von Ozbourne

Okay, this intrigues me. Admittedly mostly just to see how you did it. And if I may possibly learn your secrets for purposes of some round robin formats [big surprise] and/or emulating some historic seasons [also assuming there is some way to limit teams to anywhere from 4 to 21].

St. Mucus Ooze is a bit odd because these names sound right, but don't match the number. C Deaderko #9 - Bernie Federko [his #24 was retired by the Blues] LD Hairy Snaps #28 - Harold Snepsts [wore #5, but he did use #28 in Vancouver] At least I'm sure of Pucksucker Pukes LW Scary #12 - Bob Errey

Time for the fifth year and seventh installment of the World Championships series. 1995 was a year of major change for the EA franchise. Most notably, a complete player sprite overhaul and for the first time, you can play an entire season! As in entire, as in every single bloody game. Which is kind of ironic since at the time it came out, the major North American league wasn't playing any games, and wouldn't be for a while yet. But if you were looking for way to grind out all the free time you had from not watching hockey, you could play as one of the top 26 teams by their final IIHF placing. The IIHF still did not want fighting in the game, so like with '94, it was not included. Selling features include: 26 teams in playoff and season modes. Plus 2 more qualifiers in Slovenia and FR Yugoslavia available in exhibition game mode only. Change your team as you Create, Trade, Import and Deport players. Ron MacLean stays on as pre-game host. Team Canada and U.S.A. have stayed on, licensing their logos for center ice in their respective arenas. Other things to note with this ROM. Player ratings are a bit more varied in this one. I basically created an overly complicated spreadsheet formula which took into account a players stats, team ranking and division level, to come up with an overall number. This was then geared towards whatever stats seemed to fit the player. Note that this was weighted to that year's tournament, meaning that if a player over/under achieved or played a different role compared to on their club team, it would be reflected in the ratings. It also means a much wider gap in skill level between the A and C Pool teams that would be more reflective of the actual gap in skill level between the A and C Pool teams. Shout out to @Jkline3for the help with the player numbers. This was based on the original NHL 95 ROM [I finished it before I found out about the wonderful work kingraph has done. [hint for the future] Unfortunately I was not able to find out how to edit the team ratings, so those numbers will not be reflective of the actual skill level of a given team's players. The other, and one might say more detrimental, side effect of this is that the team's rating score will basically determine how well a team performs in simmed games. Which is odd when you consider that you can trade and sign created players. I know there is a road map out there, but nothing seemed to make any difference with this, so you get stuff like China's goalie winning the MVP award, or Estonia beating Canada in the gold medal game. At least players achieve at their proper level when you actually make the AI play the games. Anyways, on to the previews! The World Championships in 1995 were held in Stockholm and Gavle, Sweden. Used these as the Conferences. Used prominent league presidents for the division names. It pained me to admit that Bunny Ahearne would have the tenure to qualify as one of the four, the anti-Canadian swine. IIHF 95.bin

This would be really cool if it can be done. I figured I could change the art assets around, but not a lot else. But to have some way to change team names, rosters, colours and what type of monster each player is, would really make it interesting. Although part of me wants to redo the player sprites as just regular goons in kind of a Hit the Ice style.

Player ratings are still accessible via NOSE. Not sure how new you are to the program, but there is a decent amount of help info to be found around here.

Yeah, I completely figured that to be the case. Frankly I only noticed because I was referencing your ROM while working on one of my own that is intended to be geared towards the playoffs. I encountered the bug and wondered if it was just something I messed up, but it appears to be related to the card fix in general.

Okay so it's been a few days. I thought this one was done, but encountered a series of major bugs when doing the final pass, but here goes nothing. Hot on the heals of Midway's NBA Jam - Tournament Edition, EA and the IIHF come to an agreement that results in: Features that differentiate this game from the original IIHF 94 include: More teams! Welcome Spain and South Korea as the total number of teams is expanded from 30 to 32! Some graphical enhancements to emphasize highlight the involvement with the World Championships in Italy this year! So long Ron. Hello Ron! As our partnership with Mr. Barr comes to a close, we are happy to announce that Mr. MacLean has agreed to become our new presenter! [also happy that I found out how to apply the original colour back to the photo] Realistic branding and sponsorships. Feels like being at a real game! [sadly, the zamboni uses some weird sorting and i was not able to reliably modify the colours] Center ice now features some international federation logos including Canada, Finland, Russia, U.S.A, and more! Win the IIHF World Championship trophy! See scores from around the league! Brought to you by! Back of the box sales pitch aside, it should also be noted that this game is based on skip and slapshot67's original 32-team ROM. Thanks guys! Unfortunately that also means that like 32 team roms, this game includes the Winnipeg Freeze bug. [or in this case the Ukraine Freeze bug. ...Ukrainian from Winnipeg, always getting crapped on] I originally tried the player card breaking "fix" to alleviate the freezing, but I noticed that it also breaks the ability to play a full playoff run. And given the emphasis on World Championships, I felt it the lesser evil to just leave it as is. So just know that when playing in Soviet game, "U" breaks game! [this only affects Ukraine and U.S.A.] Anyways, adoing no further. IIHF 94 Champ Ed.bin

Just wanted to post this here as a possible drawback to the "Player card breaking fix". I've noticed that when using the card disabling fix, the inhibiting of player card data also seems to inhibit saving of playoff series data. Not an concern if you only plan on playing exhibition matches, but worth noting. What happens is that once completing a playoff game, when the game returns to the main menu, the "Continue Playoffs" will show Team #1 vs Team #1 instead of whatever teams you should be playing. And if you ignore that and try to play the next game, it just starts a new best of 7 playoff bracket from the beginning. Also, if you accidentally change the play mode, your Continue Playoffs option is just erased and you can't access it anymore when scrolling through the play modes. Visual aid in case I'm bad at explaining: Complete Game in single elimination playoff. Continue screen shows Anaheim intra-squad game instead of Winnipeg vs St.Louis quaterfinal. Continuing results in starting a new best/7 playoff as Pittsburgh. Well shucks...

Hey, just a note regarding the Winnipeg Bug fix you used. I've noticed that when using the card disabling fix, the inhibiting of saving player data also seems to inhibit saving of playoff series data. Once completing a playoff game, when the game returns to the main menu, the "Continue Playoffs" shows Team #1 vs Team #1 instead of whatever teams you should be playing. If you ignore that and try to play the next game, it just starts a new best of 7 playoff bracket from the beginning. Also, if you accidentally change the play mode, your Continue Playoffs option is just erased and you can't access it the play modes. I show... Anyway, not sure if you're concerned with playing playoffs in this particular build, but I figured I'd note it as I haven't seen any mention when I was looking up this fix.

Huh, well how about that. It's weird because it worked before I set the team ratings. I guess I forgot that team #32 was not previously selectable and I made it so at the same time. Thanks @DeterminedApathyfor saving me potentially a lot of work. [the "save early, save often" rule means that I make a new copy of each iteration for the purpose of catching, and not losing a lot of work due to, bugs. unfortunately I didn't catch this one and it was carried through ten versions.] Suppose I can take this opportunity to add more variety to the match ups.

[Incidentally I encountered a game breaking bug when using this fix and after I used EARE to set team ratings. Now, when trying to scroll to team #32, although only while on "New Playoffs", the game just freezes. Curious if anyone else encountered either issue and knows what might have happened there and how to resolve it.]

@clockwise no takers? I'll bite.

As a fan of tradition in sport, take my comments as you will, but I will start by saying that you can't always trust fan suggestions. One of the fan submissions for the North Stars was "Puckaroos" after all. And much like "Puckaroos", "Kraken" just feels like a silly minor league team name like Orlando Solar Bears or Macon Woopee. I may also be biased against non-"S"-pluralized names. One of the comments that the local sports radio guys threw out there was that, "It'll be like all the other weird names. Remember how we all hated 'Golden Knights'? And now it's grown on us." Can't say I agree, more like; I still don't like the name, I just don't care enough to hate it. [Although with the announcement the AHL Henderson Silver Knights, I'm just waiting for Vegas to announce that their ECHL affiliate will be the Enterprise Bronze Knights.] The other quote that I can't agree less with came from Jeff Marek. Defending the choice with "Tradition is just submitting to peer pressure from dead people.". Yeah Jeff, the Maple Leafs haven't changed their name in 94 years, they should really get on that. Don't want to be accused of being as old and dusty as the "Canadiens" do ya? And what kids knows who Dr. David Hart is anymore? They should rename the trophy to the "Capital One Wayne Gretzky Most Valuable Player Award". ...I'm going to stop before I get accused of shaking my fist at clouds. But I will say that a good team name is like a tattoo. You don't want to look in the mirror ten, twenty years from now and find yourself saying, "Yeah, I was pretty dumb back then."

Things are going to get a bit interesting for a bit. After discovering slapshot67's 32-team ROM, I realized that I didn't want to scrap the 30-team ROM I had already mostly completed, but it presented an intriguing possibility. So... Presenting IIHF '93! Seeing the immediate popularity of the '93 edition of EA's burgeoning franchise, the IIHF realized that they would be best to maintain their relationship with the publisher. This decision was made early enough that EA could even release a 1.5 edition for that year if they were inclined to double dip. [never!] Some changes were even made to differentiate the two games making it appealing enough to purchase both versions. New game features include: With the list of teams increased to 32, all 32 ranked member nations at the time could be included in the game. So welcome 31st ranked Isreal and 32nd ranked South Africa. For the first time, the World Men's Ice Hockey Championships logo is displayed in game. Showing the logo for the '93 A Pool tournament in Munich, Germany. The center ice logo was standardized for all teams, opting to display the IIHF globe logo, so all games are played in the Olympiahalle in Munich. The IIHF did negotiate to have their branding increased, even adding their primary sponsor to the jumbotron ad. The IIHF was still not a fan of the fighting, but a compromise was made where a fighting penalty would result in a 10 minute misconduct. [since typical match penalties were too hard to manage] The players get to carry around the IIHF championship trophy when they win the playoffs. Lets get to the back of the box previews IIHF 93.bin

To be honest, once I've completed the Genesis NHL series, [and unless someone smarter than me cracks NHL99 for N64] I'm actually more interested in diving into some of those myself. Any plans on releasing some tutorial material or road maps for the code?

Time for the third chapter in the World Championship series. The '93 installment ushered in a change for the EA hockey franchise. The IIHF was not a fan of the fighting in the previous games and decided to not renew their licence unless it was removed. EA opted to keep the fighting [and even took the opportunity to make it more brutal with the addition of blood spilling injuries] and continued on without the IIHF licence. This didn't affect the quality of the new game as you know who can't revoke the licence to use their name? Countries. And this time out, EA was able to licence the names of the players representing the national teams of those countries. So 1993 features a name change and part of the reason why I refer to this as the "World Championship Series" [as opposed to just "IIHF" series]. Presenting: International Hockey '93! Game features include: Full rosters for the top 30 teams based on finishing position in the 1993 World Championships including, for the first time, real player names to go with their sweater numbers! [some of which had to be creatively shortened due to spacing constraints. [John Vanbiesbrk sympathizes] Ice surface updated to 1993 markings. [had to change the original centre ice logo containment circle as the lack of ellipse bugged me] Some features were coded in before the IIHF pulled the plug and remained in the finished product, like mentions to the IIHF in the lengthy Ron Barr delivered history lessons on each team. The bottom half of the new "EA World Championship Trophy" might look familiar to savvy fans. The caron on the top of the SEGA "S" might be cheeky reference to a long standing IIHF sponsor. The ability to make players bleed, just not Gretzky, because he's not in this game. The previews: International Hockey 93.bin

Pro Sport Hockey [released in Japan as USA Ice Hockey] is an NHLPA '93-like game developed by TOSE for the NES. Supposedly has more realism regarding plays, but I should note that it did not review well and I haven't looked at it much myself.

Hear that. Madden 93 gets an update or he'll stop believing in God. Actually, in all seriousness, I haven't had much time to figure out Madden myself. Tecmobowl/Super Bowl is alright, but what I really want is a '90s CFL version of Madden. Where might one start to find some resources to help in that? Don't suppose anyone has built an EARE, NOSE and THROTE tool for Madden eh?

Time for IIHF Hockey '92! Released in 1992, this game is the first sequel in the World Championship series and features the top 24 teams based on their final placing in that year's tournaments. Game features include: Based on the NHL Hockey (1991) engine and fills the gap I accidentally left between 1991 [NHL Hockey ©1991] and 1993 [NHLPA Hockey '93 ©1992] oops. [Yeah I forgot that the year indicated the time of playoffs and the Pittsburgh vs Minnesota threw me. I suppose I could have just changed first one I made, but it was already done. And I liked having the Soviets, so why the hell not make both.] So South Korea is out, Australia is in, and to dress up the roster update, [this is '90s EA, not 2010s EA] a number of graphical changes have been made. Also, another shout out to @Jkline3 for the help with the roster numbers. Although it's too bad that the goalie bytes are greyed out in NOSE for this ROM, so any third stringers had to stay home. On to the previews. IIHF Hockey 92.bin

Just noting that I have updated the IIHF 94 ROM with accurate numbers and special thanks to @Jkline3!

Damn that is helpful. I've google translated some sites, Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, German.. but it's definitely harder to find them when your search tends to ignore the non-English ones. As I mentioned, eliteprospects is usually the most complete for information that I can find with most international teams. But even they are missing player numbers for quite a few teams and season stats for the players in lower tier leagues. legendsofhockey.net has an IIHF section that is pretty decent too. Site was built in 1997 and looks like it was never updated since and they stopped adding stats in 2014, but that's not a problem when I'm only concerned with the '90s. Beyond that, I've found some sites that specialize, like the Aussie hockey hall of fame [found some team photos that I used]. Got British team info off a scanned programme page on a UK hockey site after following a link to a Tony Hand article. Got one Ukraine team photo from a retired player's facebook page. Came across a defunct Asia hockey league site... Luckily I like the act of researching, otherwise the quest for any kind of accuracy would drive me insane. I do find quanthockey.com is nice for stats when making player ratings, but I also find it lacking for uniform numbers and when dealing with some lower pool teams. hockey-reference and hockeydb are typically only concerned with the North American pro ranks, and thus all but useless to me, but like you say, typical North Americans don't take as much interest in the international game as I do. I may have to humbly PM you before I post some of my later editions...

That's pretty cool. Although now I'm curious what that would look like if the other faceoff circles were also shrunk to the same size as center ice. Weird how the addition of ads to NHL rink ice always annoyed me, and yet here I am taking an interest in defacing my games. Nothing requiring that they be in a 6x4 arrangement either... Funny, you just reminded me of of how I came across that by accident after a bad counting error led me to paste half a logo off to the side of the ice. My reaction at the time was annoyance, and after going back to a previous save I promptly forgot all about it. Clearly that was the wrong mindset.

Game two in the World Championship Series will be the "first" game. Released in 1991, IIHF Hockey was sort of the North American version of EA Hockey for PAL regions. The major difference however, is that it features the top 24 international teams based on final finishing position [as opposed to the IIHF's four year aggregate ranking system] with rosters from the 1991 World Championships including the last ever Soviet team. [Interestingly enough, it was actually easier to find roster data overall than it was for '94. I only had to improvise on half of Belgium's team numbers] Other features include: Not much as I mainly just gave the original game a complete asset overhaul for the international teams. Given that this was only the third game I'd ever modded, it made things easier to stick to basics. Reinstated the old square crease as the IIHF still used that at the time. Still based player ratings as much as I could on players that were already "featured" in NHL Hockey. I would soon learn that this would mean a lot of players with some very low stats. Couple of Easter eggs in there that might give away my home town, but they shouldn't detract. Not much else to say about this one, so here are some pics. Hope you guys like it. IIHF Hockey (91).bin

Well geez, thanks a lot eh. Where did you find Estonia's numbers though? I have about four sites that I found decent for reference and the best I could do was adapt eliteprospects' stats from 1993. [And if you happen to have Slovakia and Kazahkstan's numbers as well...] I'll repost an updated ROM in a bit.

Alright I said I would start posting these before this year was out and since there is just over 24 hours left, I should probably just do it. Introducing the IIHF Hockey series. The idea was to make each of the NHL(PA) games for Genesis into its contemporary IIHF version. Complete with period correct art style, team assets and players. Ultimately the goal was to make it look like something EA might have released back in the day. Rosters, for the most part, have been taken from each year's World Championships. Some provisions were made in cases where say, some teams only had one goalie, so I borrowed a backup from that year's Olympic roster, or had to improvise some data because apparently no one found it important enough to record what sweater numbers the Estonian National team wore 26 years ago... what the hell eh? I start with IIHF 94. [Full disclosure, this is actually the third version of this game I'd made as the first was a foolish attempt to mod an original NHL94 ROM. Soon after I discovered that 30-team ROMS was a thing and made a second while I was just learning the craft and used an old Blitz league ROM to train on. I found a couple of critical errors, mainly how player cards were set up and some colour palette issues that were in the base ROM. Rather than keep polishing the dorodango, I opted to start over using my improved skills on a clean wboy 30-team ROM. I am much happier with the results] Some features: This game includes the top 30 international teams based on their finishing position after the 1994 World Championships. The Ice surface has been reverted back to its original 1994 goodness. Player ratings were a bit of a contentious issue, I opted to use as many player stats as was available in the original game and basically based everyone else off that. Player cards are almost complete [Who knew that finding 26 year old photos of South Korean hockey players would be almost impossible?] but at least even the "default player" pics are all unique. Many starting line ups were based on who actually had a photo available. No mind was paid to whether teams were in the "A", "B" or "C" pool as far a play offs go. I toyed with the idea of patches like weight bug and helmet sprite, but decided to stick to the default, again for the period correct feel. Might revisit that later. Anyway, here are some previews. Addendum for the series: I'm going to post the "Final Cut" updates here for the entire series as they are reworked. Again, thanks to @EagleXIII for all his help in resolving those nagging anachronisms. IIHF Hockey (91) F4.bin IIHF Hockey 92 F4.bin International Hockey 93 F.bin IIHF 93 F.bin IIHF 94 F.bin IIHF 94 CE F2.bin IIHF 95 F.bin IIHF 95 WCE F.bin IIHF 96 F.bin IIHF 97 F.bin IIHF 98 F.bin IIHF 99.bin OR IIHF 99 - [Widescreen Edition 1.2].bin IIHF 2000 [10AE].bin -