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Hello everyone, last month there was a new edition of the "Copa Fin del Mundo" an annual ice hockey championship which is held in the city of Usuahia. It is a tournament where mainly teams from Argentina compete, but in recent years teams from other countries have been invited, this year one came from Chile and two from Mexico. At first it would only be a simple edit where it would only show these teams, but since there were only 10, I had problems when i make the playoffs draw, they didn't turn out well, so I added fantasy teams and I think I got an interesting result. So as you will see in the sample images, on one side of the playoffs they will have the real teams and on the other side will be the fantasy teams, the fun thing about this is that they will only play versus the fantasy team in the finals and only there will they know what team will be. Take as a base, the rom of The Sauce from the Winter Classic, since its outdoor rink was perfect to simulate the rink that exists in Usuahia (is an outdoor rink) - 10 Teams from CFM 2023 (Copa Fin del Mundo) (Selectables) - 16 Mystery Fantasy Teams (No Selectables) - No Line Changes (All lines are sames, but can changes players manually) Download: CFM 2023.bin

Recent breakthroughs developed the necessity to Revisit this one, but then the question was what to call it. It's not an update since the original 30-team game was abandoned in favour of a ground up Rebuild with 32 teams. So what "Re" word applies here? Remake? Remaster" Redux? Rewind? Nah. On second thought, to paraphrase a '90s icon, "That previous one was just a mic check." Or maybe "Retcon" is the word I'll use now. So yeah, you might find some other version on the interwebs out there, but that one isn't the Real version. You might call it a prototype, or a poor excuse for a hack that was put together by some hack, whatever. Time to Reload. Back in 1988 SNK released arguably the best baseball game ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was loads of fun back in the day [as long as your Nintendo's 10NES chip didn't erroneously flash the memory and erase your save] and despite the engine being reused for three more, less successful, NES entries, as well as seeing two pretty solid, but much less charming sequels on the NEO•GEO MVS and AES systems, which were later given NEO•GEO Pocket/Colour ports, it remains a classic to this day. So in reverence to that game, we're going to try to fix the story of what the hockey version would be. The backstory for this one is that it was released in 1992 by Romstar [SNK's North American distribution arm in the late '80s/early '90s] on the Sega Genesis, the first Hockey Stars features many recognizable teams and player names from it's baseball contemporaries as well as familiar box art. Although it looks like it was completed with some of the prototype art as screen photos. Eh well, these things happen. On to some familiar art... Okay so some of the assets were good enough to keep from the prototype. Including the trademark stark white splash screen and "Be a Champ" words of encouragement. Might have taken the advise of reformatting the title screen to the more common English layout. The main menu got a face lift thanks to some amazing "behind the scenes" work and calls back to design elements from some of the baseball games, while the Pre-game intro screen has some fixes and a new subtle background. Teams are still divided up by league; You will find mention of the "Exciting", "Fighting", "Professional" and "Legends" leagues in the team intros. These are not exclusive in Versus play as in the NEO•GEO releases, but will determine what division you play in during the Playoff mode. Although not as sharp as you will find on AES hardware, full colour cartoony depictions of player photos are still present and take their art style from the previous "Professional" game. And just as in most other SNK games, the pre-match presenter has another SNK character making a cameo in Athena from Psycho Soldier. Got her moved down to line up nicer with her text block though. The jumbotron gets a Stars-y facelift and the arena looks bigger, while the classic Zamboni returns with a perspective shift. Each player has an individual photo and stats you can look up. The fixed View Player screen gets a treatment similar to the NES games, although the NES wouldn't have been able to handle the colour shifting. In another similarity to the Baseball games, player stats seem to be directly imported as they are wildly different. Meaning that play-style can vary quite drastically even among line mates. Some may wish to play with line changes off and create a "super line" of each team's best players, but if you are looking for the added challenge of having to adapt to each player's varying abilities, you may want to keep line changes on. As an aside, as one of the now six "Create-a-Team" options, the Turtles are the "Veterans" and submitted the old photos. While each of the other teams take their skill set theme from the original baseball game as well. The Playoff Cup from Professional makes a return, only this time it is put on a pedestal as hockey deserves. The colour coding now makes sense as each "League" is contained to a divisional playoff format and the faint watermark on traditional green is carried through. There's more of that SNK branding... And since "Stars" is in the name they get some adjustments and prominent features as well. At least the 3-stars icon isn't another SNK logo. AI shooters could use some help though. There, that's a little better. Hockey Stars 1 [1.2].bin

I know what you're probably thinking, "Didn't someone JUST do this one?"... The difference is that that one sat in my unfinished projects folder for about a year, this time around the season only wrapped up a week ago. Also helps not to have to do all the artwork from scratch If you haven't heard of Macklin Celebrini... you will. 46 goals and 40 assists in only 50 games as a 16-year old. Already the odds-on favorite to be drafted #1 overall in 2024. Once again, every player has their own photo. Updated playoff tree. New host this season, Ryan Sikes of USHL Puck Report. New broadcast partner for 2022-23, Flo Sports. Thanks again to @smozoma @slapshot67 @clockwise for paving the trail and @von Ozbourne @AdamCatalyst @Drezz and @Sean for keeping the lights on! 2023 USHL.bin