von Ozbourne

Had this one kicking around for a while so figured I'd finish that one last thing and throw it out there. By request, since apparently a game about a bunch of drunken hockey players wasn't degenerative enough, Beer League Hockey has been issued a new and impaired 40 Oz. Edition. Main differences are the new title screen. Half of the league has been swapped for new swill sponsored teams. A few minor presentation tweeks. Had to downgrade the Championship trophy due to budget cuts. Remember kids. Don't drink and drive hard to the net. Beer League Hockey - 40oz Edition.bin

Drat. Forgot to fix a few things like team ratings and playoff brackets so the game doesn't freeze up. Upped the new version.

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

There are two of these. One is for the bottom window, one is for the top and the selection highlighter Not sure which is which anymore since I absolutely HAD to correct that as well, but they are located at: BEFC2 & BF54C

What if you use an authentic retro-appropriate keyboard. The kind where the keys go *CLUNK*

I don't know about the pointer, but the main menu is a different font from the one used everywhere else. This is due to that mesh/checker style background that is uses. The font itself is located here if it helps track it down.

Or one to not have to wait for five lines of credits to pass in '95.

Hmm.. As someone who spends a fair bit of time making fancy splash screens, I am kind of morally opposed to this. But as someone who spends a fair bit of time testing out changes to ROMS, I see this taking out save states as the most common time/button saver.

Heh. Because the traditional 80/20 ratio just isn't quite extensive enough.

Not much to add that hasn't been addressed. Just wanted to say that I like the goalie changes and am interested in seeing what you try next. Oh and double what Adan said about the cartoon look. I'm not sure if I should feel relieved that I am not the only one who uses that same 10/90 rule.

@Sedge Hmm, I may have. Right now I'm only remembering how much of a hassle the PS2 port of '94 was to do stuff with. <shudder> I'd say with '96, the most fiddly bit was the fact that in some cases you might need to put a team with a long name into a spot originally occupied by a team with a short name. And unlike wboy's '94 mod with its standardized name bars located in a single spot, these names and logos are spread out and only allotted enough tiles to accommodate what was required for the original team. The other more minor issue that stands out is that the main menu is configured differently, so NOSE doesn't know how to access the data to edit it. The only thing that makes this a problem is that you can't set the default match up. There is also the team ranking system, the simulation AI, playoff team selection and everything related to season mode, but I'd like to think that with enough will and time, most of that could be cracked. With the exception of season mode I suppose, given that we know how to edit a season in '95, but it causes major memory issues when you try to incorporate the additional teams into the mix.

Unfortunately there is also that problem of there only being 26 teams in '96. Even if someone were able to crack the code to add the six newer teams into the game, I'm not even sure there is enough free memory to accommodate them. Perhaps '98 with it's five All-Star [plus two hidden teams] is a possible candidate if someone is able to figure out how to get the hidden teams to be available the game without them taking the place of the East/West All-Stars, there is still those other complexity issues that Sean alluded to.

So now that there is an updated widescreen patch that works on the expanded '95 game, I guess this needs to be a thing now. Only drawback now is that score kind of floating at the 1/3 mark, but maybe there will be a 1.3 patch eventually. Hockey Stars 2 [v1.3] Wide Screen.bin Updated the original post too.

The '96-'98 based mods use the original ROMs so there isn't that glitching that was a problem with the expanded memory. Although I just tested on the 34-Team '95 mod and found out that the patch works. This could be interesting. Unfortunately as of the time of this post, the '94 wide mode patch still does not work on the expanded ROMs.

Widescreen Patch 1.2 posted on Romhacking.net fixed some of the crowd animation and player display issues. Updated IIHF 99's widescreen mode. IIHF 99 - [Widescreen Edition 1.2].bin Updated in the original post as well.

Thanks for pointing out the 1.2 patch. Glad to say that fixed some of the widescreen display issues. Updated the original post.

Nah. Unfortunately I've always noticed that, well, all of the games from '92-'98 really, will seed the first round to whatever parameters existed at the time, but then just follow the old format of escaping the Charles Adams, Lester Patrick, Conne Smythe and Chuck Norris divisions to get to the conference finals. I'm guessing that the programmers didn't even bother with any reseeding code.

Alright. Time to get this one out the door. The Trade Deadline has come and past, so it's about time this update was posted. New to this version: Updated rosters obviously. Revamped Title screen for more colours and nicer artwork. All players can play at any position, so go ahead and put five forwards on the PP or five D-men on the checking line. Goalie Y-button hack has finally been applied. New Menu BG [shout out to the amazing @Drezz] Including some branding. Probably forgetting a couple things, or forgot to fix a couple things... Those can wait for the playoffs. Let me know if something is egregiously wrong. [or if you have any suggestions for future updates too] Updated the original post as well. NHL2023 RR94 Trade Deadline Ed.bin

Huh, I had noticed the box thing before. I'd fixed it on a couple games in the past by adding that one extra pixel to the top of the boards to fill the gap. Forget if I remembered to do it in my last mods... The glass edge completely slipped by unnoticed though ...until now. *grumble*

Well that's too bad. Admittedly I only played a few games with this mod applied and wasn't really paying attention to that. Although I guess I'm not surprised. I find that modding these games is a lot like playing with LEGO. You can create anything that your imagination can desire, ...just as long as it works within the limitations of the medium and you realize that you're probably going to end up breaking something else apart to build it.

The first step would be to get Lunar IPS. It's pretty straight forward from there. You just open the program and it asks you to select the patch, then the ROM you want to patch and then it applies it and you're done. You may want to keep an Standard Resolution backup just in case. Or, thanks for the interest in the '96 Playoff Edition. If it's easier, I uploaded a widescreen version of that mod to the original post.

Reminded of this mod so added a Widescreen Edition to the original post.

Yeah, to be honest I figured that was the case rather than it being an accident. I've seen the quality of your work. I think for me, the ideal "webbing" would need to be half a pixel, but since that is impossible, it's kind of hard to tell which way to round off. The key though is that in full motion, it really gets the point across.

Oh, did Belfour recently face an Al MacInnis blast? It looks like he has a hole in his glove. Liking the masks. Looks like the old Cooper birdcage.

Ah, I miss the days when a player's cap space only meant this: And the perspective tapering on the sideways logos is a really nice touch. Looking forward to correcting the travesty of the Jets loss to the Oilers after taking a 3-1 lead. No popcorn allowed!