LaTormenta

@Jkline3 and @von Ozbourne - You absolute beauties. You two (along with @AdamCatalyst) are doing the Lord's work with this year's updates. Cheers!

Great work, @AdamCatalyst. I have not been active on the forum for ages (life has gotten in the way) and I am looking forward to loading this onto my Retroid Pocket 2+ in a couple of minutes and wiling away the time during my flight tomorrow morning. Cheers! @Drewbdoo71 - I use a RetroArch front end with my RP2+ and use the Genesis Plus GX core for Mega Drive / Genesis games. It works perfectly, although you might need to reconfigure / remap the control buttons. If you get stuck, have a look at this site, as it includes really easy-to-follow workthroughs and videos that focus on maximising the potential of most RP builds / models (including the morer recent ones): https://retrogamecorps.com/2022/01/16/retroid-pocket-2-starter-guide. I hope that this helps.

First off, welcome to the forum! Secondly, playing using the keyboard (in my humble opinion) suuuuuuuuuucks! Before you can do anything with the controller, you will have to sync your PS4 controller with your PC so that it recognises it. It will not connect off the bat. There is a useful guide here: https://www.techradar.com/uk/how-to/gaming/how-to-use-the-ps4-dualshock-4-controller-on-a-pc-1309014 (although a quick Google will pull up stuff along similar lines and you might want to try and few and see which one works for you). Then, once everything is synced, you will have to go into the "controller" settings in the relevant emulator you are using and simply assign the keys ("Click the button for A, B, C etc."). That is straightforward enough if you are using a standalone emulator such as Gens. If you are using Retroarch it is a little bit more complicated but there are videos on YouTube that deal with how to assign buttons etc. Something to note (as I find this a pain in the ass), unless you have a spare PS4 controller that you will never use with the PS4 again (or only do so occasionally), you will have to keep resyncing the controller with the PS4 using the micro-USB lead every time you want to use it to play PS4 games. I only have 2 PS4 controllers, both of which I use all of the time, and it drove me nuts. I just ended up buying an XBox Series 1 pad for about £40 and use that instead. Does that help?

As I seem to do every year now, here is my custom cover for the ROM (along with a bonus version for the Tampa fans on here...). Enjoy!

Thanks, guys. I need to tidy up the images that I have, which is next week's task, and I'll start working through the guide and see where I get to. Fingers crossed!

Right, dumb questions alert... @kingraph - You mention in your guide that 6 players per team get shown in the selection screen but all 26 slots have to be assigned. Is it the case that the same 6 players get shown every time or does the game cycle through a random 6? What happens if a team doesn't have 26 players in a roster to start with? Do you have to fill the (selectable) player slots in each team with random players to pad things out or is it a case that the cards section needs to refer to 26 players and you can just make up names for the extras (and use generic images) on the basis that they will not be visible anywhere because (a) they're not in the main "in game" rosters and (b) only 6 players per team will cycle through? Basically, I am going to be updating my EIHL (UK) ROM over the next few weeks and have got pretty much everything I need to sort the player cards. I just need to make sure I don't balls everything up by starting off on the wrong foot, so apologies if these questions are SUPER basic. Thanks!

Awesome work, as always. This has gone straight onto my PSP for my trip to London at the weekend. Sweet!

Looks good. Keep us posted!

Whilst I doubt that EA has source code from this far back stored anywhere, it'd be kinda cool if it showed up during, say, a basement clearance by Lesser or Simmons on a 5.25" floppy disc and it was put online.

And your magnum opus will be compete!

I'm a bit late to this, as I've been AWOL for a while. Great work and I'll enjoy playing this, even though, in real life, the Leafs ended up shitting the bed when it counted!

I hacked my PSP and works really well (plus, the process is idiot proof). The battery life is awful though, regardless of whether you play ISO-based PSP games or old school games. Plus, in the UK anyway, they're still not that cheap second hand though.

This is a common issue and you are not being daft, don't worry. You didn't mention if you are using Retroarch or something else with the system, so I will assume RA but the same point applies generally. You just need to remap the buttons for the core in question and either apply the settings specifically to NHL '94 or for all Genesis games that you have loaded up. I have about 12 systems installed on my GM and pretty much had to remap each core separately, which was a pain in the ass at the time but worth it now. Here is a video from YouTube that explains how to remap buttons for use with a 6 button controller. It will still be helpful even if you are using a 3 button controller, as the main thing is figuring how to get into the Retroarch menu from the game and then a bit of trial and error after that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh6PXS7gJwc&ab_channel=PattonPlays. The thing to note is that RA's button set-up is a bit weird. So, you might have to experiment a bit to work out what button in the RA menu corresponds with each Genesis button. I think, at least on mine, "Y" is "C" on mine when it probably shouldn't be. At least with NHL '94 it is easy to test (shoot, dump the puck etc.). Hope this helps.

If you could sort out our GODDAMN POWERPLAY while you're at it, it'd be appreciated!

@Sauce - You are a beautiful, beautiful man. And no doubt, a warm and considerate lover. I have been really enjoying the versions of this ROM up to now and find it a damn sight more balanced than NHL Rewind (which, in fairness, is a blast in its own right). That said, if I find that you have reduced A. Mattthews' shooting rating because he's had a dry spell of late (save for the fluke on Saturday night), so help me God...!

By way of a further update, I have updated @UltraMagnus's V.1 ROM from Monday (the one @MonkeyHead then edited as above) to capture the kit changes (but not the ice - ew!) and also to include 32 (I think) unique 8 team play-off brackets, following some advice from @CoachMac and @Sauce earlier this week. @UltraMagnus - If you don't mind, I will DM you the ROM on Saturday with the graphic required to "mask" the non-used teams (all of the banners for the non-EIHL teams will need replacing, but I don't think it's a huge job from the sound of things, just boring and mechanical!). I just need to check one of @CoachMac's Original 6 ROMS to see how it looks / works with just having the "east" teams live. I'll do this on Saturday morning once I have caught up with how the Leafs and Marlies have gotten on. Then... Save for any minor tweaks, that should be the base ROM done. Until @MonkeyHead wants to change the ice yellow...! (Yeah, you're going to regret helping people out people from this awful little island. We're never satisfied!!! )

Agreed. @UltraMagnus, you are a God amongst (middle aged) men as far as I'm concerned. And a card carrying sadist given how much time you're willing to spend modding ROMs for strangers on the internet. Honestly, I doff my cap to thee.

This is how it looks in GENS - Belfast vs Belfast. It's the same on my Genesis Mini.

This is how the ROM looks in the version of NOSE I am running (with Clockwise's sprite patch): @UltraMagnus - Any ideas? Do I need to apply something to the ROM so that the kits show up correctly?

Any chance of posting the updated ROM, albeit without your blasphemous white ice (you absolute savage)?! I don't remember using a pink colour for the Belfast kit. Random. Still, cheers for sorting it!

Thanks, @UltraMagnus. I will play through it when I have some time this week and drop you a message with any points. They will only be minor, as the game runs really well!

The weight bug should have been removed. I cannot remember though, to be honest. The kit tweaks were deliberate, just because of the impact on the rest of the kits when things were changed (from recollection). No issues with the Cardiff shorts being black though. I went through the kits and tried to be as accurate as possible, so let me know if there are any specific ones so I / we can look at them. Away kits are easy to fix. The home ones might be a pain if it buggers about with the ice logo.

That's a really good shout and a helpful workaround. To be honest, I sorta knew it would be difficult / impossible to drop teams from the bracket, as that sounds more like a programming job than a straightforward mod. I might be being a bit dim here (I've been up since 5am catching up on the Leafs and Marlies games and am having a quick break from reviewing docs!), but I'm not sure how you could ensure that none of the non-EIHL teams don't progress if they are on the bracket. Wouldn't an EIHL team always end up facing an NIHL team at some point or does the "10 team" rule mean that, once you get past the first round (where, as you mention above, all of the EIHL teams have to face one another), the EIHL teams will always progress and the human player could never face an NIHL team? (Admittedly, this is a basic bracket and there might be a way of structuring it difficulty, but this is the best I could come up with in 2 mins in MS Paint!)

It's the 4 team series I mentioned in the other thread. Coventry Blaze, Manchester Storm Nottingham Panthers and Sheffield Steelers. 24 games then a knock-out of sorts to determine, well, no-one really knows. A cup of some description!

Evening all @UltraMagnus has just finished an awesome EIHL version of '94, which I have been putting through its paces this evening. The EIHL only features 10 teams, so I was wondering whether there is a way to amend the in-game play-off bracket screen so that it only shows the 10 teams in the league, rather than the hidden NHL teams. The ROM has already been tweaked in EARE so that only the 10 EIHL teams are selectable for a play-off run. I know you can change the brackets in NOSE but I couldn't see anything that allows you to actually delete teams from the brackets. Ignore the names here, as we have padded the ROM with other British teams so that the "EA Hockey Night" score banner does not look too ridiculous by showing, say, Manchester Storm playing the Maple Leafs! Ideally, the bracket would feature 8 teams, as this is how it works in real life. Like with every question I seem to ask, I suspect that there probably isn't an easy solution to this but I just wanted to check. Thanks!