Review of Inside NHL'94 Official Guide by Corey Sandler

[kingraph]

KingRaph's review of Inside NHL'94 Official Guide

If the introduction to the book doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will. In fact, I think the introduction is the best part of this entire strategy guide! Corey Sandler starts off by saying in this great game,"There are ten skaters on the ice, each moving independently."

There are actually 12 players on the ice with the goalies, but of course Corey Sandler knows that. He probably meant 10 move independently as 2 players are under control of the players, assuming 2 active users. See, this book is full of mysterious messages that may be confusing to the untrained reader, but after deeper thought, they demonstrate Mr. Sandler's amazing '94 acumen.

Corey also states in the introduction that "All the laws of physics are included."

If there's one thing I dislike about the previous hockey games out there, it's that the designers forgot to include ALL the laws of physics! It's refreshing to finally see that bug rectified in this version of the game and it's probably one of the first things you'll notice when you start playing. Aside from the fact that time moves much faster in the game than real life (5 minutes in EA time is more like 3 minutes of real time), the puck shatters the top portion of the glass on occasion (impossible), players who miss passes fly at hypersonic speeds, one-timers from 2 feet away are still rockets that fly off a players forehand or backhand, etc., the physics are spot on.

Again, this is all part of the introduction! We haven't even gotten to page one yet.

Corey Sandler continues to get you excited about NHL'94 by explaining that all of the most important rules of hockey are followed. This could not be more true! This hockey game has the same rules as the actual sport of hockey. I never noticed that, and without this sharp strategy guide, I may never have.

Okay, on to the real juicy stuff!

In Chapter 1 (NHL rules), Corey Sandler comes up with the greatest description of the "real" game of hockey I have ever read:

"The ultimate purpose is very simple: to push a three-inch-wide, two-inch-thick, six-ounce, disk-shaped slab of frozen rubber into a six-foot-wide, four-foot-tall opening and to do it at least one more time than your opponent. "


Ladies and gentlemen -- Corey Sandler give us the ultimate purpose! I, for one, find this description very straightforward and easy to remember. I wish I had thought of it before.

He goes on to explain some of the rules of hockey, devoting considerable time to rink size and the exceptions of rink sizes in the NHL (something very valuable to unlocking the secrets of NHL'94), as well as offsides, and icing. He completely ignores certain facets of the game such as how many players are on the ice at one time, different types of penalties, power play, penalty shots, number of periods, length of period, etc. At first, it may seem that this is a glaring omission of facts that have a direct impact on the understanding of the game and would be useful as a starting point, but this is not so! Corey Sandler knew that you would figure it all out by playing the game itself, so he wouldn't have to include any of those explanations in his 270+ page guide book! This omission allowed him to include "actual team results from the 92-93 regular season" , which is much better IMHO. Clever, very clever.

Chapter 2 begins in the classic Corey Sandler-using-hyphen-loaded-sentences-to-deliver-points-that-are-simple style (see the ultimate purpose of hockey above)
He builds up excitement by saying

"you see all the usual plays by nearly supernatural players:

* Pavel Bure bursts across the blue-line like a you-know-what out of you-know-where"

What is great about this bullet point is that Corey Sandler makes you stop and think for a moment. It's a subtle stroke of brilliance in this strategy guide, and it allows the reader to build and develop his/her own unique experience with the material. DO you know what?? And DO you know where? Some may simply say "bat out of hell", but leaving it a mystery is a part of Corey Sandler's genius. He doesn't just fill the book with riddles, he shows off his brilliant writing with the remaining bullet points:

• "Super Mario (the hockey player Lemiuex, not the Italian princess-hunting plumber) is the center of attention every time he is on the ice."
• "Teemu Selanne materialized like a ghost with the puck in front of the net, with his stick coiled like a viper ready to strike"
• "Patrick Roy plays the net as if he were six-feet-tall and four-feet wide"

Did you see what Corey Sandler did right there? In Chapter 1, he explains in the ultimate purpose of hockey that the "opening is six-foot-wide and four-foot tall". In the previous bullet on Patrick Roy, he says Roy "plays the net as if he were six-feet-tall and four-feet-wide"! Those who were paying attention and are clever enough to figure this out would now understand that the "opening" is the same as the "net" and that Patrick Roy is a player that plays as if he were the size of the entire net! Brilliant!

It's important to note that Mr Sandler assumes that by Chapter 2 you have a good understanding of hockey and who these specific players are as he did not cover this in the first chapter that detailed NHL rink dimensions. In case you didn't, he reminds you that "later in the book" he tells you "everything you need to know about all the individual players"

Anyway, chapter 2 lasts from page 9-72 and is a rework of the instruction manual that came with the Genesis and SNES game. Instead of having the instructions in one place and this kick-ass strategy guide in another, Corey Sandler puts it all in one place for you for your convenience!

Mr. Sandler does, however, clear up some things that may have been confusing in the original instruction manual, as this excerpt shows:

"Do you suffer from weak ankles? Is the farthest distance you have recently traveled on the ice the length of the frozen puddle in front of your garage door? One of the truly great things about this computer simulation of a hockey game is that you don't have to learn how to skate like an NHL pro to play the game; the computer takes care of the skating for you." - p. 19


I wish I would have known that before I bought myself a new pair of ice skates! That information alone makes this official strategy guide worth $12.95 ($16.95 CAN)!

Though I would never question NHL'94 master Corey Sandler's wisdom, it should be noted that the checking ability on the Genesis game is determined solely by weight, not checking as Sandler notes. Also, lighter guys check better than heavier guys, due to a bug in the game. My guess is this omission was probably an error by the publisher, and not Mr. Sandler.

Chapter 3 is another manual, but covers the PC version of the game. The PC version required its own chapter because there are tons of useful tidbits of information to help you master '94, such as:

"A megabit is one million bits of information (1,048,576 bits to be exact). Larger computers deal in megabytes (MB), which are computer "words" made up of eight bits. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. To convert bits to bytes, you divide bits by eight; to convert from bytes to bits, you multiply bytes by eight."

Corey Sandler's knowledge isn't limited to hockey and simulations of hockey games! I can feel myself getting better in '94 at this very moment.

Instead of continuing the cutting-edge, inside-the-game strategy, Corey stops to provide us with the NHL season statistics from the 1992-93 season (Chapter 4), followed by a condensed '93-'94 season stats (Chapter 5). While this may initially look like useless data that has no real application to the game, it's gives readers a background of the players in the game. Readers can spend a free summer translating those statistics to the player ratings in the game (note: game player ratings found in the game are not included in strategy guide). It's a fun project that Corey Sandler gives to the readers!

Chapter 6 is where the genius of Corey Sandler shines. In four (4) action-packed pages (the whole chapter), Mr. Sandler combines the NHL statistics (using total points and +/- stat) from the previous season with the overall rating and speed rating in the game to come up with a CyberSports Rating! Speed, he determined,directly translates into success.

While he doesn't provide any analysis or strategy for using speed to succeed in the game per se, we can trust that Corey Sandler knows what he's talking about. Why would a strategy guide provide you with direct strategy?

The most important factor in the CyberSports score is to "multiply the results by 10 to come up with a whole number". Again, pretty solid advice, as decimals are impossible to deal with.

We now have magic tools needed to calculate the best starting lines for each team in the game. While one would expect an application of this strategy to the game, the following chapter instead gives us more data! Chapter 7 provides a synopsis of every real NHL team (including their rookie of the year, yay!) and the default starting lines with their calculated CyberSports ratings. Wow, this is the kind of expert analysis one can use to dominate NHL'94!

And what NHL'94 strategy guide would be complete without the final chapter dedicated to Wayne Gretzky? A whopping 4 pages of career statistics and records. This may be a puzzling "chapter" for many people, including myself, but I have to believe that Corey Sandler included this for a reason. Having a completely useless set of statistics and a paragraph just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of this amazing strategy guide.

As if you weren't satisfied enough, there is a bonus section not listed in the book that provides COLOR photos of exciting game play and captions! For example, there is an action shot of the game stats with a description that reads, "the end-of-game statistics provide a portrait of the action just completed"

Straightforward? Maybe, but remember that common sense is not so common!

All in all, Corey Sandler provides us with gameplay instructions and NHL data, along with a magical CyberSport ranking (strangely called CyberQuest ranking in the bonus section), and leaves it to the reader to figure out how to apply it all in NHL'94. If you were looking for a clear, well-crafted strategy guide that you can use to improve your '94 game, you've come to the wrong place! Corey Sandler won't make it easy for you. In fact, it may take you months to decipher where the actual strategy lies in this book. Enjoy!

[LA Robbie]

Can you include the CyberSports rating in your Blitz team rankings please, so we can see how lines might change as a result. Could just give me the edge once the season starts

[Bob Kudelski]

Sounds like this book would be amazing to read while high. I'm ordering a copy right now.

[fenty]

Doesnt seem to be anything in it about impropving your gameplay? He should of mentioned gretskys a chump, he doesnt start in my lineup. This review is on amazon and the book got 2 stars outa 5

[da94wookiee]

"Teemu Selanne materialized like a ghost with the puck in front of the net, with his stick coiled like a viper ready to strike"

That explains how Selanne has 6 shorthanded goals through 11 games in Blitz 7, while your team has only allowed a total of 6 powerplay goals against. Raph, you are a true student of the game. Cheers, bud

Edited July 10, 2012 by da94wookiee

[kingraph]

That explains how Selanne has 6 shorthanded goals through 11 games in Blitz 7, while your team has only allowed a total of 6 powerplay goals against. Raph, you are a true student of the game. Cheers, bud

Lol. All credit goes to Corey Sandler.