von Ozbourne

Well, it's Playoff Time. There's a bit of a surprise rolled into this one as it's a two-for-one. For those of you who prefer the look of the regular uniforms. Other changes present in this/these edition[s] include: Regular logos for the '94 Edition An evolution of the watermarked backgrounds. Original Changed for the Trade Deadline version. Playoff Edition mixing the old and new. And a few other slight changes like new ref face off animation. Not as many as for the Trade Deadline Edition, but few new players made the cut. New lines accurate to the first few games of the Playoffs, or in the case of teams that didn't make it, some changes as per final regular season rosters. Updated original post as well. NHL2023 RR94 Playoffs Ed [v3].bin NHL2023 94 Edition PO [v3].bin

That's a good question. I suppose I should have put together a tutorial and some screenshots like jkline's center ice logo, but all of my tests haven't made it past the half baked stage yet and wouldn't really be a good example of the potential. Still need some work, but I suppose I do have these previews if you want to use them. [This was in the works before Drezz posted his amazing background mod and made this kind of tile ordering and conservation obsolete]

Thanks man. I was wondering where that replay overlay code was. The only tip I can share is that just like the main menu foreground/background assets, if use palette 4xxx or 6xxx for any tile, it will mimic the home or away uniform colours respectively. So you can have a homer crowd [see @Sean's NCAA games for an example of this], could possibly have a few disturbers intermingled[?] or have the arena painted something other than grey, so it looks more like a different place for every team.

Since completing the 90's ones, I've been debating doing a current one, but I left it too late this year. Although, if someone were to get all the roster data together for me, I could finish up the rest of the new artwork for it.

Dude. All of the thanks. I had all of the other ones changed, but it appeared that offset 00013BAC only took care of the Playoff teams and 00014492 and 00014498 didn't actually do anything. My notes were missing this one and that was exactly what I needed for exhibition games. To add to what @Sedge said, this is using the 32-team mod of NHLPA'93. And on a side note, if anyone is interested in removing icing calls, that one appears to be at 0000CC9E. Just change 08F8 to 6002.

Figured I'd vent since it might also help me find what I was looking for, but I had a concept that would be assisted by limiting the number of selectable teams in NHLPA'93. Had some information on '92 and '94, and had a few spare minutes to see if that information would be transferable to the one in the middle. Turns out the option to limit the teams in the Playoffs was easy, Regular Game options were not as obvious. But then I come across some code that looks similar, but has 0003 instead of 0020. Figured I'd mess with it to see what it does and almost didn't notice this. Not obvious here, but there are actually four active penalties to that home team. So lets increment. Hypothesis appears confirmed, so obviously... Well clearly the next obvious step is to get excited... And then immediately feel disappointed. Guess the search continues.

The title stills probably wouldn't be too hard to convert, but that ten-headed hydra of a ball player on the cover art looks like it would be quite the job to recreate in that style. It's just a shame that they got rid of the build-a-team mode in the NEO-GEO games. That's what made the original game stand out from typical games of the day. What it even weirder, is that Professional has a timer in it like an arcade port, despite being an original pack-in for the home console. [which yes, was functionally identical to the arcade hardware]

You know, I always wonder about this. Basically that I played some "violent" games, like the SNES version of Mortal Kombat 1-3 [pretty tame by today's standard] and watched Wile E. Coyote get his face smashed in with anvils and boulders and saw the A-Team beat the crap out of bad guys every weekthe only time I've ever spent in jail was playing Monopoly. I always figured that my parents realized that they did a good enough job instilling the difference between fantasy and reality [granted I also grew up playing with realistic looking guns, because none of us were dumb enough to try to point them at people who weren't in the game] and didn't feel they needed to helicopter. The second part to this is that I can actually remember being a kid. And figure if I turned out alright, I just need to teach my kids that this is a fictional and in real life, getting your head exploded is not as fun as it looks. And if I don't do a crap job at being a parent, hopefully they will turn out alright too. Obviously, other parents and their little brats are another matter, but I just learned that by not associating with them, I didn't get into as much trouble as they did. Back on topic though, you just gave me an idea. Between recently got a game in the mail, having a conversation about a localization oddity relating to a second vintage game, and explaining what the title of a third game means to my kids, I feel that the universe is telling me that there is an answer for this. Just going to have to examine a few things to see if it can be done the right way.

I was actually thinking about something like this or possibly a Hockey Stars 3 using the '96 engine, but the main drawback is that the player photos were not a thing in any of the other games [unless I start looking into PC modding] and that was such a big part of the games. I did take a look at Little League Base Ball for the NES though and noted that while it was built using the same engine as both NES Baseball Stars games, [as well as Legends of the Diamond] it seems they took out the player stats function. I guess to get the Little League licence, they didn't want to encourage firing kids. It might sound like I'm alluding to making a Hockey Stars: Junior League out of '93, but then you get that unfortunate situation of having that player that just got knocked out like mama said with the concussion and the gushing head wound... being a kid. And you thought parents were complaining about Mortal Kombat.

That would be pretty cool when done. Curious though. Would that mean that the functionality could be expanded to the other games? Or at least '92 and '93 given their similarities anyway. I get that '95 is a bit different with its season mode and different simulation settings, and '96-'98 don't even support default match settings given the different way the menus are set up. Not going to lie that that would be awesome if it can be done though.

I guess there's this. It's a bit misleading though as the ratings are based on team average and some players have high stats in some aspects and low stats in others. The inconsistencies are so that you will have a vastly different experience depending on if you play with line changes on or off.

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.