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Growing up, I had NHL Hockey for DOS, but never owned NHL94 on console until later on in life. It was and still is a great game, albeit not the easiest to fire up like a Genesis or SNES. Scoring methods weren't as plentiful/repeatable as the console versions of 94, but I enjoyed the challenge, and the full season mode _ digitized narration was a major plus over consoles. Once I got my first Playstation, I was drawn to the 97, 98, versions, and I eventually started getting PC version of EA NHL in 2000. I also enjoyed the 2K series on Dreamcast. While these games weren't perfect, they didn't take very long before you could find the cheaper ways of getting goals, and control schemes were all digital, meaning simple. In retrospect, with the exception of the 2K series, and maybe NHL98's presentation, everything was more about the tech advances, and added features, enough to distract us from games past. After the Dreamcast, I didn't buy another console for 6 years, gaming exclusively on the PC. I was turned off by the short shelf life of the Dreamcast, and refused to get another console to replace it, in fear that the same thing would happen again. I instead poured into the PC gaming universe. For me, sports games ended up taking back seats to the wonders of LAN party games like Starcraft, Quake and Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942, and other big hits around 20 years ago. Sports games to me belonged in the living room with a friend. I don't claim to be a hockey video game historian, but it's my understanding that analog controls took over in a big way during the PS2/Xbox generation. The focus towards online play, and continued simulation feel is evident. I don't know when the digital control schemes of hockey games for shooting were replaced with "skill sticks", and countless jukes. However, when I finally returned to try a NHL game by EA Sports for NHL 14, I saw they had the NHL94 controls. Sadly, it didn't seem to help me control the players, and was more of a handicap by reducing what the players could do. In short, I didn't have much fun with it, and the countless hours needed to get comfortable with everything really turned me off to it. Even my son who is pretty decent at video games was never that proficient with it. He could certainly function, but he didn't grow up playing 3 or 4 button hockey games like we did. While I give credit to the "3's" mode that was added to recent versions of EA Sports NHL hockey games(fun novelty), I could never truly be converted. I had a glimmer of hope that our "friends" at EA Sports would do us right with this NHL94 Rewind announcement. Having a true living room experience from an official source on a timeless game engine was just what I wanted. Don't get my wrong, I love the modding community, just turning on the PS4 and going without emulators, computers attached to PCs, or using flash carts is immediately appealing. Unfortunately, at least for now it doesn't appear to be a stand alone product. In addition, we've wanted an official source to play this classic game in a stable online setting. I like many others have unfortunate technical issues with our current online solution that have kept me from doing the exis and league thing(This is no slight to anyone, as the support here is amazing). In any other year, I may have been more forgiving about this exclusion, but given the ongoing Covid isolation that is killing the local tournament scene, not having a way to compete online is unforgivable. I'm interested in when the people of this community bounced away from the annual EA cash grab releases, and bounced back to NHL94. My return was based on the suggestion to run a tournament for this great game. Very few sports games hold a special place in my heart. Tecmo Bowl/Tecmo Super Bowl, the NBA Jam series of games, and NHL94 are the big three. NHL94 just felt right for me. The players perform on the ice as you'd expect them to, scoring isn't too difficult to figure out, and likewise, there seems to be a counter to most things. When you lose, most of the time it's because you were outplayed. I'm also a big fan of having two different mainstream versions that have their own +/- that = double the fun. Thanks for letting me vent. It's been a long year. -Trojan

I was newly married in the early 90's and me and 4 buddies played a lot of Madden, but when the OG, 93 and then <heavenly music> NHL '94 came out, it was OVER. We didn't play anything else. Then we got the 4-play adapter, and it got better. Then we got the CD version and it got even BETTER. The only thing that could have made it better, we said, was to be able to edit/move/create players. After a couple of years, the wives tired of it, we all moved apart, and we stopped playing. Fast-forward to 2015. I moved home to CA from Hawaii. I stumble upon this website and learn that you actually CAN edit/move/create players (and more). Me and one of my buddies re-draft the entire league and burn it to a CD and play on a SegaCD bought on Ebay. Brilliant. The only problem was trying to hook it up to modern TV's (nothing but HDMI inputs on the back of the TV, only coaxial outputs on the Sega). Then we learned of all the programs that people have created to edit players/teams/etc. It made re-drafting and creating a new league much easier. We kept a logbook of every game and stat. Played a whole season and playoffs. Then someone created the stat-extractor. Now we have literally every stat the game keeps and we keep it in a spreadsheet. We are on our 14th season of doing this. Covid hits, and we now play via Parsec. I'm 50 now, and haven't tired of this in the least.

Prior to buying myself a Switch for my 40th bday in March of 2019 (hey man, it was on sale!) I hadn't kept up with ANY console gaming whatsoever since the great Genesis/SNES wars of the 90's. I was a diehard Genesis kid back then and I played the absolute f**k of EA hockey (OG, 93 & 94) and Madden. My dog eventually murdered my Genesis and then when I moved to Colorado for college in '97 I discovered other ways to "spend my time". I moved back to Chicago after college in like 2002 and my best friend since the age of 6 (he was an SNES combatant in the great console wars) got me playing '94 hockey on SNES. So i went on ebay and bought a system/NHL'94 cart and started playing whenever possible so that i could f**king shut his ass up. I grew up on Genesis version, but since i hadn't played in forever i had no problem just becoming an SNES guy now since my friend was so adamant about it. We played all the f**king time and we expanded our circle of guys who played consistently to the point where we eventually started having an annual St Paddy's Day NHL'94 tourney. It was a total booze-fueled shitshow, and the "winner" usually just ended up getting hazed the hardest since most everyone else was eliminated and started hitting the gas lol. But it was really f**king fun, and that's all that mattered. Well, then came marriage, and buying a condo (or "borrowing" a condo from the bank, whatever), and having kids and just general adulting-type s**t. I always thought to myself how awesome it would be to be able to play 94 online, but I'm too dense in re: computers, the internet and just in general to ever imagine that a place like this existed. But since finding this place earlier this year, I've been having more fun than ever before in my life playing this f**king game. Other than some very casual gaming on my Switch (and that's usually just when i'm on the shitter haha!), 94 is the only f**king game i play anymore. Meeting and playing against a wiiiiiiiiiiide of excellent motherfuckers who call this place home has opened my eyes to how much more there still is to this game. I got humbled immediately upon entering my first classic league here, but it was f**king fun as s**t! Now i know that i kinda suck at this game, and so i go into every game (even exi's) hoping to see something and/or learn something new that i can try to incorporate or at least come up with a counter for. This game truly is merit-based in terms of winners/loser. If you lose, barring some crazy f**king s**t happening, it's usually just your own damn fault and so you gotta wear it! I love that. It's instant feedback as to how good you are or how good you played during that game. As to your last point, THANK YOU for venting! Not until i read your post did i even think about much of the bullshit i just wrote up above. But I'm damn glad to be here with other like-minded idiots such as myself. And I'll f**king drink to that "It's been a long year", buddy! My only advice is to just keep mashing that Bodycheck button! (or speedburst/shoot button, whatever, i guess it does multiple things...) DanK

The problem may be that it is a headerless ROM. You might have to add a header to it. I'm not sure (actually I doubt) Statto's Editor can take a headerless ROM. Look online, there are programs that can add a header to it EDIT: The ROM in the RA package is headerless, the ROM in other locations I'll bet has a header.

2020 KHL.bin

This is really well done. Nice to see someone breathing some life into this game, as it was one of the stronger of the EA 16 bit days. Congratulations.

Thanks @Jkline3 I shared it on social media bud.

I've crossed the Atlantic and leagues are getting smaller. Winter is coming and I've got nowhere to go. I may make it further than I originally thought...

Oh my god!!! Thank you @Jkline3!!!!! I should do the swiss league now, as some interesting players like Thornton are there, but I've got to motivate myself first...

Try downloading the ROM directly from the nhl94.com homepage. For some reason that's the last hurdle some of these guys have had to get over.

Hi all, I wasn't really satisfied with the news so far on NHL 94 Rewind, and while I was complaining to a friend, he said "you couldn't do any better". I took it as a challenge, and spent the better part of a week, and anytime I could turn my camera off during Zoom classes on this baby right here. 1.0 Notes 31 NHL teams, all in the style they were in 1993-94, or at the very least, with a bit of retro flair. 1 team of all-stars from NHL 94, with 20 players all representing a different team. Not always the highest overall player, but just someone I thought would be fun. 5 Easter Egg players. To Do: Smozoma gave me some tips a few days to potentially conquer the mighty Winnipeg Freeze Bug...... I'll try my hand at it this week. Update rosters, lines, and player cards once the season begins. Add more challenging content over time, potentially over the All-Star team. Try my best to rip the actual NHL 94 Rewind ROM from the game. End Credits I used @Sauce's playoff ROM as a base, so some ratings overlap since I really like the way he structures things, and it uses @clockwise's sprite patch. @slapshot67 gave us the 32-team ROM, so always need to thank him when the opportunity arises. SportsLogos.net and NHLUniforms.com were very helpful for this project. I hope you enjoy, and have a little bit of 90s themed fun. Any and all feedback is welcome. NHL21Rewind1.0.zip

That’s how I got here! Been playing 94 on console for that last 25 years and never knew there was an online community until someone mentioned it in EA’s Twitter announcement for Rewind. No need to buy 2021 when you can get it here!

No we have seen and read in articles that they have made actual changes. It's possible they used a ROM from here as a base, but they still did some real work on it. They added an exit menu in the game (something I couldn't do trivially, so they put some real work into it) From a Twitter video: They added a controller assignment screen to the menu, like in SNES. We're not sure how they did that, if they actually changed the game, or the way it works is they added a custom front-end to the game that looks just like the normal game (which was my guess because the colours seemed slightly off). If they put a controller selection screen in the game, that's significant work. From a Twitter video: They added an extra team, so there are 33 (31 + 2 all stars). So we know they didn't just steal a ROM and sell it. Again that's significant work. They made their own player ratings, which was mentioned in an article (Arda's, I think) I only looked at 1 of the 2020 ROMs from here, and the pictures in their ROM are different. I didn't look at the other one. But I'm pretty sure they will have used their own pictures that they own. If they took a ROM from here with internet-sourced pictures, they could have trouble on their hands if someone noticed they used pictures from ESPN or TSN etc. Apparently they fixed only the weight bug. Since they added more teams, they needed to add more logos, so I would be surprised if they didn't redo all the logos.

I also came back after a 10 year hiatus. I think my last classic season was in 2010. A bunch of things contributed to me stopping, new job commitments, girlfriend, moving etc. And there was a bit of a lull in committed SNES players at that time. I played in the Vegas tournament in 2017 and got my ass kicked by the Vancouver guys. Came back to online play for the SoChel tourney and got my ass beat again so it motivated me to get back into playing some seasons. Like Dan says in the post, there’s been so many improvements in the last 10 years. Retroarch seems to be working a lot better than other programs we used to use. Discord is a million times better than AIM for communication. Also adding the save states for SNES to track the stats on the website is a huge add that we never had before. I bet if more guys knew how much better it is now it wouldn’t take much convincing to get them back. I’m having a ton of fun again and happy to be back!

I'm not an online player, the missus and I have foregone having kids, she is far from boring, I'm already skating, rapidly, towards forty and I've been playing '94, for around fifteen years. Only having found this community, less than, a week ago, I can safely say... I'm here for the long haul.

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! NHL94 Playoff Edition.bin NHL94 Team and Player Ratings.zip