Hi guys, I just discovered this site, you're just amazing! You know, down here in Sicily ice hockey is not that famous and there is no media coverage whatsoever; I knew literally nothing about it before NHL'94, that baffling videogame I had as gift along with a more classic game for an Italian kid: FIFA International Soccer. But in the end, NHL became the favourite one to play with my SEGA Mega Drive (aka Genesis).
I didn't knew the rules (icing? offside?), the teams (I fell in love with their logos anyway) and - worse - I didn't even knew english back then! With a lot of effort I translated the manual and eventually I mastered the game. Then I started to praise NHL'94 with my skeptical friends and, after a while, grew up a sort of cult around this strange game of mine (I was probably the only kid in town with a SEGA system and almost certainly the only one who knew something about NHL). It was like an alien sport to us, but that videogame was freaking great!
After some years - thanks to the PSX and a broadband Internet connection - it was really nice to find out that Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky or the Stanley Cup itself were real. Yes, because I loved hockey and NHL for years without even to be able to see footage of the game! It was really strange, because for a long time everything I knew about hockey came from NHL'94, nothing more. No one here knew anything about NHL, beside me and my friends obviously (I just remembered that we even nicknamed a fellow of us "Samuellson", after Ulf. But to me, he was just a pixelated figure on a videogame).
I played (and I still play sometimes) NHL 2000 for PSX, but I always though that NHL'94 was the best among the EA titles. It's really fantastic that you love it just like me, I thought I looked to NHL'94 through rose-tinted glasses and I could never image *this*.
The website is really great and your effort is invaluable; I'm looking forward to play NHL'94 online... actually I'm not that good and it's a lot of time since I played against another human; I'm pretty sure I will be wiped out, but it would be fun anyway and sound pretty exciting to be able to play with someone after so many years!