AdamCatalyst

NHL 94: 2024 Edition by Adam Catalyst v3.0 updated 2024 04 21 Hello there friendly strangers, Here is the latest version of my 2024 ROM. The goal is to try to provide the most refined and realistic up-to-date versions of this all-time classic game. I'm thrilled to be able to share this with you. Here are the top reasons you might want to give it a try… New in '24 800 players obsessively rated, up-to-date rosters, and realistic lines, based on even more extensive 2020-2024 regular season data. Logos, Colours, Uniforms, Arena names… everything up-to-date for the 2024 season. The Bench area has been completely re-designed, new puck design & animation, re-designed graphic overlays for Shoot-Outs, Penalty-Shots, Goal, Injuries, Stars of the Game, etc. and numerous other refinements. Gameplay Revisioned The gameplay has been adjusted for a more realistic modern hockey feel, with harder to score goals, easier to hit crossbars and posts, more realistic speed burst, fewer penalty calls, custom energy depletion and recovery rates (balanced for more realistic line rolling and shift length), and player rating distribution curves that have been carefully calibrated for more realistic gameplay on the ice. Graphical Refinements Hundreds of other refinements have been made including title screens, banners, player photos, scoreboard, audience, face-offs, bench area, player sprites, nets, ice markings, scorekeepers, Zamboni driver, and more. The goal is to bring the most graphically refined version of NHL 94 ever made, while remaining faithful to the spirit of the original art direction. And so much more Of course there is the weight bug fix, but also a custom weight scale, less variance in Hot/Cold rating randomization, immediate goalie control by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller, a custom 3-Stars of the Game rating formula, a Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg Menu & Player Cards crash fix, and… Every single feature & modification is documented below. I would love it if you would give it a try, and leave me any feedback! -Adam p.s. I'd be flattered if you wanted to lift any of my mods for your own ROM. Anyone who contributes to making hacks or ROMs for nhl94.com is welcome to PM me, and I will happily send you source files, including Tile Molester bookmarks and palettes. Current Version NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v3.0 - 2024 04 21.zip Previous Versions NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v2.5 - 2024 03 18.zip NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v2.0 - 2023 12 20.zip NHL 94 [h] 2024 AC v1.0 - 2023 12 01.zip Box Art Maximum Quality: Box Art - SMD - NHL '94 [h] 2024.png.7z Features & Modifications Title Screens & Under the Hood ROM Header: Updated to indicate support for Japan region, 6-Button Controller, both domestic & foreign ROM names, and updated checksum. Title Screen: Opening Logo screens display time reduced by 30%. Graphics: EA logo screen heavily modified and updated to reflect current Stanley Cup winner. Graphics: High Score Production screen refined. Graphics: Splash image updated with EA's NHL24 image. Graphics: Masthead re-drawn to match EA’s current NHL24 lettering. Graphics: Title screen Logos removed. Text: Credits re-coloured & edited. Above: The player sprites design was revised to more accurately accommodate the wide range of colourations for all 32 NHL teams. Taped taped composite sticks complete the more realistic contemporary look. Above & Beyond: A global colour palette for the entire ROM was built, with all key colour decisions made in this relative context. Teams have been systemically coloured to have as accurate a representation as possible, with a consistent sense of depth, and realistic colour shifts for shadows and highlights. Tests were done with demo play, and final colour decisions were made to give the most accurate impression in motion, and not necessarily what looked the best in stills. Main Menu Settings: Default teams set for the 2023 Stanley Cup finals. Settings: Playoff brackets updated to the 2024 seedings. Settings: 7-minute period length option added. Settings: Line Changes & Penalties defaults set to on "On," because that's how I roll. Graphics: Team Banners & Logos updated and refined. Graphics: Team Banner names removed, and replaced with "VISITORS" and "HOME" for clarity. Graphics: Player Photos all updated with official NHL headshot images, custom cropped & colour graded. Graphics: Error removed from the selection box. Hack: Player Photo carousel cycling order modified. Hack: Bug that would causes crashes upon cycling through the Player Photos for Vegas, Washington, and Winnipeg has been eliminated. Please note, this comes at the cost of preventing saved stats from showing under player names. Text: Re-wording of a couple menu options for greater clarity. Typesetting: Player names centred vertically. Above Right: All logos were revised or re-drawn by hand, and matched for visual weight. Official team colours were relatively mapped to the Sega MD/Genesis colour space, and banners were matched to key logo colours, with some minor re-wording in the menus. Pre-Game Graphics: Banners typesetting improved, and colours improved for greater clarity and consistency with the team colours used throughout. Graphics: The Pre-Game Announcer's picture frame has been altered to be more consistent with the design of similar elements throughout the game. Graphics: Ron Barr image restored to be closer to original. Arena Names: All up-to-date as of December 2023. Pre-Game: Match-up position names have been simplified to “Forward,” “Defence,” & “Goaltender.” Above: When EA released Rewind (left), they kept the same colour palette as the original, despite decades of new teams and new team colours. I've optimized this restrictive colour palette (right) so that all teams now look much closer to their authentic colours. Furthermore, typesetting has been improved in all banners to also be better than Rewind. Rink Graphics: Colour Palette has been altered to improve the audience affect with more uniform tonal contrast, improve the accuracy of the team banner colours, and to give the nets more realistic colouring. Sprites: Audience members design and animations have been refined. Graphics: Goal light & animation revised. Graphics: Instant Replay Reverse view inconsistencies fixed. Graphics: Minor refinements throughout the arena. Rink - On the Ice Graphics: Ice Colour lightened slightly. The darker colour was giving me eye strain. Graphics: Centre ice logos updated, adapted from NHL Rewind designs. Graphics: Face-off circles modification. (author unknown) Graphics: Net re-drawn to the most recent (2013) NHL proportions, with an updated goalie crease. Graphics: Trapezoid area lines drawn to NHL scale. Graphics: Glass & stanchions behind bottom net revised to be symmetrical and parallel to glass & stanchions at the top, horizontal seam in top glass has been removed, and on-ice reflections of stanchions have been fixed throughout. Above: There have been hundreds of refinements to the rink design. Beyond the big obvious things like the redesigned bench area and time keepers, there are far more subtle touches like the symmetrical glass re-design at the bottom, the updated net designs, and the refined audience member designs & animations. Rink - On the Sidelines Graphics: Bench area completely re-designed, including refined animations, and the addition of animated coaches and backup goaltenders inspired by @slapshot67. Graphics: Time-keepers added in, and time-keeper area Stanchion misalignment fixed. Graphics: Bench, Penalty Box, & Time-keepers area Stanchions modified to be consistent with the Sideboards view. Sprites: Bug fixed that would stack multiple Visitors players in the Penalty box incorrectly. Above: The original (Left) benches had floors coloured like the ice, and the players chirped with unhinged jaws, with no supervision from a coach. Over time (Centre), fantastic changes were made by slapshot67, adding a more realistic floor, fitting in a coach and a backup goaltender! I've built on this work (Right) completely re-designing the bench area, including re-designed players and refined animation, an animated coach, and more. Plus, a new more three-dimensional puck design! Above (Botton Left): I really liked The Sauce’s wide take on the EA logo (Centre), as well as the bevelled style of the original (Left). I’ve mixed the two styles together, and refined it to better fit the allocated vertical space. The Sauce’s excellent ROM is shown here for relative comparison only, no criticism implied of his inspiring work. Rink - Sideboards view Graphics: Sideboards Bench, Boards, Glass, Ice, Stanchions, etc. revised. Graphics: Scoreboard Banners refined to improve typesetting, and colours modified for clarity and consistency throughout. Graphics: Sideboard Scoreboard has custom drawn NHL logo. Graphics: Side-boards Score-Keepers added. (Based on the SNES version) Sprites: Zamboni driver revised to better match the perspective of the side-boards. Sprites: Player in Penalty box refined, and placement revised. Above Below: The original Zamboni driver (Left) looked like a small ruddy-faced hunchback. I re-designed him to fit the style and perspective of the scene better, adapted the design of the scorekeepers from the SNES version to match, improved the design of the player in the penalty box (who disturbingly had no lower body in the original), and have made hundreds of minor refinements to the audience, animation, bench, stanchions, the light refraction on the edge of the glass, etc. Above Top: Beyond the improved banners, the scoreboard features brighter lettering and scores along with custom drawn a modern NHL logo. In-Play Sprites: Player design was revised to more accurately accommodate the wide range of uniform colourations for all 32 NHL teams. Tests were done with demo play, and final colour decisions were made to give the most accurate impression in motion, and not necessarily what looked the best in stills. Sprites: Face-off animations revised. Sprites: Players given grey composite sticks, because grey pixels have better puck feel, more flex, and are lighter weight. Sprites: Goaltenders masks revised to reveal their faces. Sprites: Player Helmet colour patch. (@clockwise) Sprites: Player Eye, Boots & Gloves, and Stick Tape patches. (@clockwise) Sprites: Improved Checking animations patch. (@clockwise) Sprites: Player stick animations refined. Sprites: Puck design & animation revised. Graphics: On-Ice Player Numbers changed to white for better legibility against the ice. Graphics: On-Ice Player indicator (star) for Player 1 lightened to be less conspicuous and increase relative on-ice contrast for the Player 2 indicator. Graphics: Penalty box player colour error fixed. (Slapshot67) Above Top Row: The original face-off animations had a linesman that was looking in the wrong direction (Top Left & Centre), freakishly long & thin stick blades, stick shadows that would overlap incorrectly (Top Left), disproportionally dark shadows that sometimes overlapped the image frame (Top Right), a frisbee instead of a puck, and some rough detailing on the players. Above Bottom Row: I’ve painstakingly gone through the 108 possible graphic combinations that can occur during a face-off, revised every issue I could find, re-drew the sticks to be more realistically shaped & taped, and perhaps most importantly, turned the linesman’s head to face the right direction. We all need to do our part to improve NHL officiating. Rosters Rosters & Lines: Updated based on extensive 2020–2024 regular season player usage data. Rosters & Lines: 800 total players have been included, covering the 25 players (14F, 8D, & 3G) with the most ice-time in 2023-2024 on each team. Above. 192 official NHL headshots used in-game), all individually cropped and colour graded for visual balance. Ratings Team Ratings: Team attribute & overall ratings updated as per April 19, 2024 end of regular season data. Player Ratings: Underlying system has been changed from the default 1-6 scale to a 0-15 scale for more accurate differentiation of players. (@smozoma) Player Ratings: ustom player ratings based on a mix of real-world data and gameplay oriented parameters. The goal is to make gameplay more contemporary, and individual player performance more realistic. Player Ratings: Custom overall rating formula. Player Ratings: More parity between the best and the worst of the league, with all players having a minimum 52 rating before Hot/Cold variance. Player Ratings: Weight scale modification patch. (@smozoma) Player Ratings: Edit lines bug fix patch. (@smozoma) Player Ratings: Hot & Cold variance is hidden from the menus, so you will have to feel which players are hot or cold through gameplay. (@smozoma) Behind the Scenes: Rosters, ratings, and lines are based on extensive real-world data and advanced analytics. All of this is conformed to custom ratings distribution curves, which give the gameplay its unique feel. This single most important feature can't be shown in stills. You have to play it to feel it. Gameplay Controls: Goalie control can now be accessed immediately by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller. (clockwise) Gameplay: Goalies without the puck can move slightly farther towards centre ice. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Goalies can hold the puck very slightly longer before the play is whistled dead. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Body Checking and Aggressiveness have been balanced to reduce the penalty rate from the original, and approximate the real body checking and penalty rates of each team in the 2023–2024 season. Gameplay: Hot & Cold range of variance has been reduced by ~25%, and the frequency of variance has been reduced by ~50%. Gameplay: The "goal" area of the net has been reduced slightly, making it more difficult to score, and more likely that you will hit the post. Gameplay: Player Speed Burst set to 25% of the original, for a more realistic feel and higher difficulty. Gameplay: Custom Stamina Depletion & Recovery rates. Gameplay: Weight / Checking bug fix patch. (@smozoma) Gameplay: Second-Assist bug fix patch. (@smozoma) Gameplay: CPU pulls Goalie with 2 minutes left when trailing by 1 or 2 goals. (@McMarkis, @smozoma, & @chaos) Gameplay: Overtime set to 5 minutes, Penalty Shots set to 20 seconds. Player Ratings: Attribute rating distributions have been careful set and thoroughly tested to produce a faster more contemporary feel to puck movement & gameplay, with better goaltending. Stars of the Game: New custom formula. Above Right: The Timekeeper design has been adapted from the SNES version, and modernized with touchscreens. The players in the penalty box have been re-designed (and errors fixed), the puck & animation have been redesigned along with a "translucent" shadow, and the scorebox has been nudged off to the side. Above: Note how in the original (Left) the player one indicator is distractingly very high contrast, while the player two indicator is much more difficult to see with low tonal contrast. Brightening the colour of the ice (Centre) helps, but then the already muddy looking player numbers become very difficult to see. I’ve re-balanced the colours (Right) so that the player one indicator is quieter while still being easy to see, the player two indicator is equally easy to see, and the the player numbers are much clearer to see against the ice. The excellent Naples ROM is shown for relative comparison only, no criticism implied of their superlative work. In-Game Overlays Graphics: Linesman & Referee pop-overs refined. Graphics: In-Game Timer logo has been re-drawn. (based on @Sauce's design) Graphics: Score Clock and Line Change overlays relocated. Graphics: Line Change Energy bars have been re-drawn to have an inverse quasi-logarithmic gradation. Graphics: Overlays for Shoot-Outs, Penalty Shots, Goals, and Injuries revised. Graphics: Instant Replay controls graphic revised. Graphics: Stars of the Game overlay re-designed. Text: "Cross Check," "Face-Off," and "Fight Instigator" renamed to "Cross-checking," "Face-off," and "Instigator" as per the official NHL rulebook. Above: Various evolutions… Updated ice markings, including a to-scale trapezoid area and crease. The Net has been re-drawn to closely match the current NHL proportions, and to slightly reduce the scoring area. Improved sprite designs, including details like the Goalie’s mask now showing a bit of their face underneath (Right). The Stars of the Game overlay has been redesigned, along with the underlying selection formula. In-Game Menus Graphics: NHL & NHLPA Logos re-drawn. Graphics: "Hockey Night" Banner slightly re-coloured. Hack: Player Cards bugs that would causes crashes upon cycling through Cards for WSH (and possibly also VGK & WPG) have been eliminated. Hack: Player Stats now showing Checks instead of Penalty Minutes. (@smozoma) Text: The “Change Goalie” option for “no goalie” is now in ALL-CAPS for greater visibility. Extras Box Art: Matching box art was made! The artwork is high resolution, print quality, and stays very close to the original North American box design. Player Ratings: The distribution includes a CSV with all the player ratings. Thumbnail Art: The distribution includes thumbnail artwork for popular emulators. Known Issues The Main Menu and Player Cards do not show saved User Records, in order to prevent crashes that on these pages with Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg. User Records may incorrectly store user data if playing with Vegas / Washington / Winnipeg. Builds are tested with Genesis Plus 1.7.4.15 and Genesis Plus GX 1.7.5-RC1 r24-10-2021. If you are having any technical issues, you may want to try one of these emulators. If you are reporting a technical issue, please note the exact console or emulator version that you are using for me. Future Wish-List I'm not sure how much time I will have to work on this in the future, but if I did find more time, here is what I would like to focus on next… Interface: Alter the range of displayed values for player ratings. Gameplay: Increase the wrist shot speed. Gameplay: Increase the puck ice friction slightly. Gameplay: Reduce the force with which pucks rebounds off the boards, etc. CPU play: Increase the goaltenders lateral stopping abilities, reduce five-hole stopping effectiveness. Gameplay: Enable line changes to be initiated without possession of the puck, preferably with a dedicated button. CPU play: Prevent the goaltenders from skating into the trapezoid areas. Gameplay: Decrease accuracy of One-Timers. Gameplay: Reduce the passing speed slightly. Gameplay: Reduce the energy cost for each time a speed boost is used. Gameplay: Enable players in the Penalty Box to re-generate energy as if they were on the bench. Gameplay: Improve logic for how icings and offsides are calculated to use puck position instead of player position. Graphics: Redraw Sideboards Referee to better match the art style of everything else (requires "de-compressing" shared tiles.) Graphics: Improve the comparatively low visual quality of the on-ice officials throughout (requires "de-compressing" shared tiles.) If you are able to help me with any of these changes, please let me know! Credits This project was built decades of work by the NHL94.com community, and never would have been possible without them. I’m sure there are more contributors than I could ever possibly know, let alone acknowledge, but I will do my best… Contributors This ROM contains contributions from the following individuals… Brodeur30 Rink & Net collision logic. chaos Hot/Cold variation logic. Team Attribute bonus logic. Clockwise Goalie Control with a six-button controller. Player sprites boots & gloves colour patch. Player sprites eye colour patch. Player sprites helmet colour patch. Player sprites hockey tape patch. Player sprites improved checking animations patch. Dervin10 Roster extractor & importer tool development. Drezz Team uniforms Yoke colour isolated. kingraph Animation block logic. Sideboards modification logic. Stars of the Game modification logic. McMarkis CPU Goalie pull logic. (+ Smozoma & Chaos) slapshot67 30 to 32 team ROM re-structuring. Bench backup goalie hack and original design. Penalty Box player sprite colouring fix. smozoma 0–15 Player Rating scale patch. Checking / Weight bug fix patch. Credits editing logic. Displayed Ratings bug fix patch. Goalie range of motion. Goalie puck hold time before whistle. Period lengths logic. Player Overall rating formula logic. Player Stats Checking patch. Player Weight scale modification patch. Second-Assist bug fix patch. Stars of the Game formula logic. Tony H. Stopping & Crossover Rate logic. wboy 28 to 30 team ROM re-structuring. Default settings logic. Player photo logic. Player energy depletion & recovery rates logic. Rink modification logic. Speed burst rate logic. NOSE tool development. Author unknown Face-off circles graphic modification. Team uniforms colour restructuring. Special Thanks to… @Drezz - selflessly sharing original work & resources. @Jkline3 - tips, resources, & candor. @kingraph - tips, resources, & encouragement. @naples39 & @Sauce - inspiration. @Sean - tips, encouragement, & inspiration. @smozoma - utterly invaluable tips, resources, tools, & support. @von Ozbourne - brainstorming, resources, wit & wisdom. …and everyone at nhl94.com who tested Betas or provided feedback. Extra Special Thanks to… Ena - for nothing less than everything. I hope you enjoy!

Hi there, I've never used Retroarch on a Mac, so I can't help you there, but OpenEmu on the Mac works great. The ROM can be zipped or not zipped, however if it is zipped, there sometimes can be compliance issues with some emulators. This is rare, but I have seen it happened. I believe it has to do with the compression setting. I'm not sure what else to tell you. p.s. You could also try renaming the .BIN to .SMD, but this shouldn't be necessary either.

I was able to find where the Overall Ratings are knocked down by by 1x for a net 7x instead of 8x, but haven't been able to find the same for the Attributes. I'm borderline just thinking of changing each byte one at a time, to see what they do.

THANK-YOU!!! Will go search to see if I can find that in the source. After @von Ozbourne shared that Weight info over PM, I realized that Attribute calculations are x8, then bit shifted to force a cheap round down. Dropping it down to a x7 seems like an inexpensive way to compensate.

Sorry, I think that I must be confusing everyone. I'm not talking about NOSE or Overall Ratings. Please let me start over. In the original 0-6 rating system, rating an Attribute "2" would translate to the ROM showing a Displayed Value of "42" for that attribute. However, with your 0-15 system, giving that same Attribute a rating of "2" would translate to the ROM showing a displayed value of "32" for that attribute. My question, is why or how? I hypothesize that there is either a multiplier value somewhere (e.g. "take 0-15 rating and multiply by "7" for Displayed Value), or perhaps a look-up table, or perhaps something else entirely. Whatever it is, I would love to know more!

Thanks for the reply to a 13-year old thread! My apologies, but I meant in the ROM, not NOSE. How did you get 0-15 ratings to scale differently in the ROM? I tried to retrace your steps, and really haven't been able to figure out what witchcraft you did here. If you still had your old notes, or spreadsheet, or whatever, I'd love to take a look.

I'll have you know, in Canada, that is *exactly* what we do on Thanksgiving!

@smozoma I've been trying to figure out how the Displayed Rating Values are calculated in the ROM. I can see with Weight that there is merely a base weight figure that is set, with each additional Weight "point" adds an increment of 8 above that. But for this… how did you adjust this? I can't figure out if there is a multiplier variable set to 7, or a lookup table, or whatever. You must have done SOMETHING, but I can't figure out what it is. Any insight as to how the displayed values is handled, a HEX address to a multiplier, any insight whatsoever would be greatly appreciated!

The 2024 Reverse Retro ROM is AMAZING!!! It's distracting me from getting mine done.

Thanks! It is coming…

@von Ozbourne Sorry for spamming your thread, but I can't get over how phenomenal your player photo work is. It doesn't just look better, it looks and feels authentic to what the players would have looked like if they were 16-bit video game characters. I love it so much.

I'm always so curious about how different people rate things… I just checked, and my model currently has those two teams as a 71 and 65 respectively. That's literally the exact same % rating differential between the two teams! That is neat. So… yeah, I think 82 and 74 sound about right.

I'd love to pick your brain about how to use EDGE data!!! I haven't tried to incorporate this yet, but would very much like to try. Fox is a tough one to rate IMHO. My rating system this year currently has him at an 83, out of a range of 52-94 (Makar) for D-Men. I've never been able to rectify his acclaim with an objective rating…

The Player Cards have never looked as good as they did in this release. Such a joy to just go browsing around. This release is premium.

Looks beautiful!!! So many nice bespoke touches. I still can't believe that you pulled off colour photos. Looking forward to dropping this into my console tonight.

@von Ozbourne and I are just joking around and being ridiculous! I know that I shouldn't speak for him, but I didn't want you to have the impression that he (or I) would actually paywall updates. It will be the same deal as last year: just buy a lifetime subscription to our OnlyFans, and you're good to go.

Not a dumb question at all. There's lots that can be done, but everything comes with a cost. Some ways that you might try: increase the Offence Awareness of all players. increase the Defence Awareness of all players. increase the Bias / Roughness of all players. mod the ROM so that the team you use has players with worse attributes than the teams you play against. increase the Aggression & Checking attributes of opponents players. Please note, this will increase penalty calls, so you may want to play with Penalties off if you do this. further reducing the size of the goal may help. From what I can tell, on Defence the Defence Awareness dictates how many pixels of "vision" each CPU controlled player has. They Aggressiveness indicates how likely they are to go after the puck with their stick if they can "see" it, and their Checking indicates how likely they are to go after the player with their body if they can "see" it. I am less certain on how the offensive "thinking" works. I'd encourage you to export the ratings from a ROM, edit them in a spreadsheet and, and re-import them to see what happens! As for your second question, depends on which ROM, and the human players skill level. IIRC my ROMs should give reasonable results for CPU vs CPU games with period length set between 10-20 minutes. At 10 minutes it should be akin to a very low event game, and at 20 minutes it should be akin to a very high event game. But throw a human being into that mix, and all bets are off.

Sucker! I wasn't even on the site during my 41 second suspension.

I'm hammering away at one as well. I'm embarrassed to say my splash screen looks VERY similar to von Osborne's, but that's where the similarities end. While von Osbourne tries to rip people off by accepting pre-orders for a scam product that you can buy on AliExpress for $0.01, I am going 100% FREEMIUM this year, with the most realistic version of NHL94 ever conceived. I've obsessively located the code for every goal / penalty / penalty shot / injury announcement box, and used them to deliver a non-stop parade of in game advertising for sports gambling. And while von Osborne claims that the widescreen patch doesn't work with expanded ROMs, I have entered into an exclusive 10-year agreement with a sports gambling company to deliver a proprietary widescreen view that will constantly deliver real-time betting odds in the extra screen space to the left and right. Most importantly, as an important service to the NHL94.com community, Ron Barr will now warn the player to gamble responsibly and play within their limits. I will also be offering a "Classic" version without gambling ads, available exclusively with a monthly subscription to a Premium NHL94.com+ forum membership, for only $9.99 month.* Meanwhile, von Osbourne's promises to do NOTHING to help people suffering from gambling addiction, an all too real growing scourge on our society. * $9.99 per month when pre-paid (which is different than pre-ordering) $119.88 annually. Cost without annual contract is $14.99 per month. Monthly roster updates will be made available as paid DLC, or included in the $249.99 season's pass. Prices subject to change without notice. Please play responsibly.

I can shed some light here. The problem is that a long time ago (1985) Apple came up with a "MacBinary" file format, which is an archive format like ZIP, and it uses the file name extension .BIN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBinary Because of this, on a modern Mac the default behaviour for opening a .BIN is to try and de-compress it as a MacBinary. So if you try to double-click a .BIN file, you will get an error, that it cannot decompress the archive. But you don't want to decompress it! You want to have it run in your preferred software. Most people will NEVER fuss with a MacBinary file. You can safely change the file type association for .BIN to OpenEmu or whatever you like, and it will stop trying to interpret .BIN files as "MacBinary" and then you won't see that error any more. As noted by everyone else, OpenEmu can read properly formatted ZIPs just fine. Do note that every once and awhile this might not work as expected, if the contents of that ZIP aren't formatted in a way that OpenEmu understands.

I've never tried to play a season, in fact, I spend WAY more time modding than actually playing, I leave that to you guys. MAC? Easy. Download OpenEmu. It is an all-in-one loader that includes many popular and stable cores for many systems. Highly recommended for Mac users.

Hy folks, just an FYI. I don't want to promise anything, but I've been finding time to get back on this project, and making lots of progress lately. There's no imminent release in sight, but I'm pushing things a long to get a '24 release out as soon as I can.

I cannot recall the last time I was this confused.