bcrt2000

94 PC is the start of the lineage of the current game's team & code base. Yes it started with 92/93 on Genesis and eventually some of the people who worked on the console versions ended up working on the PC version of the game. But seems like Dave Warfield was one of the designers on 94 PC and he essentially was one of the leads on the NHL series up to 2005. 96 PC Seems to be the 95 PC gameplay running on the NBA Live 95 engine. 97 is an enhanced version of 96 with more 3D looking graphics. 98 takes it further with proper fully 3D players, and yes is the first PC version that also ends up on consoles as well. NHL 2004 is where they made a big change to the team, and brought in Black Box. The team seems to be partially composed of people who worked on NHL 2003 and partially of people who worked on NHL 2K. I'm curious to know if they did a complete game rewrite at this point. 06 is where Dave Littman takes over. I'm guessing maybe the original game design here isn't Littman's, because 06 an extremely arcade oriented game that wasn't very good. It was a staple of the Warfield era of games to have big back of the box features, and after around NHL 2001 (when the big features were just improvements to graphics & gameplay) they tended to add very arcade oriented features that usually got thrown out a year or two later. 06 also happens to be the last PC version of the game that is the flagship. I wonder if Warfield not being tied to the game anymore is what finally makes PC not a priority anymore. All of the game credits aren't available on Mobygames beyond NHL 06 but I know Dean Richards was involved in the early Xbox 360 era and then eventually Sean Ramjagsingh becomes the main lead of the NHL team where he still is to this day. 07 (switch to Xbox 360), 15 (switch to Xbox One/PS4) & 22 (switch to Frostbite) are where major changes/rewrites to the code base could've also happened, but assets/animations/logic was likely carried over somewhat in these years.

Love that the disks on 94 are similar to the cartridge version. I do have a physical version of 94 I bought from eBay last year, want to say labelling was different on the disks though. For the people mentioning the skating being slow… the PC versions were meant to be more simulation oriented. It kind of was the only way to go, and pretty much lead to the evolution of the game in its current form. The team working on the series AFAIK goes all the way back to 94 PC, although in 2004 dev did switch to black box, I’m not sure how much code was carried over and/or how many team members moved over.

You may not have to do all these steps but I dusted off nhlinfo after about 20 years and this is how I got palettes working: - make sure your palette file and .fsh file are in same folder as nhlinfo - open nhlinfo after you do this - before you go into the fsh file hit shift+p and set . to palette folder - now go into fsh folder, you should be able to cycle through available palettes. The image itself won’t update with the new palette, you have to save while the palette is enable to see it correctly i was able to extract the rink from NHL95 with proper palette this way

I can help with the jerseys. The update.nhl94.com jerseys weren't that good and I posted some earlier in the summer with corrected colours (that rom uses the swos strip hack). Anyone who wants to use those as a base can, I think I've got all of this year's jerseys in there (including Philly's and Edmonton's new home jerseys). I'm under the assumption Buffalo is going to keep the slug jerseys as their primary homes this year although they've hinted that they are changing it-- I'm not sure if thats for this season or next.

I wish the person who maintains the update ROM was around. I'm hoping he uses these jerseys (at least some of them) before continuing to update with the new draft/ufa moves.

They are finally bringing back playoff mode in NHL 10. And they are also dedicated to removing exploits as well (claim they've gotten rid of all of the exploits used online in 09). If it has competitive and co-op support in playoff mode, it could finally be the game to have all of the features of the old games.

I tried it before-- thought it crushed the palette of the centre ice logos a little, but I guess its better than nothing

Okay, I checked it out and D,D,D translates to: 222, 219, 222 I guess theres limitations to what the colour palette can be set to (NOSE really isn't clear about that). Theres really no perfect shade of grey or even light blue that I can get. I guess I'll set it back to default when I get a chance.

I updated the rom to fix a few issues I noticed from the last version: - shoulder shading on a few teams was not the right shade - fixed montreal's design - fixed the shade of red used with washington I made sure that the rink was grey in this version (D,D,D)... if you're seeing pink its a monitor issue.

Hah, it was one of the first things I changed (before I got a hang of the palette editor) so perhaps its got a little too much red in it. Oilers new home news: http://www.faceoff.com/hockey/teams/edmont...x%3Fid%3D898337 Flyers info comes from someone in Philly that I trust who claims that the orange jerseys will be used as home jerseys and the blacks will be used as 3rds. It makes sense as the Flyers 3rd is the #1 selling jersey in the NHL: http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_detai...to-science.html (under "Hot Jersey")

Hey guys, I had a question. Who maintains the update.nhl94.com ROM file? I made some updates to the latest rom (april 19th 2009), which fixes some of the issues with the jerseys such as: - Changing Oilers home jersey to the ones they'll use next year (the one thats the 3rd jersey right now) - Changing Flyers home jersey to the ones they'll use next year (their current 3rds that they wore during the playoffs) - Fixing shading on jerseys so they use all 3 shades and fixed any shading issues - black pants are using the correct palette (0,0,0 2,0,2 2,2,2) - some teams with dark blue pants were using black pants or vice versa, fixed that - Red on Flames jerseys fixed - Lots of other little modifications etc I've also changed the ice colour to look closer to what NHL 95 PC uses (light grey) but that can easily be changed back. Anyhow, if you're the person who maintains that rom, check this out and take whatever you like. NHL2009_fixed_jerseys_v2.bin

Enhh... Basically theres two differences (between the sprites). SNES has a bigger palette so the uniforms could be a little more accurate, and the SNES went for a different player-to-rink size ratio which required them to shrink the sprites. But the real winner is NHL 95 PC . It had the bigger Genesis sprites, the player-to-rink size ratio that the SNES had, the extra animations the SNES version had, and a bigger palette than either console version. Outside of the Habs (slightly problematic), even today pretty much every jersey can be recreated in the PC version.

EA already did that, the game that resulted was NHL 06, which was one of their worst. Its nearly impossible to recapture the magic of NHL 94 on a full blown simulation game. The only chance for it to happen would be a DS version or WiiWare/XBLA/PSN version. But I doubt EA will do it. And like in my previous post, I think under Littman they have captured some magic with NHL 09. There are still a few annoyances which bug me, but they are getting to the point where the games finally are the culmination of the best parts of the past rather than trying to add selling points each year and destroying gameplay balance in the process.

This is such an interesting topic. I was always under the impression that High Score Productions was behind the changes in NHL 95. I don't recall if it was NHL 95 or NHL 96 but I scored on an offside and had a player disappear through the boards, only to come back celebrating as if a goal happened later in the game. I never even bothered getting the game after playing it at a friend's place. Not that I needed to though, by then I had moved on to NHL 95/96 on PC. I do wonder what made NHL 94/95 PC so special for me. Was it the gameplay? Was it the graphics? For me personally, the gameplay of 94 Genesis wasn't that great because it was way too offensive. It was basically a competition between who could get more triple dekes and wraparounds off, and playing against the CPU was a joke. The PC version played a little more like real hockey and you could have some insanely tough games against the CPU. EA had a ton of missteps from NHL 95-NHL 06 (except for NHL 2001, 2002, 2004), but I think they've finally gotten back to innovating and building upon what they had in the previous year (like they did for 92-94, 95/96 PC). Under Dave Warfield the games would go between being too arcadish to being too hard and not fun every year. Since Littman has become the producer of the NHL series, they are back on track. NHL 09 for 360/PS3 is such a deep game but it has the spirit of fun and spontaneity that NHL 94 had as well. There are a couple of features that they have dropped over the years that I'm still waiting to be brought back (Playoff Mode, Saving Games, Multiplayer/Online Season mode, Free-4-all), but 09 overwhelmingly is a triumph IMO. I also am surprised that outside of NHL 06 (which was lame because they used fake rosters and was only available on PS2) that they haven't gone back to the 94 Genesis or 95 PC Engine and updated it for current handhelds.

Ron Barr IRL: Yes, hes a real person.

My guesses would be... N95 (or any S60 phone with enough power/n-gage capability) iPhone Most windows mobile phones could probably do it as well-- my brother had an HP Windows Mobile Phone like 3 or 4 years ago which could do it. What definitely cannot do it? S40 phones... not powerful enough. They can handle ports of Genesis games though (there is a version of Sonic 1 & 2 available for S40 for example)

The truth is the real sequel to NHL 94 for SNES/Genesis was... NHL 95 for PC... and NHL 96 for PC was basically a 3D version of NHL 95. It would be nice if they created an XBLA version of NHL 92/93/94/95 (maybe with sliders which let you change how the game plays) which included fighting, 5on5 multiplayer and the latest rosters.

I think there is a version of GENS+ which allows you to overclock the Genesis CPU. In Road Rash it made the frame rate MUCH smoother (although sometimes youd get some gfx glitches).

NHL 07 on 360 is MUCH better than NHL06 & 07 on PC/PS2/Xbox. NHL95-97 PC, NHL 98, NHL 2000, NHL 2004, NHL 2005 & NHL 07 360 are all good games which brought a bunch of enhancements, but all of the other years were big steps backwards. Especially the last two. NHL 04/05 were a great basis for a hockey game because the defense was very good, but it went to waste with 06/07 PC/PS2/Xbox by them making it way too arcadish. I don't know, perhaps their strategy is to switch back and forth between arcade hockey and simulation hockey so that people will keep on buying the new versions hoping that they get the game that they want. Biggest things missing now are Playoff mode, Multiplayer season mode, online seaosn mode, more than 1vs1 online (and with modified rules/ai/rosters, something that they used to allow for years), and classic rosters. If they would get out of the cycle of just trying to remake the game every 2 years into something else, and just continued to improve the game like Madden, then the series would be great. But make no mistake, we'll never get the same feeling from a hockey game as we did from a game like NHL94. NHL94 was arcade hockey. We'll never see pure arcade hockey again (as long as EA does their job and makes a good hockey game). And with those tiny 2D sprites you kinda had to use your imagination. Now the graphics are so defined, that if theres anything wrong with them, its a lot easier to notice and break immersion. In fact, one of the biggest flaws since they've gone 3D is that they've never had a proper physics engine. One of the greatest things about the 2D NHL games were the physics, the way you player skated around the ice, the way the goalie slid around, the way players would move when they got checked, etc. In the 3D games a lot of the fluidity of the ice physics is gone. Hopefully with the power of the newer consoles they can fix that.

I've edited most of the stuff that there is to edit in this game (Centre Ice logos, Jerseys, made a 3rd jersey switcher, Menu logos & backgrounds, etc)... I'll post more when about it I have time, right now I'm at work. PS: I was the one who made the 98 Nagano pack way back when. Also, to the person that says the game has no speed, its possible DOSBOX isn't configured properly either. The game does have a slightly slower pace overall, but the intensity of the game does pick up at times and guys like Bure still fly around the ice. I think the biggest thing is that the AI is much better in the PC version than in the Genesis ones. I can win every game at will on the Genesis, but on PC sometimes the AI will just put up a wall and you won't be able to get anything by them. The biggest things though are the inability to play this game online and the lack of 30 teams. Perhaps one day they'll add netplay to DOSBOX though.

nice. can't wait for this to come out.

Well, I don't mind the organ screw ups if we were able to put in the Sega CD music on top of the versions they have, and the lack crowd noise could be "fixed" if we just added fading away crowd noise after certain sound effects (checks, puck hit the post, goal siren, cheers, boos), but it depends on there being memory limitations for the size of the SR file. Its 39 megs, so I don't think the PS2 has enough memory to fit it in, I'm guessing they stream a lot of the audio and only keep certain sound effects in memory.

Oh boy, the sound emulation in NHL '94 retro is brutal. It can only play like one or two sound effects at the same time, so the crowd will cheer and boo, but you won't hear the crowd "noise". Also the organ music stops playing once you drop the puck. If it starts playing at random during gameplay, once another sound effect kicks in (sound made when checking a player for example) the music will just stop.

Theres two occurances of the name for each player. I extracted the NHL94.SR file using UltraISO and then put it back into the .iso file, but I think I screwed something up because it didn't boot for me (and yes I have a modchip, or else I wouldn't be able to use PGEN ). Maybe I needed to regenerate the MDS file or something. The disc wasn't even being recognized as a PS2 disc.

I did a search in NHL94.SR and I found players names like Lafond and Sweep (fake player names for Gretzky and Muller)... I think it should be editable if someone like wboy can figure out how to edit this container file without messing things up. I also found it interesting that WAV files are used in place of the sound effects. If sound emulation is totally done using these wav files, we could easily insert the Sega CD music files on top of these ones