL titles were his only mods, and he detailed an earlier attempt to mod the NES title Rad Racer back in 1999. He jumped at the opportunity to help create the 32-team rom, and would rank this mod at the top of his list of accomplishments. He works as a freelance web and graphical designer in Saskatoon, and is taking a break from modding for the time being. A big thanks to Bud of the Year @slapshot67 for taking the time to chat, and for ushering our draft leagues into the next NHL era.

2017 has been a mixed bag of good/bad in the NHL94 community, with great successes (Kingof94II - Vegas, expansion of the classic Genesis rom to 32 teams, to name a couple) and some  downers too (shrinking numbers of regular leaguers, the usual forum drama).  I feel like 2018 could be a bounce-back year, with many members working hard to expose the casual gamers to this community on many social platforms, new live events popping up all over the country,  and unique new league ideas popping up to keep the online leaguers busy looking for games. We've met some new talented players in this years Classic, some who have already shown interest in draft leagues, but would love to see some vets crawl back out of their caves and rejoin the scene. As gaming companies continue to milk the many millions of gamers out there with microtransactions and pay-to-play models - the retro gaming community grins with tens of thousands of hours of playable titles and sports gems with incredible replay value. In short, I don't think that the Retro Gaming scene is just for the nostalgic, nor will it be a passing fad. The next generation of gamers needs to witness the sheer amount of existing gaming content out there, and should take that into consideration before feeding the massive pay-to-play, or ad-supported game companies.

 ONLINE LEAGUES:                                                                 

  • Plablegs (Season 2) - @Brutus is running this league based on draft/league rules originally set out by @Premium. Season standings here.
  • NHL94 Ladder League -  @smozoma has started a unique ladder league, with no defined schedule so you can play whoever, whenever. Check it out here.
  • Fall Classic - The NHL94 Standard, for most this is their first taste of competitive online play. Playoff brackets here GENS-A, GENS-B1, GENS-B2, SNES.
  • VHL5 - A WBF draft league based on @skip's current NHL ratings played with the new 32-team NHL18 rom. Playoff brackets here.

 LIVE EVENTS:                                                                          

 ROMS/HACKS:                                                                         

  • NHL 2018 - by @naples39 - updated rosters/ratings/logos/uniforms, WBF (weight-bug fixed), speed-burst has been limited to 75%.
  • NHL18 by @skip - updated rosters/ratings/logos/uniforms, WBF (weight-bug fixed), 1 minute penalties.
  • NHL18 rom [SNES] - Help needed to produce an SNES rom with current line-ups. @tru is looking for people who want to learn to hack/update SNES roms. In progress.
  • 32-team NHL94 rom [GENS] - Thanks to the hard-work and dedication of @slapshot67, the community is now ready for current and future NHL expansion.
  • 34-team NHL95 rom [GENS] - @kingraph has been hard at work customizing the NHL95 rom to allow for current and future roster updates. A work in progress.
  • ROM Jukebox [GENS] - this classic goes back to the early days of the site, a league rom created by @clockwise. Presenting NHL91. [Forum link / dload link]
  • ROM Jukebox [SNES] - with the WJC going on in Buffalo as we speak, here's a rom with the 2011 WJC rosters by @northstar91 [Forum link]

 FROM THE STANDS:                                                                

  • Cast your vote for the possible location of King of 94 III. Forum thread.
  • @kingraph played a little NHL94 on the Prudential Center Jumbotron, still waiting for the full story. Forum thread.
  • Check out this tabletop version of NHL94 created by forum member @Bil. Forum thread.
  • Fightcade 2, possible GENS replacement? Forum thread.

 TECH TALK:                                                                                

  • AIM is DEAD, join us on Discord [invite link].
  • Retro Bit Genesis USB dual adapter discontinued?  [Amazon link] if you see one on Ebay, scoop it up!
  • Looking for the best video adapter to connect your retro console to your new HDTV? Read this.
  • Visit NHL94rocks.com, a website to upload gamesaves and track your NHL94 series results. Credit to @aqualizard and @AtomicRaven.

 

  Thanks for reading folks, and as usual comments and criticisms are welcomed. If you have an idea for future stories, or links to anything related to the newsletter categories feel free to pass them along.

Keep mashing those buttons.

 

 

Bonus video for those of you who made it this far:

 

Edited by jer_33
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Please pay no mind - this is simply a draft for a year-end edition of the newsletter. 

Though - since you're here and reading, if you have any comments or ideas, this would be the place to share them.

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@jer_33 Just for accuracy (sorry to nitpick lol) - Slapshot67 created the 32-team ROM, I really had nothing to do with it. And he should also get credit for helping out with my 2018 ROM since he does all of the graphics work :-) 

Thanks bud, this is great!

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