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It all started two years ago when I ordered a bootleg NHL ‘94 cartridge from AliExpress for the hell of it. I got the cart and box for $15. As expected the box (and box art) was really crappy. The cartridge shell was sub-par and the label was just a scan of the box art. But there was more. I knew they didn’t just have NHL ‘94 ready to sell cause they offered the whole line up of NHL titles from the 1st all the way to NHL ‘98. I figured they must make them as people order them. So if they can make NHL ‘94’s to order they could make any ROM to order. When it finally came in... to my surprise the game worked great! You can’t tell it’s a knock off from playing it on a real system. But opening the cart up to see the board was the breakthrough. I have never seen anything like it at that point. There were no ROM chips just a black blob that looked like Silcone on an empty board. After talking to some retro experts on Twitter they explained to me that those are “cheap” knock off “Glob Top” boards used to make cheap games and most people use them to scam people into thinking that they are buying real games. Of course I didn’t really care about the scamming part as the game worked perfectly. So in my head I thought, what did this cost the seller to get it to a $15 selling point. I know from experience that this stuff always needs around 100% or more markup to be worth it for individual sale. So... Cheap Sega Gens Box $.50 Printing labels $.50 Cheap Sega Shell $1.50 Custom ROM Board $2 labour $1(to burn ROM, print materials, assemble and package to ship) ______________ $5.50 cost of goods sold and $15 sale price is looking pretty good deal for the seller. So what are the strengths? THE $2 ROM BOARD! The box and shell are garbage. So what did I do. I did the research and found a company that is making high quality knock off SNES games in Asia. I dont care about the insides as I know the Glob tops work for what we need them. The trick was to find a good Shell and Label for a good price. We don’t need to trick people, we just want the game to work and play like the original. So we put a Glob top in a decent Shell and a nice label and we are done! So we go from a $40 custom game (or $100 everdrive) to a $10 game and it plays the way we want it to. With a $10 game we can now afford to buy custom games for a custom Draft tournament! After the tournament the game carts now act like a time capsule for the tournament and and awesome keepsake. Only thing we need now is people to play the games.

Hi Guys, I would like to introduce a new way to play NHL ‘94 live that @halifax and I have been working on. Here is the pitch... We are taking NHL ‘94 tournaments to the next level. Imagine playing a whole NHL ‘94 tournament with a team that you built on a real cartridge. This spring we will be hosting a live Draft online. Using your laptop or mobile phone you can draft players and go head to head against other coaches in a race to get the best players. Draft picks (order) will be determined by real world money. We are selling 28 spots all at different price points. This will be the first flexible priced entry fee tourney. Here is where strategy comes in to play. Do you spend the big bucks and get a higher draft pick or do you spend only $10 and take your chances. The prize money doesn’t care what draft pick you got, your skill does. Once we have the teams made, we will be ordering custom NHL ‘94 Saskatoon Draft Carts form a supplier overseas. The winner of the tournament will receive a special gold cartridge just like they had in Nintendo World Series. The runners up will also get to keep their tournament cartridges as a souvenir (who knows they might be worth something some day lol). So please join us in Saskatoon this spring for a tournament like no other! Quick Facts When: May 2019 (date to be determined) Where: Saskatoon Saskatchewan Venue: (most likely the Canadian Brewhouse but subject to change) Players: We are capping it at 28 (full NHL league) Prize Money: 1st $500, 2nd $200, 3rd $100 (Based on a sell out) Games: Guaranteed 10 games!!!!! Screens: Mix between CRT’s and HDTV Consoles: 10 SNES setups Draft Spots: Will be sold on Eventbright at a predetermined time and will be first come first serve. If not all draft spots are sold the draft order will be from highest paid to the lowest ONE Draft Spot per coach. (Basically acts as your registration fee) Draft Spot Prices: 1. $66 2. $64 3. $62 4. $60 5. $58 6. $56 7. $54 8. $52 9. $50 10. $48 11. $46 12. $44 13. $42 14. $40 15. $38 16. $36 17. $34 18. $32 19. $30 20. $28 21. $26 22. $24 23. $22 24. $20 25. $18 26. $16 27. $14 28. $10 The Draft will be hosted online similar to how fantasy football is done. It will be a stand alone draft where each player takes thier turn in order. Auto Draft features will be available. More info on the system will follow. The whole Original NHL ‘94 roster will be available. Teams will be made of 10 players and two goalies. We will be using mostly King of 94 Rules and the tournament structure will be finalized before tickets go on sale. When the Teams are finalized. Brand New Cartridges will be ordered with custom ROM’s for the event. The top ten players get to keep thier carts and the winner will receive a GOLD Cart. More info to follow. (And above info is subject to change). I hope to see you in Toon in May! Cheers, Mikey

We will be having 1 league this season in SNES. Once the draft is over, we will start the new season, with a 40 game schedule. I will be dividing the single league into 2 conferences, essentially an "A" level conference, and a "B" level conference. Schedules will be weighted (Playing more in-conference more games than out of conference) and playoffs will be divided by conference, with the winners of each playing each other for the final (like the NHL Playoffs), with 6 teams in each conference making the playoffs, and the top 2 seeds getting a 1st round bye. The list of coaches playing this season is below: SNES Coaches: 16 coaches: annatar BobKudelski26 schwartz MikeGartner22 c4outlaws koke_45 stheds2000 jer_33 Auggie Acadius hotelcalifornia combustiblecam dethrox kingraph Bad Moon Rison KaBa78 Waiting List: Gimpyclay (needs to be confirmed) JMAU104 (needs to be confirmed) Below is the draft order for the SNES league. The pick order was randomized (using random.org to generate the randomized list). When it is your turn, reply to this thread to choose your team. You can choose any team that has not already been selected. Below the draft order, you will find a list of available teams. The draft starts now! Deadlines are set starting Saturday, 11/24, in 1 hour increments. All deadlines are in EST (Eastern Time). If you miss your deadline, you can choose your team at anytime. If you do not choose a team, you will be given best available team at the end of the draft. Once you have selected, please pass along the message to the next person up via PM, Discord, email, etc to let them know they are up. I'll try to do my best to stay on top of it. You can also post your draft list in this thread, or PM/Discord message me (chaos) the list if you don't want to post your team selections. ON THE CLOCK: DONE League Draft Order (Deadlines in Parenthesis): jer_33 - PIT BobKudelski26 - BOS schwartz - CHI koke_45 - VAN Auggie - DEADLINE PASSED - PHI c4outlaws - QUE MikeGartner22 - DET Acadius - CGY dethrox - DEADLINE PASSED - STL hotelcalifornia - BUF combustiblecam - MTL annatar - LA kingraph - NYR stheds2000 - WSH Bad Moon Rison - TOR KaBa78 - WPG Available teams: ANH XXX XXX XXX XXX EDM DAL XXX FLA HFD XX XXX NJ XXX NYI OTT XXX XXX XXX SJ XXX TB XXX XXX XXX XXX Screenshot of Random.org:

Good news, the test SNES NHL '94 ROM I sent the Cartridge Manufacture passed. They quoted me $9.65 (USD) per cart and that comes with the classic grey SNES Shell and Custom Label. WIth shipping and exchange to Canadain its going to come out to around $14.95 each. This comes in under budget and the Draft Spots (entry fees) will cover the 10 carts that the top ten players will get to keep plus leave room for a $500 top prize. I'm personally making the gold cart myself. Now we just need to nail down a date and the Draft Spots will go on sale!

Leagues and Draft Order will be posted later today. I won't start pick deadlines until Friday night. But once it's posted, the draft will start.

Going off the board. Picking vancouver. The pettersson-est of picks

Wow, lucky draw. I'll take Super Mario's Penguins.

My first season is over! The San Jose Sharks pulled off an 83-1-0 season finishing with a 74 game winning streak after losing in St. Louis back in October. Impressive as that may be, the loss ruins a run at the Gordie Howe bobble head. Line 4 did a some serious work out there as I expected. Mark Pederson took over the team lead in points despite dragging the corpse of David Maley with him. Maley certainly made things very tough as his lack of ability nearly lost the Sharks a couple of games. Late in the season the Flames had a 2-1 3rd period lead before Pederson tied the game to send it overtime and then followed it up with the game winner just 30 seconds into the extra frame. Line 1: 107 GF - 17 GA Line 2: 129 GF - 20 GA Line 3: 115 GF - 13 GA Line 4: 128 GF - 20 GA A very even performance from all the lines, I suspect Line 1 would have a much better performance now that I'm familiar with the game and I will be saving them for the most difficult playoff match up. I'll just leave other stats down below as I know at the very least coach will be interested in all of this.

Also, you guys can't possibly let me win back to back SNES titles! Bring it!

Count me in. It's Daf from the King of 94 #3.

Good point. Maybe we can start it Wednesday.

We are working on finalizing the date and rules now. The tricky part will be having enough time to sell the tickets (Draft spots), doing the draft and ordering the custom carts and having it all ready before May. But I'm excited about this new process as it is something new. I would like to have the tickets go on sale sooner than later. I think our break-even point will be around 20 players (depending on Draft spots sold). I'll cover the difference as a guarantee. I'm working with the overseas supplier now testing ROMS. If this works out and people enjoy their time, we can do the same for Genesis next year.

Playing Full Seasons of NHL Hockey (94) DOS In the spirit of what Tecmo Guys do with Full Seasons. No need to sign up, just post your Seasons here. Play as many Seasons as you like. I will award a Retro NHL Bobblehead to the Person who has the best record of Season and Playoffs. Can you go 100-0. 84-0-0 in Season and 16-0 in Playoffs. Rules: -You may choose any team. -5 minute periods -Penalties On, Offsides Off -84 Game Season and 7 Game Playoff Series. -Line Changes OFF, but special rules do apply to your roster. ---Players must play their default postion and with their default line. RW = RW etc... ---You must use Line 1 and Defense Pair 1 and Goalie 1 for the first 21 games. ---The next 21 games Line 1 will rotate back to Line 4, and Line 2, 3, and 4 will all move up 1 slot. ---The defense pairs will rotate in the same fashion. Except with only 3 pairs Pair 1 will play with Line 4. ---Goalie 1 will play with Line 1 and 3, Goalie 2 will play with Line 2 and 4*. Teams with a third Goalie will play him with Line 4. ---Scratched players are scratched for the season. ---Playoff Rosters work similarly. ---Each Forward Line can play in 1 and only 1 playoff series. You choose the order but if Line 2 is playing Line 3 is backup etc.... ---Each Defensive Pairing work just like in the season 1 with 1 and 4, 2 with 2 and 3 with 3. ---Each Goalie plays in 2 Series. If teams have a third goalie he does not have to play in the Playoffs. I have started my first season with Minnesota. I will post some results later tonight.

I'd like to draft a team and sell them

Feeling blessed. Chicago please

This has the potential to be legendary! Love what you're doing Mikey.

Looking like Thanksgiving special now

The San Jose Sharks have capped off their successful season with a 16-0 playoff run to complete the year with a combined 99-1-0 record. All of the games in the playoffs were blowouts except for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Islanders. The Isles took a 2-0 lead into the final two minutes of the third period against the Sharks 4th line. Pat Falloon came to save the day as he was subbed in for the injured Robin Bawa. He set up David Maley to make it a 2-1 Isles lead with 1:40 left and then later scored the tying goal himself with just 50 seconds. Before the regulation ended, Falloon was knocked out of the game which put the Sharks on the PP moving into overtime. It only took a mere 29 seconds for defensive defensemen Neil Wilkinson to scoop up a puck in the neutral zone, dash off for a breakaway and pot the Stanley Cup Winning goal with a beautiful deke. I had a good bit of fun with this version of the game, it certainly has it's charm and is a somewhat challenging game. But there are still some holes in the AI here and the challenge is only slightly greater than GENS in the end. Tis a shame I missed out on the bobble head by a game as I don't think I'd attack another season with the same vigor as this one.

I won the Cup going 16-1. Lost one game in the Conf Final vs Winnipeg. I am done with this game, going back to 94 on the cart and CRT. Some cool features but, 1 season is enough.

I'd also like to point out I was most likely to score with Hawerchuk on the penalty shot , had the momentum lol. But I didn't even know this was a thing. I always tend to shoot the puck after a whistle. Now I know. I paused, asked aqua what we should do, he said continue playing. I did "wait" until 5 min into OT to score, was trying to just go into the zone and basically just put a shot on goal the whole time, one of them just squeaked past his goalie. I feel really guilty. He says it's not a big deal, but it is a league game.

Keyboard controls from the manual

Far from 100% but I'm looking into making the trip this year. I'm sure there's at least a couple guys who would like the chance to destroy me at Gens. And maybe SNES too.

ANA Home Average (1) Road Brutal (3) FLA Home Average (1) Road Brutal (3) OTT Home Average (1) Road Brutal (3) SJ Home Average (1) Road Weak (2) TB Home Weak (0) Road Strong (0)

(Not quite sure where to put this, I went with the Player Ratings area since it is (or rather will be) mainly about how home/away advantages affect the players. Home/Away Advantages Analysis Plabax's Plea for making the home/away advantages equal in future seasons of (Genesis) Classic League made me wonder, what does the data say about these advantages, and how do they actually work? I'm ignoring PP/PK as that wasn't part of the discussion, but that would an interesting thing to check out as well, using a similar technique. What are the Home/Away Advantages*? *Not the proper name, as we shall learn shortly. Each team has a pair of attributes that modifies their behaviour at home and on the road. These are shown in the game manual (PDF) for each team, starting on page 55. They are referred to as "Home Ice Advantage" and "Road Ice Disadvantage." In the game's code, these values are represented by numbers, typically 0 ("Weak"), 1 ("Average"), and 2 ("Strong"). Additionally, some expansion teams have a value of 3 for their Away Ice Disadvantage; the manual mistakenly calls this "Low", but I named it "Brutal" a few years ago when developing EARE. To make the name of these attributes shorter, I'll call them the "Home/Away Modifiers". Or the HAMs for short. What the Home/Away Modifiers Do I looked at these in the code many years ago, and took some notes, but the notes were not very clear, so I can't say specifically how the modifiers work. I intend to investigate this again soon and will do a Part II of this post. Since this post does not explain what exactly the home/away modifiers do, there can be no real conclusion with regard to Plabax's Plea. However, I do believe / vaguely recall that the values tend to favour the home team more than the away team, which is what makes most teams perform better at home than on the road. Classic League Data I took the Home/Away records of all A or A/B leagues available on nhl94online.com, as well as 4 more seasons from 2006-2008 that Halifax somehow had stashed away (which chaos hunted down for me), plunked it into excel, did some excel-y stuff and came up with the following. Team Results The meanings of Columns 1-14 are pretty obvious. The "results" are columns 15 (H-A) and 16 (H/A). These columns both quantify how much better at home a team has performed than on the road. "H-A" is "Home W% minus Away W%" (column 10 minus column 14). "H/A" is "Home W% divided by Away W%" (column 10 divided by column 14) Things to note (about interpreting the data): I ignored ties completely in calculating Win Percentages I only counted data from seasons where that team had a Pts% greater than .200 or less than .800, because, #1 I felt that you couldn't tell too much from really dominant or outclassed players and, #2 it smoothed out the data a bit (which encourages me that #1 is correct). In column 5 (Total W+L), I have highlighted in red the teams that don't have a large number of games played, which means their results are less reliable than the other teams. These teams tend to be outliers with their groups (i.e., teams with the same HAMs), so tend to be at the top or bottom of the group (Leafs and Capitals in the 1/1 group, Lighting in the 0/0 group, Penguins and Blues in the 2/1 group). The teams with more games played are likely more representative of the true effects of the particular HAM values. I split out the teams with fewer than 100 total W+L because there is not enough data to trust their values. The table is sorted first by Total Advantage (column 4), then Home Advantage (column 2), then by H/A (column 16) Probably a better way to look at the H/A values are to think of them as in the following table, as the home and away win percentages for an average team, or what their home and away records would be in a 40-game Classic season: ​ So for a team like the Flyers, who have a 135% H/A, it basically amounts to winning 1.5 more games at home than if there were no such thing as home ice advantage in the game. As the HAMs may actually make some teams better on average than others, maybe the values should be shifted a bit more towards higher HW% and higher AW%. But that's for the followup post... Observations & Conclusions The HAMs do in fact have an effect on how much teams win at home or on the road: There is a very high correlation between H/A and Total HAMs (column 4). The correlation function value is 0.736, which is very high/conclusive. The correlation between H-A and Total HAMs is also very high (0.687) However, because of the missing information about how the HAMs are actually used by the game, we can not say if teams are given large home boosts, or receive smaller boosts to their abilities at home and de-buffs to their abilities on the road. 0/0 This means a team has Weak home advantage and Weak away disadvantage. HAMs of 0/0 appear to pretty much neutralize home ice advantage, although the Stars' 113.2% is still quite high. 1/1 This means a team has Average home advantage and Average away disadvantage. These are the HAMs that GDL uses. It also appears to neutralize home ice advantage, although not to the extent of 0/0. Considering the high effects of 2/1 and 1/2 HAMs we'll look at next, I'm surprised there isn't a more noticeable separation between 0/0 and 1/1. //(Maybe when I look into what the HAMs do in the code, the reason for this will become clearer)// 1/2 This means a team has Average home advantage and Strong road disadvantage. There are only 2 teams in this group, and neither has many games played, so the H/A values are not very reliable, but do suggest the value is around 120%, quite significant. 2/1 This means a team has Strong home advantage and Strong road disadvantage. These are the HAMs I used in Blitz. We expect these teams to have a high disparity in home and away records, and this is backed up by the data, with these teams having around a 120+% H/A (or 130% for the teams with fewer games played). 1/3 This means a team has Average home advantage and Brutal road disadvantage. These are bad expansion teams, so there is not much data for them, although they do seem to be around 130% H/A 2/2 This means a team has Strong home advantage and Strong road disadvantage. Only the Flyers have this HAM. Their real-life home/away records in the 92-93 season were 23-14-5 / 13-23-6. They have a huge 135.8% H/A, but with only 294 games played, there's a chance this value is a bit of an outlier, although seeing the pattern in the table it looks like it should be fairly accurate. What is unclear at the moment is, if you have two identical teams, but with different HAMs, do certain HAMS make one of the teams actually better than the other? And how powerful is this effect? Combined Results To deal with the issue of teams with low amounts of games played, we can group the data, not by teams, but by HAMs: This grouping also includes the data from the teams with under 100 GP. The data is pretty clean-looking now. 2/1, 1/1, and 0/0 each have over 2600 games played and I think should be considered accurate. 2/2, 1/3, and 1/2 still don't have a lot of games, but at least they fit the pattern well. 0/0 and 1/1 teams have a slight home advantage of around 106%. This is equivalent to home records of around 10.3-9.7 for a .500 player. 1/2 and 2/1 teams have a significant home advantage of around 120%. This is equivalent to home records of around 10.9-9.1 for a .500 player. In other words, for every 20 games played, they win one game that they would otherwise have lost. Next Steps I will investigate how the game actually uses the HAMs by doing code and RAM traces with the hacking emulator http://forum.nhl94.com/index.php/topic/16742-tool-gens-rerecording-emulator-for-hacking/?p=147027. Something that is not covered in this post is how teams with different HAMs fare against each other. This could be analyzed in a similar manner but using schedule results (for example by going through all the pages like this http://nhl94online.com/html/coachpage.php?lg=31&sublg=GENS-A&team_ID=1165. Chaos gave me a copy of the database recently and I may some time try this.) Images uploaded to the forum for safekeeping incase they disappear off imgur: