Who gets credit? Jim Simmons? Mark Lesser?

[DavidG]

Hi, I have a very small role in this story. I worked on the SNES version of NHL 94 - in a supporting role - It's all very foggy now but as I recall being a young programmer, I was is awe of Jim Simmons - who quietly set down the foundations for Madden and NHL.  No offense to Mark Lesser but I didn't even know who he was until much later. It's weird that there are two versions of NHL 94 - one for the Genesis and one for the SNES but two completely different development stories. Mark gets a lot of limelight today and I think he's good and all but kind of only because Jim Simmons is reclusive and no one from EA Canada seems to talk much either.  In any case you can see from 
https://www.mobygames.com/game/12399/nhl-94/credits/snes/
that Mark Lesser isn't anywhere in the credits for the SNES version.  The way it worked is that features were fed to both teams and they implemented them. I may be wrong but I don't think that Amory Wong who was the lead of the SNES version talked much to Mark at all!   I'm pretty sure that Jim made the NHLPA (93) version for the Genesis and the SNES was ported at Park Place by William V. Robinson according to MobyGames and then we at EA Canada got the source code to do the NHL 94 version where we replaced the 'engine' with our design but kept the secret sauce of the gameplay but then went on to extend it. Amory played hockey and was a huge fan as you can imagine a Canadian team working on a hockey game was really cool.  But in the end I have endless admiration for the mysterious Jim Simmons who also did audio. That being said Jim didn't work in a vacuum and as posted earlier, the other staff around and producers all had their mark on the original product - still in those days Jim was kind of a one man band as far as getting the code down. 

And all that being said, it is somewhat intriguing that a young man who was more of a Audio and sound effects guy at Cinemaware could suddenly burst onto the scene as a lead programmer and set down the foundation of two massive franchises with no prior sports game experience. But he did work as a Audio Tech and Sound Effects guy on Cinemaware's TV Sports Football and Basketball. Is it possible that he was inspired by those products? We may never know. 

Edited March 28 by DavidG
missed a name

[halifax]

1 hour ago, DavidG said:

Hi, I have a very small role in this story. I worked on the SNES version of NHL 94 - in a supporting role - It's all very foggy now but as I recall being a young programmer, I was is awe of Jim Simmons - who quietly set down the foundations for Madden and NHL.  No offense to Mark Lesser but I didn't even know who he was until much later. It's weird that there are two versions of NHL 94 - one for the Genesis and one for the SNES but two completely different development stories. Mark gets a lot of limelight today and I think he's good and all but kind of only because Jim Simmons is reclusive and no one from EA Canada seems to talk much either.  In any case you can see from 
https://www.mobygames.com/game/12399/nhl-94/credits/snes/
that Mark Lesser isn't anywhere in the credits for the SNES version.  The way it worked is that features were fed to both teams and they implemented them. I may be wrong but I don't think that Amory Wong who was the lead of the SNES version talked much to Mark at all!   I'm pretty sure that Jim made the NHLPA (93) version for the Genesis and the SNES was ported at Park Place by William V. Robinson according to MobyGames and then we at EA Canada got the source code to do the NHL 94 version where we replaced the 'engine' with our design but kept the secret sauce of the gameplay but then went on to extend it. Amory played hockey and was a huge fan as you can imagine a Canadian team working on a hockey game was really cool.  But in the end I have endless admiration for the mysterious Jim Simmons who also did audio. That being said Jim didn't work in a vacuum and as posted earlier, the other staff around and producers all had their mark on the original product - still in those days Jim was kind of a one man band as far as getting the code down. 

And all that being said, it is somewhat intriguing that a young man who was more of a Audio and sound effects guy at Cinemaware could suddenly burst onto the scene as a lead programmer and set down the foundation of two massive franchises with no prior sports game experience. But he did work as an Audio Tech and Sound Effects guy on Cinemaware's TV Sports Football and Basketball. Is it possible that he was inspired by those products? We may never know. 

Thanks for sharing! Did you continue to work on later versions in the series as well?

[chaos]

3 hours ago, DavidG said:

Hi, I have a very small role in this story. I worked on the SNES version of NHL 94 - in a supporting role - It's all very foggy now but as I recall being a young programmer, I was is awe of Jim Simmons - who quietly set down the foundations for Madden and NHL.  No offense to Mark Lesser but I didn't even know who he was until much later. It's weird that there are two versions of NHL 94 - one for the Genesis and one for the SNES but two completely different development stories. Mark gets a lot of limelight today and I think he's good and all but kind of only because Jim Simmons is reclusive and no one from EA Canada seems to talk much either.  In any case you can see from 
https://www.mobygames.com/game/12399/nhl-94/credits/snes/
that Mark Lesser isn't anywhere in the credits for the SNES version.  The way it worked is that features were fed to both teams and they implemented them. I may be wrong but I don't think that Amory Wong who was the lead of the SNES version talked much to Mark at all!   I'm pretty sure that Jim made the NHLPA (93) version for the Genesis and the SNES was ported at Park Place by William V. Robinson according to MobyGames and then we at EA Canada got the source code to do the NHL 94 version where we replaced the 'engine' with our design but kept the secret sauce of the gameplay but then went on to extend it. Amory played hockey and was a huge fan as you can imagine a Canadian team working on a hockey game was really cool.  But in the end I have endless admiration for the mysterious Jim Simmons who also did audio. That being said Jim didn't work in a vacuum and as posted earlier, the other staff around and producers all had their mark on the original product - still in those days Jim was kind of a one man band as far as getting the code down. 

And all that being said, it is somewhat intriguing that a young man who was more of a Audio and sound effects guy at Cinemaware could suddenly burst onto the scene as a lead programmer and set down the foundation of two massive franchises with no prior sports game experience. But he did work as a Audio Tech and Sound Effects guy on Cinemaware's TV Sports Football and Basketball. Is it possible that he was inspired by those products? We may never know. 

Thanks for posting!

Since the original NHL Hockey source code was released last year, I've been comparing the code to the disassembled 94 Genesis code. A vast majority of it is the same, and I'm sure most stuff that is not, were part of the NHLPA93 code. I can tell what was added by Mark Lesser, but this is Jim Simmons' and team's game for sure. 

I do have to give a lot of credit to Lesser and to the SNES 94 team though! It must be difficult having to work off code that was not previously written by them, and especially with a deadline. Source code or not, you still have to understand what is going on and where to put your changes. And the changes made the game much better than the previous entry! (Especially SNES)

[DavidG]

On 3/28/2025 at 3:25 AM, halifax said:

Thanks for sharing! Did you continue to work on later versions in the series as well?

I didn't but I do have a credit in the DOS NHL 93 because I played hockey and at that time we did our own stunts. I am in the opening credit movie hockey montage. I get blown up by the defenseman in spectacular fashion and in fact I did get a concussion but it was super fun.

The other thing that I had a more major role in was the SNES version of the first edition of FIFA (now EASPORTSFC) - I did all of the foundational work in terms of porting the game from the Genesis in which the game code was being written in C - so I found a C compiler for the SNES (Zardoz) and got it all figured out.  Although SEGA and Nintendo versions were being made around the same time - the actual game development was done on the Genesis and the Nintendo SNES was a real-time port which was a pretty efficient way to do it. 

I left before the end of FIFA and they (EA mgmt) rudely left my name off the credits but my fellow devs snuck me in as a player for Team Scotland.

I moved on to Accolade and worked on Unnecessary Roughness football game for the Genesis before they closed shop due to financial injury from a SEGA injunction.

But lets just say that I love the early NHL games - I played them a lot before I even got the opportunity to make a very small contribution to them.

[DavidG]

On 3/28/2025 at 5:36 AM, chaos said:

Thanks for posting!

Since the original NHL Hockey source code was released last year, I've been comparing the code to the disassembled 94 Genesis code. A vast majority of it is the same, and I'm sure most stuff that is not, were part of the NHLPA93 code. I can tell what was added by Mark Lesser, but this is Jim Simmons' and team's game for sure. 

I do have to give a lot of credit to Lesser and to the SNES 94 team though! It must be difficult having to work off code that was not previously written by them, and especially with a deadline. Source code or not, you still have to understand what is going on and where to put your changes. And the changes made the game much better than the previous entry! (Especially SNES)

It's way easier to take existing code and extend it than it is to write it from scratch, well at least I think so - a lot of people are bad at reading code so they want to rewrite everything!  But I think that code literacy was pretty common back in those days because a lot of us learned by hacking/modding games just like people do today! I have a lot of respect for the modders! 

[bcrt2000]

On 3/28/2025 at 5:09 AM, DavidG said:

Hi, I have a very small role in this story. I worked on the SNES version of NHL 94 - in a supporting role - It's all very foggy now but as I recall being a young programmer, I was is awe of Jim Simmons - who quietly set down the foundations for Madden and NHL.  No offense to Mark Lesser but I didn't even know who he was until much later. It's weird that there are two versions of NHL 94 - one for the Genesis and one for the SNES but two completely different development stories. Mark gets a lot of limelight today and I think he's good and all but kind of only because Jim Simmons is reclusive and no one from EA Canada seems to talk much either.  In any case you can see from 
https://www.mobygames.com/game/12399/nhl-94/credits/snes/
that Mark Lesser isn't anywhere in the credits for the SNES version.  The way it worked is that features were fed to both teams and they implemented them. I may be wrong but I don't think that Amory Wong who was the lead of the SNES version talked much to Mark at all!   I'm pretty sure that Jim made the NHLPA (93) version for the Genesis and the SNES was ported at Park Place by William V. Robinson according to MobyGames and then we at EA Canada got the source code to do the NHL 94 version where we replaced the 'engine' with our design but kept the secret sauce of the gameplay but then went on to extend it. Amory played hockey and was a huge fan as you can imagine a Canadian team working on a hockey game was really cool.  But in the end I have endless admiration for the mysterious Jim Simmons who also did audio. That being said Jim didn't work in a vacuum and as posted earlier, the other staff around and producers all had their mark on the original product - still in those days Jim was kind of a one man band as far as getting the code down. 

And all that being said, it is somewhat intriguing that a young man who was more of a Audio and sound effects guy at Cinemaware could suddenly burst onto the scene as a lead programmer and set down the foundation of two massive franchises with no prior sports game experience. But he did work as an Audio Tech and Sound Effects guy on Cinemaware's TV Sports Football and Basketball. Is it possible that he was inspired by those products? We may never know. 

I’m curious, do you know anything about the development of NHL Hockey on DOS? Did that team talk to the SNES team at all? Also, was season mode ever considered for SNES NHL94? I wonder why the DOS team did it but neither SNES/Genesis teams did.