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Like a moth to a flame, I knew Segathon would be lured out of his, NHL'95-Fuhrer-bunker. It's about time the rest of the world know the true nature of your occult, video-hockey "tournament". It's all just a front for Nazi sympathizers to have clandestine meetings.

Hi guys, I don't know how valuable my input would be as someone who mostly lurks, doesn't participate in leagues, and just likes to play against the computer, but I wanted to offer my two cents anyway. I also didn't read the whole thread, so sorry if this overlaps with anyone else's thoughts. If the idea is attracting new, young people to NHL '94, you're going to have a tough time competing with several issues: On a Venn diagram, PC gaming and sports gaming are pulling apart year after year. This means that people who play modern EA NHL games are used to being able to pick up and play against a friend online with little difficulty. Personally I don't think the process of playing NHL '94 on Windows against someone else is too onerous (having grown up in the age of server browsers, old), but consider the ease with which someone can do it on PS4/X1 and you have a natural impediment to one's desire to participate. Playing NHL '94 likely won't have much appeal unless the rosters and graphics are continually updated (which, gratefully they are), but beyond that there are several aspects of the game that so far cannot be modified (rule changes, roster sizes, minor leagues, game modes like a full regular season, statistics...things that are taken for granted in new games). The novelty of playing NHL '94 with updated graphics and rosters can wear thin. Then, making a fantasy league/team is not a straight-forward process either. If I knew how to modify the updated NHL '94 so I could do it myself, I still can imagine the process being time-consuming. Nevertheless, herein lies the main source of modification the game and any leagues can offer. Finally, I have an expectation that the people who play in NHL '94 leagues with some regularity are formidable opponents for a variety of reasons. In a general sense, this community is full of NHL '94 veterans, and even the idea of competing with people who have been at this for upwards of twenty-three years sounds daunting even to me. Speaking even more broadly, I get the sense that this community hasn't had an infusion of regular new blood in a while. Being a more open and accessible community would always be beneficial. To that extent, I like the ideas of mentoring, expanding into "C" leagues, using Discord, having ladders and relegation/promotion, streaming and game nights...but is there enough of a potential user base to make the most of those ideas? What would one even do to encourage people to seek out this community? I know there's a Twitter handle, I'm sure there's a Facebook page...is there a YouTube channel? How about Twitch? Does anyone stream the games already? Play-by-play/color-commentary would be fun as long as there were professional-enough people doing it. (As a side note, I know there's a group on AIM for NHL '94 and people seeking out exhibitions, but my understanding is that the OSCAR protocol will not be supported by third-party software by the end of this month. I don't know the full details on this, but it may server to expedite shifting over to a Discord channel.) Ultimately, how do we make NHL '94 appeal to young people? It's got outdated graphics, outdated rules, not enough variety or depth in game modes, and the competition would be stiff. I think if we came up with something like an Elo rating system that gave a clearer understanding of how good a player is, instead of just A/B/C level, that may help players integrate and find the most suitable competition for themselves. I don't think this would be too radical an impact on the leagues and the players out there now I hope I'm not too out-of-the-loop for my thoughts to not be considered, but I would like this community to thrive and survive where I've seen others fall apart due to stagnation.

That would be a smart option, but I would feel "cheap" doing that for some reason. Perhaps I could use that against players who would use that move themselves, similar to 5 hole passes. I thought Zep meant with Coffey, but that was impossible to stop.

thank you. I think it is extremely hard to do. alot of the game comes from knowing how to put yourself in position. Depch gets extremely snake bit with both the goalie falling over especially the second time (the other was a good hard play.) Then Gilmour plays like he is cold as ice! One of the easiest pointers I see is at like 27:40; the puck is firmly inside the blue line which will pull the d men into the offensive zone, and then the loose puck headed towards the boards. Did Depch make a mistake coming across? Not sure. I personally would have skated backwards but I'm in the minority with that one. Plabax clearly jumps on the opportunity to create a pretty much insta break. Similarly the last Gilmour one timer at 28:06 is setup by the pass before the one timer. Anyway, I love watching these. Thanks

You always can But let's spread the love around. I love the series. Each game for different reasons.

These are custom roms from User Draft Leagues. Edmonton is my team I drafted for the current Et tu Brute League.

You used to be somebody I could trust.

This game is a gem. I believe the series went south in a lot of ways in 96.

Play the NHL95 theme song backwards and you will know our secret...

That's what I had been doing to do line changes without losing possession. In the FF07 mod, as Dopefish mentioned, player energy was running out too fast, requiring you to have to make too many line changes by this method, disrupting the flow of the game. Thankfully, I found a topic on this forum where not only was there a player energy depletion rate for bench players code, but also a player energy depletion rate code for players on the ice. This is the one that apparently Inklings greatly increased causing players to run out of energy forcing you to do a lot of line changes. It's at 010D42:0021. 0021 is the original NHL '94 value but it was 0062 in the FF07 mod. This allow players to stay on the ice in the FF07 mod without having to line changes as often. Thanks for the link kingraph. I saw that there was a switch goalie mod button so you won't have to hold down B button. That's a great start to possibly adding more functions to the X or Z buttons. The first step would be to find the address that turns on and off the line change selection menu during gameplay, then try adding that to switch goalie mod in one of those unused buttons. Without cwcheat working in Picodrive on my PSP-3000 I may need to find another emulator to find codes like that for NHL '94 during gameplay. Another idea I had for the other unused button on a 6 button control scheme is possibly a speed burst button for offense when you have the puck. Yet another idea for an unused button that would be a button that allows you to pass the puck to a player but to retain control of the player who passed the puck. (sort of like a player lock) I've been able to get it to happen to an extent when holding A button and a teammate gets to the puck while the edit lines menu is up, at that point you will remain controlling a player who doesn't have the puck while on offense, to have a button that did that whenever could be useful. These are just some ideas of what we could try to do with 3 additional buttons. I updated the FF07 again in the 1st post, slightly reduced bench energy player recovery rate from 0014 to 0010 and reduced on ice player energy depletion rate from 0062 (as was default in FF07 mod) to 0032. "NHL '94" Default 0021 was too low for FF07, as energy barely went down even after minutes on ice, so I can see why Inklings felt a need to increase it. The 1.3.6 bin seems to be a good balance with real-time clock, but it needs further testing. Finding a balance with these codes certainly does lessen the issues with manual line changes being tied to the A button in NHL '94 in the FF07 mod. If anyone wants to work on researching adding functions to unused control buttons I would be very interesting in doing so!

#1 Saving states is an adventure. Sometimes it works sometimes not. #2 Every time you connect you have to restart everything. So when your opponent disconnects or sets up wrong you have a 5 minute restart process. #3 Screen is like double vision unless you go full screen. #4 Escaping full screen can only be accomplished by shutting down. So no in game chatting and going from Home to Visitor requires restart. My old Mac was from 2003. Apparently it has different compatibility with different Mac OS. Some have said older is better. Some say not. All I will say is it takes a great deal of effort. So it needs to be worth it.

32 team rom is coming soon.

Probably doing something lame like spending more time with family or making the world a better place