von Ozbourne

Yes to this, but I will just add that it only pastes the order of the players. So if you simply copy/pasted the entire rosters from '98 and pasted them into '97, this will work. But if you rearrange the order that the players are listed in the Players window in anyway, you will notice some issues. ie: if your first line consists of the fourth, fifth, seventh, fifteenth and twentieth players in your list, then copy/pasting the line will select the players in those same slots to make your new line, even if you first rearranged the order of the original players for some other organizational purpose.

Turns out much like Baseball Stars for the Pocket, the monochrome version of Hockey Stars was adaptable to the colourized remake as well. Updated the full review above, but here it is. Hockey Stars NGP Colour.bin

Oh!.... I did find out something about this one. You can actually change the palette in the player cards. In the original game anyway. I don't think I figured out the 32-team version. The problem however is that the palette numbers reference a different set of colours depending on which screen you are on. Although, speaking of 32 teams, with the Arizona door supposedly being left open a crack for the next five years, [assuming they don't repeat a New York Americans situation where the franchise was withdrawn in 1942, but not officially cancelled until 1946 when the owner tried to reactivate it] is it time to try to add another two teams to the NHL'94 fold?

As someone who usually plays an aggressive defensive game, I've had that fourth, fifth... sixth guy jump into the box and either overlap the rightmost player or possibly just disappear. [Actually I had run an experiment in NHL95 back in the day, playing as Pittsburgh, I had so many guys in the box that the game only gave me two players on the ice and my d-man was Ken Wregget. Only three of those 20 penalized players displayed in the box obviously. Then my brother played 20 minute periods, got Cam Neely to score 40 goals in a single game, and completely glitched the season and anything that recalled the records] Back to '94, I don't remember where this was originally found, but there is a code that determined how many players line up in the box. No problem reducing it to one or two, but when you logically increase that number to four, it doesn't work so well. Was hoping that you could just extend the box and have another guy sit to the side or in the crowd or something, but it just completely glitches the game.

With the checking source discovered, am I the only one who wants to know how to tweak the values? I'm thinking along the lines of increasing the range of effect, so you can go from half the dudes no-selling like a jabroni to now half the dudes flipping out like Hong Kong kung fu movie minions. Too much?

Given that Baseball Stars Colour was literally just a colourization of the original monochrome game released a year later, It probably wouldn't have been that hard for SNK to give this game the same treatment. And I was thinking it would be nice to see some of those new/old assets in something other than grey...

Those are interesting tournaments. Takes a lot of research to make those historic games though.

"So you got all the other ones, what about the Pocket?" "What?" "The NEO*GEO Pocket version of Hockey Stars." "Hm... I'll look into it." Okay. So the idea behind this one, for those who need a quick backstory. As per wikipedia, "The Neo Geo Pocket (NGP) is a monochrome handheld game console released by SNK." It was released in Japan only in late 1998 and was essentially discontinued six months later with the release of the Pocket Colour. It launched with six games and saw another three released by the end of the year, before efforts were switched over to making Colour ports. As a side note, the Pocket Colour would meet the same fate as all handhelds that try to compete with the Gameboy and be discontinued two years later, as would the company. Be discontinued that is. Having declared bankruptcy. Correction: They made ten games that year. And like many of the original Pocket games, SNK colourized it the next year. But since most people don't have a NEO*GEO Pocket kicking around, we're going to cover the ports that came in the same re-release collection as Hockey Stars 0. Alright, that preamble was pretty amble-ly, but it seemed important to set the stage for what this is. A SEGA Genesis game that looks like a Gameboy game. So I present a retro-style review of both the original and colour remake of: While titled simply "Hockey Stars", it is known colloquially as Hockey Stars Pocket or Hockey Stars NGP. Or Hockey Stars Colour! And it was developed primarily buy Saurus, a subsidiary of SNK that also developed the NGP version of Baseball Stars. Getting into the game, this port doesn't stick to the original resolution of the pocket screen thankfully. but many of the graphics, as well the the monochromatic-ism of an original Pocket release. Maybe at some point we'll see if they ever ported this one to the colour. It's notable that the team names and logos this time were borrowed primarily from the NES version of Baseball Stars II, rather than the Pocket versions of Baseball Stars, as many of those were heavily baseball themed. One change though is that several of the teams have had logo updates when they looked too much like some initials on a ball cap, and changed cities from some smaller baseball towns, to more traditional hockey markets. At least the game is colour blind friendly. And the Colour version is pretty bright. One thing to note, while the 18 playable teams all have colourful fictional names, being restricted to eight total grey tones including black and white, means that a lot of thought had to be put into contrast, and every team looks the same with light grey home and dark grey away uniforms for maximum discernible-ness at full speed. And now individualized colours in the colour version. I though Denver was a dinosaur, not a dragon... The game does support up to four players, but being that this is half of the grey tones, telling everyone apart might not be the easiest task. Much easier in Colour. I did like the starry "O" from the original NES game's assets. Alright. One of the best parts of the original NES game, was the player profiles. And we revisit those here too, even if the game doesn't have the capacity to allow for hiring, firing, trading and upgrading. We are treated to a nice set of unique photos. Checking out the player abilities. It would appear that the rosters are also borrowing from Baseball Stars II, and are as usual in this series, vastly min-maxed for acute player specialties. Some playing around with rosters may be required to get a starting lineup that you find best suits your playing style. Goalies be crazy. Some even bright their old-school masks to picture day. While the limited grey scale seemed to relegate everyone to a mid-toned skin shade, it is notable that almost every team has one or two co-ed members. Colour makes for three different three different skin tones as well as some nice mixing it up. Finally, there are three game modes, Single Exhibition, or play for the SNK Cup in a 16-Team Tournament with Single Elimination or Best-of-Seven formats. There is also a Shoot-out mode from back before those were played out. And the trophy actually looks like gold now. I don't know if there was a colourized version of this game. Turns out it didn't sell well on the rare system, so SNK made the switch. in Might have to see how the reception to this one went. Hockey Stars NGP.bin And now Hockey Stars NGP Colour.bin

I will say that I did do a bit of looking into this one, but... I did use the blue of the player shadow for economical reasons. Long story [that I can't really explain very well] made short, the problem I found is that there just simply isn't enough pixels to get the point across in a manner that I liked. Best I could manage was to just change the dead eyes to the skin tone to match the old SNK NES look.

I heard it was a very small production run. Probably just never made it to your local game store.

Sorry guys. That bug was intended to be a feature. If you tested out other teams, you might have noticed a trend in that all of the teams that are within reach of making the playoffs are featured in the game, and all of the teams that are functionally eliminated, were told to empty their lockers and go home. Except for the goalie. Who donned practice gear. But he does eventually decide he's had enough and will bugger off as well at the start of the third period. After further reflection, it was probably a missed opportunity to not set the goalie roaming area to the entire rink. Uh...April fools. To make it up, I'll probably set up a real update once the playoffs start.

Had to test this out in the other games of course. The numbers are a little different between games so I had to limit my search for instances of "0002 6600", but found that the sequence that @smozoma laid out above held true in all of the games from '92 to '95 in some form of 6B00 xxxx B07C 0002 6600 xxxx 0C78 003C. Tested them all with a few extreme numbers and they all behave as described above [if my tests did mean chaos ensued] No luck with '96-'98 sadly. For anyone interested, here is the complete list of offsets. NHL'92 offset 7AB2 = 6B00 [change to 6300] offset 7AB8 = 0002 [goals at which CPU team pulls goalie] offset 7ABA = 6600 [change to 6200] offset 7AC0 = 003C [seconds remaining in third period at which CPU team pulls goalie - in hex] EA'92 offset 76A4 = 6B00 [change to 6300] offset 76AA = 0002 [goals at which CPU team pulls goalie] offset 76AC = 6600 [change to 6200] offset 76B2 = 003C [seconds remaining in third period at which CPU team pulls goalie - in hex] NHLPA'93 offset C308 = 6B00 [change to 6300] offset C30E = 0002 [goals at which CPU team pulls goalie] offset C310 = 6600 [change to 6200] offset C316 = 003C [seconds remaining in third period at which CPU team pulls goalie - in hex] NHL'94 offset F758 = 6B00 [change to 6300] offset F75E = 0002 [goals at which CPU team pulls goalie] offset F760 = 6600 [change to 6200] offset F766 = 003C [seconds remaining in third period at which CPU team pulls goalie - in hex] NHL'95 offset 83674 = 6B00 [change to 6300] offset 8367A = 0002 [goals at which CPU team pulls goalie] offset 8367C = 6600 [change to 6200] offset 83682 = 003C [seconds remaining in third period at which CPU team pulls goalie - in hex] Eliteserien'95 offset 80BD4 = 6B00 [change to 6300] offset 80BDA = 0002 [goals at which CPU team pulls goalie] offset 80BDC = 6600 [change to 6200] offset 80BC2 = 003C [seconds remaining in third period at which CPU team pulls goalie - in hex]

Just a mini update today. Rated a few new players. Made an edit to the "pull the goalie" formula after remembering to go back and review the summary that @smozoma was excellent enough to post on that subject. Decided to turn this one into a Path to the Playoffs Edition to highlight all the teams that are gearing up for a run at the Stanley Cup. The trade deadline sellers are still there despite having fewer bodies than they did at the start of the season, but lets face it, much like the fans that are still showing up to the games in real life, you're probably going to have more fun playing as the teams that are looking to extend their season and not their lottery odds. an April Fools joke. Have fun. NHL 2024 - Retro 94 PTTP Edition.bin

At risk of sounding self promoting, your question makes me curious. Aside from the obvious graphical differences, there were some slightly different philosophies going into the game play of these two options. But then the question is: Is it noticeable enough that the games may have different accessibility levels for different skill levels? Or is the game inherently the same, and the only real difference felt is going to be in the overall ratings of the players on the team you select, and is that going to be minimal because of the limitations of the game engine. The way I play means that I'm just adapting to changes all the time, so I can't really get a a good baseline. But I'd be intrigued to hear if this version of a "modded NHL game with latest rosters" is a different experience for you.

Thanks eh. Funny enough, I don't play all that much anymore either. I think it's been a few months where literally the only reason I've fired up the emulator is to play test the current project or to check out the hacks that others have posted recently.