von Ozbourne

Ah, well there you go. The game was messing with you because it knew that the only way the Sabres were making the playoffs this year was if Vegas were playing in the Eastern Conference Final. I have to ask. What do the numbers represent? I'd figure they'd be scores, but some of those look like a basketball score vs a football score.

You have me wondering actually. The behind the scenes is that that image uses about 32-36 unique colours and the Vancouver uniform is using it's own separate palette from the New Jersey colours. All three palettes share the black to white range, but it might have been possible to have the blue to green colours on their own instead. Although that said, it would have been quite the clash colour-wise, so it was both logistically and aesthetically beneficial for all three Hugheses to stick to the warm side of the colour wheel. <insert guttural sounds of disappointment> Stupid Utah. On the plus side, I looked the draws over again and you just had to find the only instance of a mismatch. That'll be something I'll have fixed for the next patch

Hopefully this one's better late than never. As tomorrow is going to be a busy day of turkey and being reminded that family is like beer, best enjoyed in moderation, I figured I'd get this one out tonight so it will be ready for some playoffs with those of us who would rather play games than lie on your aunt's new carpeting in a food coma. As mentioned in last season's thread, this one is not entirely complete in that most of the depth player's photos have not been updated yet [blame nhl.com for taking so long to update] and a few other things like updating some line changes will need to be revisited once a larger sample size is available. Feel free to leave feedback is anything else turns up that may have been lost in the shuffle. Anyway, it's about time to present: The Hughes Deluxe Retro Edition. To start off some additional graphical changes were made to this version starting from the moment you plug your cart in and hit the power button. The second splash screen uses the cluttered on-ice ads section to list all of the required parties including the nhl94.com community website. Another new addition is the updated menu screen which see the old arena be retired in favour of a modern dressing room. In addition to the logos on full colour uniform background, the player call out will scroll through the entire roster if you can wait long enough. Dave Reid sticks around as the presenter for NHL Network, introducing the newest team of Utah and a one of a few teams in their new look. Another new look team waits for a redressed Zamboni driver to finish his task, while another team paints a new center ice logo to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Player cards again feature full colour photos. And while some players will have to wait for their new photo to be uploaded to the game art, the top line of each team did see an update. Speaking of lines, most teams are configured to match their season opener line ups, but that will probably be revisited next month some time when more data is available. We also fixed a couple things we didn't like about the back end of player ratings from last year, so hopefully that feels better than last year as well. This version is very much true to the feel of the original NHL'94, but we have been debating an additional, more arcade-like edition. Don't worry, we'll keep a classic version as well. With Arizona moving to Utah, the playoff brackets did need to be edited, but with the discovery of how playoffs are calculated, a whole lot of randomness was baked in for better variety of first round match ups. Also drawing attention to some minor tweaks to the 3-Stars formula. It should feel a little more logical than the original selections. Obligatory under the hood and minor graphical stuff: Original custom player attribute stats based on NHL24 updates. All 832 players have colour photos. Thanks @slapshot67 Original JKline player sprite mod based on helmet patch for more accurate and varied uniforms. 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. V1.0 and V2.0 only. Pucks that also feature original customized sprites. Puck sprites that change with team colours. Thanks @AdamCatalyst The nets that those pucks can go in have also had their sprites redrawn. Weight bug fix is applied. SmozROM Ratings consistency fix - player ratings will match hot/cold overall. Thanks @smozoma 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. Expanded goalie roaming area. Go out to the edge of the trapezoid or out to the face off dots to cut down the angle. Thanks @smozoma 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] Yes we know that the goalie can technically go to the red line, but that would mean having to figure out how to assess delay of game penalties and that's not likely to happen. Goalie Y-button control hack applied. Thanks @clockwise CPU will pull goalie if down by 1 or 2 goals with 1 minute remaining. Thanks @McMarkis Edit Lines hack for any player to play at any position applied. Allows for 4-1 Power play lines. Thanks @TheTome Benches have been edited so the coach mod has been removed. EA Sports watermarks have been updated to modern logo. Thanks @Drezz Main menu background hack in use for full custom background image. Also thanks @Drezz That's probably it for now. Feed back of course is appreciated - you know, if it's constructive. I did fix a couple of typos today though, so if you spot one I missed, feel free to get as mad as you want. Update list: 2.0 version All 832 players have new colour photos. Player ratings have been adjusted for start of 2025 season. Team ratings have also been adjusted for start of 2025 season. 2.1 version Board/Net collision has been adjusted to classic setting for less difficult scoring. Hope you folks enjoy this one. Most updated version: NHL 2025 - Retro 94 Edition v2.1.bin Old versions for old people: NHL 2025 - Retro 94 Edition v2.0.bin NHL 2025 - Retro 94 Edition v1.0.bin

I was going to comment on that. Not only interesting that the receipt is from a [basically] defunct store, but the price is still what is kind of considered the acceptable target price point for games 30 years later. [accepting that the last few years have seen conditioning methods to drag that base price up to the $70-$80 range and even though inflation rates state that $80 now is still costing less than $60 then, when going by percentage of expendable income of a minimum wage earner, that's a different story]

Unfortunately the past couple of weeks have been an absolute gong show at work and I haven't been able to find enough free time to finish this year's edition up. The good news that everything presentation-wise was done over the summer, but the NHL was so slow in releasing the new player photos [with a full third of teams only just updating their sites two days ago] that I haven't been able to convert them for use in the game. @Jkline3 is almost done with the rosters and ratings at least and I'm thinking I can have at a minimum the starting lineups ready in a day or two. I'm thinking we'll try to post the "Pre-Season" edition this weekend with the idea of figuring out the accurate bottom line combos and seeing which prospects and role players manage to stick around longer than the first couple weeks, and get the rest of the player photos fixed up by the end of the month. So, stay tuned?

Out of context, in the Recent Activity feed, I interpreted this as "Do better Adam". Upon further review, glad to see that you are wishing Adam well, rather than chastising him for his inability to complete a project.

Wondering about this, I know that one could just look at the game sprites in an editor, but then you just get snippets like this that will need to be assembled and recoloured to get what you want. But then I got thinking that at that point, it might just be easier to simply play the game, take a bunch of long shots at the goalie and check the replay until you get the animation you want. Maybe take the screen print into your default paint program and scale it up by some percentage in multiples of 100 to keep the crisp pixels so it can be printed out for your tattooist. Or better yet, bring your Genesis and game cart to the shop and wager double or nothing in a best-of-seven.

I was a Penguins fan in the Lemieux era [he and Hawerchuk deserved a lot more credit for doing what they did despite not playing on the Oilers] and used to think of the goalies as Barrasso and Wregget, but had to admit that that was not likely. Despite the lack of the weird chin guard, I'm currently subscribing to the hypothesis of Fuhr and Hackett. And the righty skater being a Ranger on account of the pants, but not sure who. One would think the hockey cards might have similar pictures, but I'm picturing that scenario being one of the game being made first, and then the card set being a promotional bit that was made after the fact and with help from a third party [possibly Pro-Set?]

Okay, it's been more than a few days, but I was busy. But on the other hand, I decided to stick to a visual representation of the teams, so I took some more time to whip these up as some digital instructional manual pages. New teams added for V2.0 update. Wait. Update you say? [or maybe you didn't] Well yes. Admittedly the teams aren't that great, but you do get a decent central Americas team with less Luchas than originally thought. While originally omitted, long time announcer/spot talent Jerry Lawler gets a team mentoring some up-and-comers with some help from a few more back-niners. And finally, a team of perhaps some guys who think higher of themselves than warranted, [even when they are called "mid"] but one can't go about calling themselves the "Enhancers" without sounding even more lofty or like a '50s doo wop band. Update in the original post

Oh, I'd forgotten about Hackett as a Shark. You might be on to something. I was trying to think of bird cage goalies from about 1991 since the other two seemed to be from that year. Off the top of my head I recalled a few that didn't match up. Ken Wregget [white pads], Mike Vernon [white pads], Chris Terreri [white pads], rookie Felix Potvin [solid dark pads but wrong uniform stripes], Dominik Hasek [everything], was reminded of Pat Jablonski [but he's right handed] Actually I came across an image of John Casey that seemed the closest [Cooper helmet with no chin guard], but he dropped the bird cage after 1989, so I doubt they would have used an image that was that old.

I've been curious about these pictures for a while but never saw anything that mentions where the images were taken from or who they were of. Figured it would be fun to take a guess. The first one is the first default player, but is not used anywhere in the game as best I can figure. The clues are the round logo, wide arm and hem stripes, lighter pants with hem stripes and a hint of a shoulder patch on that left arm. Possibly Goals for Kids? It kind of looks like a Winnipeg uniform. The two patches in the left and right chest look like the NHL75 logo and a captain/alternate's "C" or "A". The helmet is also giving me '90s CCM vibes and he is a left-shot. All this together makes me think Thomas Steen. [He wore an "A" in the '91-'92 season and that arm number looks a bit like the "2" in his "25"] The right-catching goalie could be a mirrored image, but if it's not, it's possible to look at the striping on the sleeves and pants and get Maple Leafs 3rd uniform vibes from that same '91-'92 season. Grant Fuhr is a rare right-catching goalie who happened to play for Toronto that season and he did wear all white pads that year. The left-catching goalie is possibly obvious in that he has black pads and a birdcage and Los Angeles is one of the default selected teams in NHL'94, so left catching Kelly Hrudey would make sense. The default lefty player is a bit more tricky. Assuming the uniform is not overly doctored, it seems that this player is in a sweater with a coloured yolk, wide arm and hem stripes and stripes down the sides of the pants. The only two teams that fit the bill in this time were Edmonton and New Jersey. But beyond that it just looks like a lefty in a CCM helmet with a double digit number. Could be a few guys, even more if it turns out that yolk stripe was drawn on and the number of possible teams is increased. The default righty player is not much better. Similar look to the other player so maybe another Edmonton/New Jersey player? But it look like this one is wearing lighter pants that also have a hem stripe. Something that only two teams, Rangers and Jets had at the time. The light patch on the pant leg is reminiscent of the logos that some teams will place there from time to time, but I'm more inclined to think it looks like a Tackla manufacturer logo given it's size and location. And another CCM shaped helmet. Given the non-zero probability that during the process of airbrushing out the logos, the rest of the uniform was doctored like a newly traded player on an O-Pee-Chee card, the equipment and the pose are possibly the only chance of matching up an original photo for the two skaters. Why do this? Just curious.

Just came across this as posted yesterday. Looks like the font is going to be as expected after all. But I am not looking forward to trying to 16-bitintate that deluxe edition cover

Pardon my finding this question a bit odd, but it was my understanding that the credit crawl is by default center aligned. In that the left x-position is determined on each line by the code that sets how many characters are in a line of credits. And if one wants to adjust the centering of a name, that's up to the number of spaces before of after the text. Although saying all that, I am now thinking more logically, and realize that the center point of each line of text would probably have been set by some universal number. And no I have not been able to locate a number that affects that.

To be honest, The Coyote situation feels like a combination of the Hamilton Tigers, New York Americans and Cleveland Barons. The Tigers, in that the team was suspended and the entire roster was re-hired by a new team [Americans]. The Americans, in that the team went dormant due to financial struggles [because of the war, otherwise the owner actually tried to pay his bills] The Barons, in that the team is the first, since the previously mentioned franchise, to fall into a weird state that ultimately ends in a rare franchise folding. This is however, not to say that ROMs will not need to be expanded again at some point in this decade, when the NHL board decides that the time is right to welcome in some new expansion fees... er teams.

Had a few minutes to myself and luckily it was as I suspected. The patch just used the sprite locations of its original ROM, but didn't consider the tile order used with the modern rink markings. So those "L" ticks that determine where a skater is supposed to put his feet when taking a faceoff were the undoing. Even if you were using the older style rink markings. But it was just a matter of copying the tile numbers from the neutral zone faceoff dots and pasting them in place of the offence/defence zone circles and the ProSet logo is left alone. Thankfully @AdamCatalyst made the bigger rink grid map so it was easy to track them down. This should be the rink you are looking for. 92 MHL V002.bin

I could probably dig through that for you. My initial thought is that the patch is simply writing the ProSet logo over the offset location where the modern ice faceoff dot was set to be. In theory, it could be fixed by changing the rink to use a different tile. I think it had two different faceoff dots. Maybe. if not, a different free tile could be commandeered as the new location of the faceoff dot and the rink tile code can be changed to use that instead. If you want to send me the ROM I can take a look when I have time in the next couple of days. I'm kind of interested in seeing how the patch works anyway since the ROMs I'm using all have different Three-Star, Jumbotron logos going on and matching them up might be nice.

You seem to be knocking these out pretty well on your own. In lieu of having time to actually help, I will offer up the much more valuable support of the moral variety. You are ever the most welcome.

Thanks eh. Actually I did have a list. I could probably clean that up and sort it out by teams for easier reference. Just give me a few days eh.

Weird fact of the era, I actually used the teams from Baseball Stars 2 [NEO-GEO] which is a completely different game from Baseball Stars 2 [NES]. Other weird fact, I actually already made a Hockey Stars mod that uses those teams from the NES second Stars of Baseball. Well, some locations I did change from smaller U.S. Baseball towns like Memphis and Tempe to larger North American hockey cities like Edmonton and St. Paul. However for that one, I kind of combined bits from the NES game as well as the NEO-GEO pocket game. While using the Genesis '94 game as a base.

I have been curious if I might be able to add to this series, [although altogether I've made five now] just a question of if using a later engine and not having player photos is still going to fit the vibe. I never noticed the Home/Away thing before. Admittedly I have built this version on top of someone else's expanded mod, so I don't really know how that is getting handled in this version. As for lineups, to be honest, i normally play with line changes on, and the idea was to make them slightly balanced. Also the player ratings are really min-maxed, and I borrowed them from the Baseball Stars games, so they are fairly specialized. Maybe it's not for everyone, but my goal was to just list the players in the same order they already were and then just adapt to who's out there. There is another thread on here somewhere where the season mode is discussed, but I know from my own testing that it's not currently possible to use more than the default first 26 teams as well as having some arrangement other than a maximum of 12 teams in the West and 14 in the East. The Calendar was unlocked so the number of games cam be messed around with, but when I tried changing some of the teams to one of the additional eight, the glitches were fast and plentiful. This is not to say that someone smarter than me might not eventually figure this out. But I had to give up and just stick to being an artist.

Ah, yes. You did say that didn't you. Regarding specific times in the game: Behind the scenes, the pulling-the-goalie parameters are modified that the CPU will empty their net at the 60 seconds remaining mark, if the deficit is one or two goals. I did a test where I was up by one and the CPU pulled their goalie and I scored to go up by two. Their goalie still pulled, I scored again. Up by three and their goalie back in, I let them score. Up by only two again, I scored once more and it was actually this third empty netter that I noticed an odd glitch in the top left corner of the crowd. It was only for a fraction of a second before going away when the "Goal! Scored by..." window came up though, but that was actually the only issue I encountered and at no time did it freeze or display an error for me. I am curious if this has something to do with the modified parameters for pulling the goalie. [Usually the CPU will only pull the goalie if down by exactly two goals] but since I'm using Gens on a Windows machine, I'm also thinking that this may also be an emulator specific issue as well. Got any ideas @AdamCatalyst?

Oh? I never noticed any errors in my testing, but thoroughness aside, I only did this in emulation mode. Are you able to replicate and find what situation the error comes up in?

I fear that the team might not be as exciting as it seems behind the curtain of secrecy, but given that the "Other Games" list seems to only draw from three additional teams, I might be able to activate those ones. Probably wouldn't go further than that though. [I think one team I literally just filled with "one hit wonders"] I suppose I could also unlock the TECHNOS Team. Their photos are just and the entire team is just rated 99 overall like the hidden EA Teams in NHL 97 and 98. I don't expect they would be that interesting and they wouldn't require a secret code for the mystery's sake, but it fills a spot. Well, I should probably acknowledge and be thankful that if not for your breakthrough with the menu background and watermarks, much of this presentation would not have been possible.

I'm curious about this. I actually normally reduce the number of games displayed on the Other Scores to the minimum of eight, but I find it still it draws from the first 20 teams. Even if some are not selectable. My best guess is that there is some sort of definition in the code that sets the teams used to slightly more that teams displayed so it looks more natural that not every team is going to be active every single "Regular Season day".

Actually yes, as of now, the additional teams were literally just slapped together in order to have something other than "Team #19 vs Team #23" show up in the scores and replays. Technically all of the teams are set up with names, but since I stuck within the WWF brand, and only guys that were active from 1980-95, most of those lower teams are stocked with deep cuts that may have only made a handful of unmemorable appearances in that time. [As it stands, there are enough deep cuts on the 16 selectable teams, but that's just how it was going to be without going the Fire Pro route] Anyway, I suppose those teams could be unlocked if one really wanted to, but at the moment the rosters only have names for the sake of the replays and lack any logos, photos or ratings.