von Ozbourne

Thanks eh. At risk of sounding un-modest, I was kind of proud of myself for figuring out the pseudo-animation on that in lieu of a proper parallax from the more powerful NEO-GEO system. Ah screw it. I like it too much to not highlight the trick on a screen that, hell, even I only pay attention to enough to wait for the cue to hit Start,

Hey thanks man. Just a heads up since you were the only one to download it so far. I forgot I was going to adjust the puck collision data before uploading. I've changed it from a 05 to my customary 02, so the puck will bounce closer to the wall graphic and make the nets just a bit smaller. I've fixed that and re-uploaded.

With one big project out of the way, it was time to finish another one. So we're going to frame this one as a retro review. With the "wild" success of Hockey Stars, [the hockey version of the critically acclaimed Baseball Stars on the NES] SNK decided to release a follow up two years later. This one however drew more influence from Baseball Stars 2 and Professional for the NEO-GEO AES and MVS systems respectively, as opposed to the Baseball Stars 2 port for the NES. [which was actually just a re-skin based on the original Baseball Stars engine with some features stripped out] But enough of the history lesson, this review is about... Based in a different engine from the original, this game has all of the favourite teams from the past games, plus four additional custom teams for 34 in total. The pregame amble features this old guy. For context, he was also the commissioner in Baseball Stars 2. I guess he got fired or decided that he wanted to be involved in a more exciting sport. While the entire roster no longer has individual player photos, the starting lineup still has wonderful images. [with character art adapted from the same game, and with cameos from other SNK titles] Starting a game you have a menu screen that looks like an old familiar jumbotron with a lot of statistics and options in addition to accessing line and goalie changes. Full roster stats and ratings are available for picking your best line[s] as line changes can be turned on or off in the pre-game options. The branding should be noticeable by now, and it carries over to all the stats screens as well. The Playoff mode supports single game and best-of-7 play. The Championship trophy seems to have been removed from its tall base since the previous incarnation. Wonder if there was a scaling issue in the new engine. While the pregame announcer gives individual names to the home team's arena, like the baseball games, the art assets are not individualized for each team. Judging by the amount of detail in each teams' logo, I doubt it would translate well to the smaller scale anyway. SNK did take the opportunity to add more branding in case you weren't sure who developed the game you were playing. Winning playoff mode treats you to your victory on the front page of the national sports page with a close up of the large gold "loving cup" style trophy. While the reduction in player profiles is a bit of a let down in this new entry, SNK figured they would make up for it with added features like Signing, Trading, Releasing players and even a Create-a-Player options. And to top it off, a full season mode. Much like a college style season, games are played almost exclusively on weekends, with some back-to-back home-and-home series to add to the drama. Seasons are a 32-game affair, which is nice and quick especially since you can play every single game if you want, allowing you and your friends to pick their favourite team and face off in the same season for the Championship. If 32 is still too long a season for you, the season can be ended after any day, and with each team playing on the same days, games played in the standings will be equal for all teams on any day. At the end of the season, regardless of how your team fairs, you will be treated to an awards ceremony where the best players are awarded a gold medal of excellence. Nice touches like that make the game feel like a real season and not something completely player-centric. To cap it off, the game offers Practice and Shoot-out modes to test your skill. There also seems to be some Easter eggs in there for fans of SNK games as well as some general pop-culture of the '80s and early '90s. In the interest of full disclosure, there are some instability issues with this game, likely due to the added teams and players and it being considered to be rushed out in prototype state in order to meet publisher obligations. This, as well as the Genesis losing ground on the new SNES at the time, would appear to have affected sales at the time, leaving the game a bit of a rare gem for collectors. A solid 7/10 Hockey Stars 2 [v1.2].bin Leaving the old version here. Pre some minor graphical fixes and puck collision set for slightly more difficult scoring. Hockey Stars 2.bin And now I have to do this version too. Hockey Stars 2 [v1.3] Wide Screen.bin

Thanks for the kind words everyone. We're happy you like it. Remembered one more bullet point about the playoff brackets.

I guess I'll start with the obvious. "What? But you two don't do NHL stuff!" True, normally we leave that to the other guys, but admittedly we started this project when it seemed that there was going to be no updated NHL ROM for this season. And admittedly it took us a while to complete, since you know, life stuff. But to whip out a tired old cliche; At the end of the day, we figured that third place was okay too, and we had gone in a different enough direction that this is more a companion piece to the other great updates that @AdamCatalyst and @seamor have released while we were dillydallying. To that end, @Jkline3 and I would like to submit: NHL 2023 Reverse Retro '94 Edition Defining Characteristics: Every team is geared up to use their Reverse Retro uniforms. Alternate uniforms are given preference when opportunity presents itself for whichever uniform is not the RR. Team Select screen features Reverse Retro logos with uniform background. The Team Select screen also features art changes like new "Home" and "Away" banners with colour sections adapted to the team's uniform colour. Trade Deadline Edition features a new background with a special thanks to @Drezz And some new branding and adverting for the community. New player sprites for more versatility and accuracy in how team uniforms are presented. Might have to fix that ref staring off... Every player gets a player photo. From the first line cover athlete to the obscure third line winger. Logos and fonts also got an update too. So. Many. Photos.... Was originally even going to try the colour photo trick, but the team photographers were so wildly inconsistent that this proved a fools errand. Presentation brought to you by: Ray gives his pre-game analysis of newly minted Islander Bo Horvat [rosters updated as of 01 Feb, 2023] I keep wanting to call that place USB Arena... Main menu lineup scrolling has been expanded to allow viewing of the entire roster. And all those damn pictures. In addition to guys going to their new teams, we'll say "several" players also got some colour adjustments to their photos. Player benches reduced to original size so no coach, but kept the goalie and grey rubber floor. Some teams had to use some creativity to get the on-ice logos to look right. Team banners got flashy new fonts too. Zamboni repainted with modern EA logo. ... same Cup though. Probably a bunch of other minor things that I don't recall anymore. Under the hood stuff: Original custom player attribute stats based on NHL23 updates. Weight bug fix is applied. SmozROM Ratings consistency fix - player ratings will match hot/cold overall. Freeze Bug applied so no player stats and player name on second line. User Records set to "ON" can still cause crashes with Vegas, Washington and Winnipeg so caution is advised. Tighter puck collision on boards and net making for pucks that hit closer to the boards sprites and a slighter smaller scoring area on the nets. Expanded goalie roaming area. Go out to the edge of the trapezoid out to the faceoff dots to cut down the angle. Goalie can also carry the puck out to the blue line before the automatic whistle. [if play isn't blown for holding the puck too long] *NEW* Goalie Y-button control hack applied. *NEW* Edit Lines hack for any player to play at any position. The three stars calculator hack didn't seem to play nice in our games, so we left it out. Might revisit it in an update if it seems like it needs fixing. Glass still breaks [okay, it's just been a long time since I've managed to break the glass, so I'm just balancing the space and keeping a shot for posterity.] Probably forgetting something... well let us know if I missed some info or credits. Hope you all enjoy it. Ah. Remembered what it was. Went through and made sure that every possible divisional home and away matchup was possible in playoff mode. NHL2023 RR94 Ed - V1.0.bin NHL2023 RR94 Trade Deadline Ed.bin NHL2023 - 94 Edition TD.bin NHL2023 RR94 Playoffs Ed [v3].bin NHL2023 94 Edition PO [v3].bin NHL 2023 RR94 SC Finals Ed [v4].bin NHL 2023 94 Edition SCF [v4].bin

Curious how you added the extra strip option in there. Tell me it's not as easy as just opening up the .ini in notepad and typing another listing in there. Also, not necessarily related to '94, but if you're looking into NOSE's guts, have you perhaps seen anything related to the default Menu tab for '96? I know that the navigation is different in those games so they don't translate as well as in '92-'95, but it would be nice to figure out how to set the default matchup at the very least.

That's a shame. I really liked Elvis when I'd see him playing for Latvia in the World Championships. Granted Latvia also plays a better defensive system that Columbus so that helps. But he would be lights out in those short tournaments, sometimes single-handedly keeping the score closer than it has any business being. I do wonder how he might do if he was able to land a trade to a better team. It's quite possible that, similar to how Edmonton's poor management led to some demoralizingly bad seasons that almost scuttled the careers of young Jordan Eberle and Taylor Hall before they got out, the change in scenery is what he needs. Nuge at least made it to the McDavid/Draisaitl era, but then without better defence and goaltending, all three might end up bouncing around in the back 9 of their careers still chasing that first Cup. Not to make excuses for the guy, but I have talked to a couple guys from the expansion Ottawa Senators and they were basically joking in the dressing room before a game on the over/under of how badly they were going to lose. It's not surprising that some of those guys were not only out of Ottawa, but also the League by the time the likes of Alfredsson and Spezza showed up and they started turning things around. And with goaltending being such a cerebral position, Elvis is probably getting into his own head too much, just wondering when the tide is going to turn. And of course that's when it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and the entire team says "Here we go again" and then it goes again.

I used to see a retro game seller at the farmer's market I would go to. While perusing one day, I overheard her talking to another couple of people. "What's this game like?" "Oh, It's about <insert back-of-the-box synopsis>." "What if I can't get it to work?" "Oh, sometimes you just need to take it out and blow into the cartridge." [WHAT?! NO!!!] "It's a bit pricey..." "Well I just go by ebay prices." People like this getting into the game, along with the rampant counterfeiting, are the reason why I don't buy original games that much anymore. That and I figure if I'm looking to buy a copy of City Connection, or maybe to stay topical Pro Sport Hockey, but Jaleco isn't getting a penny from me anyway, then I feel no problem with just going with a flashcart/emulator. I'm only interested in playing the games, not padding the wallets of speculators.

@AdamCatalyst Ahh.. Sorry no. Although if you want to ramp them up, I might recommend the PAL versions... no? Funny, that never even occurred to me. But then I tend to mostly watch international events that are played in smaller, sometimes temporary, settings where the announcer will inevitably comment on how "This arena has some lively boards" and the dasher or older style stanchions will sometimes kick the puck out hard and possibly in a surprising direction.

On a hunch I looked to see if 92 and 93 shared the same code as 94. The location was different, but doing a search for 0001 0005 0005 0018 yielded the same pairs of 0005's that determines the collision distances. Changing the 0's to F's made the puck bounce off the crowd's feet in every game. I actually just checked '95 to '98 and noticed the exact same thing for every game, so that was considerate of the coders. I pasted the locations into the comments of that original How To if you're interested.

Figure I would share this here, since I figured out where the code was to do this same thing in all of the other Genesis games from NHL Hockey (92) to NHL '98. Turns out that every game follows the same pattern as '94, so the easy way is to just search for a Hex Value of 0001 0005 0005 0018. [Although in '95 it might be 0001 0005 0005 0001] It should be the only thing that comes up. That 0005 0005 is the only thing you want to change, but it will do the same thing in every game. OR The direct locations for each game if you prefer that is: For NHL HOCKEY [92] Location is D1BE & D1C0 For EA HOCKEY [92]PAL Location is CDEE & CDF0 FOR NHLPA'93 Location is 127F4 & 127F6 For NHL '94 Location is 017012 & 017014 For NHL '95 Location is A8CA & A8CC For NHL '96 Location is 21392 & 21394 For NHL '97 Location is 2653E & 26540 For NHL '98 Location is 2696E & 26970 By the way, I tested '95 with a collision of FFE5 and the boards were merely a suggestion. Rather than bouncing off anything, the puck would just sail into the crowd on any pass or shot that wasn't intercepted by a player first.

Actually truth be known, I found the corresponding offset for the puck collision detection in EA [PAL] and NHL [NTSC] Hockey (92) games and it was the PAL version that I had modded. [I am slightly obsessed with the +20% "turbo mode" physics that playing the 50Hz game on the 60Hz setting gives you] It does seem to also make it harder for the CPU players to score so you might want to play around with it. I tried it out and had back-to-back 0-0 games, so results may vary. But the gist of it was that the whole team had a shot accuracy of 1 or 2 out of 6, so combined with the net collision being set to 0002 instead of the default 0005, it made for a play experience somewhere between complete frustration and masochistic joy, depending on how seriously you take your games. It's a weird one, so I'm not sure how much appeal it would have, but it's also only 90% complete. I can see about posting it when the progress bar reached 100% though.

Maybe it's because it was the second game I ever owned, [after the Mario/Duck Hunt pack-in] but I have to go Blades of Steel. I did play Ice Hockey a bunch because a friend had it back in the day, but while it was a lot of fun, I wasn't a fan of the 3-on-3 format. And sorry to contradict Seth's old comment, but there were some notable differences in team skills [although all players on a team were the same if that was his meaning] and you could employ some different game play strategies like picking your angle and using the arrow to your advantage. As well as putting your opponent at a literal disadvantage by winning fights. Maybe it was just the amount of time I sunk into each, but Ice Hockey's strategy, especially against the guys I played against all the time, was to just try to get open and get a quick shot or just blast it and hope. Could also be that most of my friends were good at offence and sucked on D, and I was the opposite, but we also tended to have a lot of 1-0, 2-1 games. Also, have to give a nod to Konami because they used to make games that were and they were totally awesome.

Funny, I just got a message yesterday from my brother about a ROM I pranked him with. Small nets and awful shot accuracy. "What the hell did you do to my team?!" "Yeah. Sorry man. I'll fix that." "No! I'm losing 4-0! I love it!"

Yeah it's the reverse angle, but that's pretty awesome. Just sad his comment of "lost media". As someone who appreciates historical records, never not annoyed and disappointed when I hear the phrase "The tapes were scrubbed to be reused and free up storage space."

Oh. Okay this is a thing that I've been wanting to do for a long time. Hope I don't sound pushy, but I'm more artist than coder, so I still need some step-by-step guides if you find the time to put some together. I will of course be ever grateful and in your debt.

I think it could work. In the 30 team 94 ROM, I added it to the tail end of the code and there was still quite a bit of room left over in the 2MB version. I believe you could essentially do the same thing in 95 unless there is some weird issue with available RAM. I had to slightly increase the amount of tiles to accommodate the player cards coming through, so I suspect this would be the case for 95. I'm not familiar with trying Drezz's method in '95, but I did notice that there are 727 unique tiles in the ROM data. while the menu background is 40x28=1120 tiles. I was able to use the less intrusive method of reordering them to get some different looks, but I was playing around with the 34-team ROM though and encountering a lot of glitches similar to @kingraph's playoff screen issue any time I tried to get too fancy with that and other assets. Haven't tried using the much-more-stable original 26-team ROM. Might yield better results. [assuming that RAM concern doesn't prove prophetic]

Very interesting. Reminded me of how much I miss the longer individualized team descriptions when they were omitted from '94. I'm curious though, I had intended on taking a look into this version of '93 at some point, mainly for the same reasons as you, and party because I like the spinning EASN logos on the opening splash screen. The disconnect of the All-Star teams is a little bit of a draw back though. Makes me wonder if there is an easy way around that or if it's just how it is if you want to modify the teams in any way. [read: more trouble than it's worth]

This is pretty cool. Sign me up for guys that would be interested if you're up for sharing notes. I've played around with that background for a few mods, but always gone with just editing and reordering the existing background tiles. Totally up for a less fiddly and time consuming option.

Think we might need more information to go on to figure out where you are, but something comes to mind that we should get out of the way first. I'm curious, are you using the 30 or the 32-team ROM? The problem with the 32-team mod is that, like the original game, only the starting lineup gets a picture and every other player is stuck with default left/right-handed player/goalie image. Now if you're using the 30-team mod, you should already have an image in the ROM data for every player, so it should just be a matter of tracking that down and replacing it. [Once you've been able to determine where that player's data references are of course]

Black seems a tad dark on the stark white ice, but it's interestng to see how it comes together. I'll PM you the resulting ROM.

I think the issue with that is the fonts. There are, if I recall correctly, three "basic" fonts and four large that are visually identical to each other, but functionally are used in different contexts. One of which, in both cases, includes the transparent “mesh” or “checkerboard” or whatever you want to call it. It might[?] be as easy as also making the text background black as well. <pause for quick testing> Well, it's a start. Just used the original grey, but swapping the grey for black, and probably changing the fonts to the clearer older style since that drop shadow wouldn't show up anyway, would likely yeild the result you are looking for.

Hey thanks eh!

After a long hiatus, it's finally time to revisit the World Championships. ...with a twist. The story behind this entry is that as the new millennium approaches, it is now the time of the PlayStation and EA games have fully embraced the era of low-poly 3D models, janky animation and really learning what the word "clipping" means. As for the IIHF series, it is also reaching a milestone in releasing its tenth game. I do not have this game. However, as a bonus Tenth Birthday surprise, the Anniversary Edition of this game has an Easter egg in the menu where you can load up an retro version of the game based on the NHL'94 ROM. So, presenting the retro review of: First thing one will notice is that the game art is more of a reference to NHL'94 rather than IIHF'94. This is mostly due to the game being built on the architecture of the PlayStation version of the game and some limitations imposed with that. There are a few differences that will show up between this version and the original, starting with how Team 1920 got the call to adapt it to the IIHF, but the rest of the old credit scroll was disabled. When the main menu comes up, the Play Mode is the second difference, [third counting the missing second splash screen] You start with a "Play Now" option and the User Records were disabled. Likely due to not having a way to save them on the PlayStation. Another big change is that there is no Ron Barr introducing the game [for obvious licensing reasons] and while, unlike the retro NHL'94 version with fake random player names, this game does have the real player names, but the connection to the photos had been severed and only these staticy silhouettes remained. [which meant that the researcher didn't have to spend any time trying to find photos of all of the players, so hey, that's fine] An interesting difference for the playoffs, the updated IIHF World Championship trophy makes an appearance [in it's final form before being retired in favour of a new trophy unveiled at next year's tournament] Player cards get some nice updated logos, but of course no photos. Another interesting difference with the PlayStation version is that the code for the player stats is wholly dependant on a "blank defenceman" being listed in the code for the players or else the stat screen completely breaks. No idea why this is, just that it takes up bytes. Also in the "no idea" file, the "Press A to Switch teams" text on the bottom of this screen was removed. Trying to put it back just breaks things, but the text not being there doesn't mean that you can't still press A to view your opponent's player stats anyway. One on-ice improvement over the original IIHF'94 is that the full licensing agreement by this time means that ice logos are based on team uniform logos as opposed to each country's flag or coat of arms. It's tiny, and not quite the right colour, but the World Champs trophy makes an on-ice appearance once you win the playoffs as well. A final note. Since the game is not being emulated within a PlayStation game, this End Game menu item doesn't actually do anything. Apparently an interview with a Team 1920 spokesperson at the time revealed that while this game was "an interesting challenge to work with, it is unlikely that we will be revisiting it for any future releases." So there you have it. IIHF 2000 [10AE].bin

Have to say, I like the look of that rink. I've been sketching ideas for my own outdor rink, but in leaning for a much older style without glass means I can't borrow that awesome transparent look.