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My friends and I like San Jose VS Anaheim (embracing the suck, and also a nice Cali rivalry), and Hartford VS Quebec for maximum 90s effect.

Skin tones work during the play, too.

Welcome to modern software I had to jump through hoops to keep EARE's size down. It's all layers of libraries/frameworks. It's using "fmod" for sound and "arsenal" as some kind of emulator wrapper. Storage and data transfer is considered cheap these days. When you update a modern xbox game it seems like it just replaces the whole damn 30GB game rather than the patched parts.

Mine will only play Mutant League Hockey. She doesn't want to hear me talk about how great Pavel Bure is for an hour.

I second that for sure!!!! we do it better here!!!

80% of the roms on this site are better than what EA will do =P if only we got nhlpa 94... *sigh*

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