NHL96 Playoff Edition

[von Ozbourne]

After spending a lengthy amount of slow progress on some bigger projects, [plus you know, that whole "being a responsible adult" thing] it was nice to take a break and bang out an Adam Savage style "One Day Build" [in that it actually took two days]. Figured now that it's done, I might as well share it.

Thanks to @Deckard for the suggestion on this one, been a while since I did anything with NHL96 and it was fun to revisit it.
Thanks to @redwing90 for reminding me that division alignments are possible to edit and Colorado doesn't need to play in the East if they don't want to.

The premise: Take NHL96 and give it an NHL97 roster update. Effectively making it closer to season end rosters. Fix art as applicable.
Which makes this,

Not a lot of changes, but the most obvious is, out goes Quebec, in goes Colorado.
[sorry to see you go, but it is more historically accurate this way]
 

All the other logos were mainly borrowed from '97 for consistency, although there are a few other fixes that, in theory, shouldn't haven't needed fixing...
 
It's a little thing.
Not so little on the other hand...
 

Now, two caveats:
1. Due to how the team positions are hard coded, to avoid a giant compounding mess, Colorado simply adopts Quebec's old place in the North East Division spot in the team selection order.
2. Due to NHL97 having more memory space allocated to rosters than NHL96, I've had to cut one or two players per team to get in under the free bytes limit.
 Luckily there is no pre-game preamble anymore [something I would not say under any other circumstance], so I could delete the arena names and free up some extra bytes to avoid having to cut even more players.
 Thanks to @Deckard again for making the tough choices.

UPDATE:
Switching to Version 1.1 to eliminate the odd "Bruins" inconsistency.
Switching to Version 1.2 to move Colorado from the East's North East division to the West's Pacific division

NHL 96 ~ Playoff Edition V1.2.bin

NHL 96 ~ Playoff Wide Edition v1.3.bin

Edited March 8 by von Ozbourne

[Deckard]

Thanks to you @von Ozbourme!!! You're the real MVP of this mod

[Sedge]

I appreciate this but would it be possible to get an addendum where the team select text for Boston says Boston instead of Bruins? I know it's a little thing but the inconsistency bugs me.

 

[von Ozbourne]

9 hours ago, DeterminedApathy said:

I appreciate this but would it be possible to get an addendum where the team select text for Boston says Boston instead of Bruins? I know it's a little thing but the inconsistency bugs me.

Sunuva.... You know, I'd forgotten all about that. And that's the kind of thing that really bugs me too.

...
V1.1 will probably be incoming sometime tomorrow.

[von Ozbourne]

Update complete. No more "Bruins" outlier. New ROM in the main post.

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by von Ozbourme

[von Ozbourne]

Reminded of this mod so added a Widescreen Edition to the original post.

      

[Deckard]

Great!! Now this mod gets even better!

[von Ozbourne]

On 3/12/2023 at 2:16 PM, Deckard said:

Great!! Now this mod gets even better!

Thanks for pointing out the 1.2 patch.

Glad to say that fixed some of the widescreen display issues. Updated the original post.

[UltraMagnus]

On 3/11/2023 at 10:17 PM, jmastert said:

Hope all is well old friend,

 

i was wondering if you had any college or nba rom hacks..

 

also what have you been working on.. or suggest !

have a good night 

 

-JT

 

On 3/12/2023 at 3:18 PM, von Ozbourne said:

Reminded of this mod so added a Widescreen Edition to the original post.

      

How did you get the mod to work on this. Can we do it to 95. I saw the post that it's possible. 

[von Ozbourne]

16 minutes ago, UltraMagnus said:

How did you get the mod to work on this. Can we do it to 95. I saw the post that it's possible. 

The '96-'98 based mods use the original ROMs so there isn't that glitching that was a problem with the expanded memory.

Although I just tested on the 34-Team '95 mod and found out that the patch works. This could be interesting.

Unfortunately as of the time of this post, the '94 wide mode patch still does not work on the expanded ROMs.

Edited March 18, 2023 by von Ozbourne

[Deckard]

37 minutes ago, von Ozbourne said:

Thanks for pointing out the 1.2 patch.

Glad to say that fixed some of the widescreen display issues. Updated the original post.

Fantastic!

[redwing90]

Not sure if this crossed your mind but maybe a possibility, as a workaround to the incorrect conference positions:

1 . Change Quebec entirely to TORONTO (rosters, logo etc)

2. Change (stock game) Toronto to Colorado

Remember the Leafs became part of the Eastern Conference, once the Avs established in the western conference

[von Ozbourne]

Actually that hadn't crossed my mind, but just last week I came across some old posts about season mode games and also some old notes I made regarding the divisional alignments that I'd apparently forgotten about. The thing with that type of team exchange is that [apart from taking some time to do] the team ratings, as far as simulated games go, are linked to where in the order a team falls and nothing to do with the team rankings or the player skill ratings. So the drawback to this would be that real-life-eventual-champs Colorado would be a playoffs bubble team, while we're-in-a-down-period Toronto would make the finals 50% of the time in a straight simulated season.

Besides, I double checked and Toronto actually didn't move to the East until 1998 when Nashville joined.

I was however reminded that I could realign the teams in less time than it took me to type this message, by simply relocating Colorado's team number in the section of code that sets the division and conference setting. And changing the numbers that set the division and conference set up. So Colorado is still in the "Q" spot in the team selection menu, but apart from that it works.

So goodbye N.East

Hello Pacific.

updated in the original post

[Deckard]

So glad to see this project is still improving!

[Schwabe]

I came across a potential glitch playing season mode.  I played about 10 games and got to about "Oct 26th" and suddenly the game entered 'Playoffs' with some odd behavior like it can keep cycling through old season games (to see the scores, as usual in season mode) but if I proceed to play next game it's into a series where a game has already been played.  

Seems my season got corrupted some how.  Other than playing some games I made a number of trades.   Not sure what else would have caused the glitch.  I'm using Retroarch with the Genesis Plus GX core. 

Edited April 4 by Schwabe

[von Ozbourne]

This is a weird one. Beyond the changing of the team art and this last update where Colorado is in the correct conference, I didn't touch anything else. I'd also simmed a few seasons and "played" a couple as well. [Mostly just 2-player with the frame rate jacked to 800% in order to make sure Colorado made and won the playoffs] Didn't notice any issues, but I'm just using Gens on a Windows machine hooked up to a TV, and I've found that this emulator is a bit more forgiving when it comes to ignoring certain errors.

Curious if you had to start a new season and if the glitch repeated itself.

[EddieSpaghetti]

Hi everybody. Longtime lurker and first time poster. But I'm glad to see NHL 96 getting some attention. NHL 94 is great and all, and I understand why people love it, but NHL 96 has been my favorite hockey game since it was released. Been playing it regularly since the Genesis days. So thanks for these mods @von Ozbourne

Anyway, I'm sure Avalanche fans feel differently, but my issues with '96 have nothing to do with the Nordiques still being in the game. I like that, actually. Even more so after the league's changed so much since the '90s. My problems mostly are minor roster issues—and major roster issues in '95, '97 and '98. ('96 through '98 essentially play the same way, IMHO.) 

Minor roster problems in '96 that irritate me:

[1] Joe Sacco (for the Ducks) shoots right in the game. He should shoot left.
[2] Duplicate player numbers... 

For Hartford, Glen Featherstone and Adam Burt both wear #6. Featherstone should wear #36.

For Ottawa, Steve Larouche and Randy Cunnyworth both wear #7. Larouche should wear #74

For the Islanders, Dave Chyzowski and Kirk Muller both wear #9. The issue here is that's technically correct... sort of. Chyzowski wore #9 but was sent to the IHL. Then they brought in Muller who took the vacated #9. So if that were "fixed" you have to get creative. He wore a variety of numbers in preseason and minor league games: 90, 54 in Chicago, and a handful of others.

[2.5] For Winnipeg, Arto Blomsten wears #55. But he should be playing for Los Angeles and wearing #39.

Now obviously, aside from the Sacco thing, you can just release these guys and re-sign them if the numbers bother you—or just use a few of the CAP slots. Maybe I'm the only person on Earth who notices/cares about this stuff, but I downloaded Hex Fiend (I'm on Mac). I'm not a programmer. The most I've done in a hex editor is fix a bug in Betrayal at Krondor. But I'm going to play around and see if I can fix these problems. If I can, eventually, I might have bigger fish to fry.

It'd take forever to list, but there are numerous players in NHL 95 whose handedness is wrong. I'd have to check, but I believe in NHL 97 & NHL 98 every  goalie in the game catches with the wrong hand! And NHL 98 has a bunch of skaters whose handedness is wrong. If someone's fixed this stuff already somewhere I've missed it. But if not, I'll chip away at making sense of that hex editor, and if I figure it out I'll post the fixed versions somewhere. How long that might take me, though, I have no idea.

 

Edited April 11 by EddieSpaghetti

[Schwabe]

On 4/6/2025 at 1:27 PM, von Ozbourne said:

This is a weird one. Beyond the changing of the team art and this last update where Colorado is in the correct conference, I didn't touch anything else. I'd also simmed a few seasons and "played" a couple as well. [Mostly just 2-player with the frame rate jacked to 800% in order to make sure Colorado made and won the playoffs] Didn't notice any issues, but I'm just using Gens on a Windows machine hooked up to a TV, and I've found that this emulator is a bit more forgiving when it comes to ignoring certain errors.

Curious if you had to start a new season and if the glitch repeated itself.

No worries false alarm - I encountered same bug on a different NHL96 ROM.   The bug is due to my emulator; seems the save states get corrupted if you have a season but then start a new season (and not even do any save states with that season, but simply loading your original save state is now corrupted).   This is on Linux / Retroarch / Genesis Plus GX core.  

[von Ozbourne]

7 hours ago, EddieSpaghetti said:

Hi everybody. Longtime lurker and first time poster. But I'm glad to see NHL 96 getting some attention. NHL 94 is great and all, and I understand why people love it, but NHL 96 has been my favorite hockey game since it was released. Been playing it regularly since the Genesis days. So thanks for these mods @von Ozbourne

Anyway, I'm sure Avalanche fans feel differently, but my issues with '96 have nothing to do with the Nordiques still being in the game. I like that, actually. Even more so after the league's changed so much since the '90s. My problems mostly are minor roster issues—and major roster issues in '95, '97 and '98. ('96 through '98 essentially play the same way, IMHO.) 

Minor roster problems in '96 that irritate me:

[1] Joe Sacco (for the Ducks) shoots right in the game. He should shoot left.
[2] Duplicate player numbers... 

For Hartford, Glen Featherstone and Adam Burt both wear #6. Featherstone should wear #36.

For Ottawa, Steve Larouche and Randy Cunnyworth both wear #7. Larouche should wear #74

For the Islanders, Dave Chyzowski and Kirk Muller both wear #9. The issue here is that's technically correct... sort of. Chyzowski wore #9 but was sent to the IHL. Then they brought in Muller who took the vacated #9. So if that were "fixed" you have to get creative. He wore a variety of numbers in preseason and minor league games: 90, 54 in Chicago, and a handful of others.

[2.5] For Winnipeg, Arto Blomsten wears #55. But he should be playing for Los Angeles and wearing #39.

Now obviously, aside from the Sacco thing, you can just release these guys and re-sign them if the numbers bother you—or just use a few of the CAP slots. Maybe I'm the only person on Earth who notices/cares about this stuff, but I downloaded Hex Fiend (I'm on Mac). I'm not a programmer. The most I've done in a hex editor is fix a bug in Betrayal at Krondor. But I'm going to play around and see if I can fix these problems. If I can, eventually, I might have bigger fish to fry.

It'd take forever to list, but there are numerous players in NHL 95 whose handedness is wrong. I'd have to check, but I believe in NHL 97 & NHL 98 every  goalie in the game catches with the wrong hand! And NHL 98 has a bunch of skaters whose handedness is wrong. If someone's fixed this stuff already somewhere I've missed it. But if not, I'll chip away at making sense of that hex editor, and if I figure it out I'll post the fixed versions somewhere. How long that might take me, though, I have no idea.

 

I noted some of the Left/Right stuff back in the day myself, although I can't really remember any specific players anymore. Having the tools to dig into the rosters now, I do wonder if it had anything to do with how the games are set up. I only realized this after setting up spreadsheets for each game and finding some stats weren't going to work without messing with my formulas, but just looking at the hex codes for each game, it seems that while in NHL Hockey ['92] and NHLPA'93, they started with 0=Right and 1=Left. [they also use a 0-15 player rating scale] However, the programming was flipped for NHL'94 so 0=Left and 1=Right. [in addition to switching to a 0-6 scale] But then it was flipped back for '95 so 0=Right again, only to switch again in '96 through '98 to 0=Left again.

This makes me wonder if the programmer in charge of compiling the player stats may have been working off a lot of recycled information from the previous season which would inadvertently make those righties and lefties switch back and forth depending on how the stats may have been intended vs how the game was configured.

The players and numbers probably ended up falling into different trap in that the games needed to be programmed in advance of the season, and the rosters were probably set well in advance of any summer trades and signings. As someone who recently had a lot of fun trying to interpret some old media guides that were written in the age before the internet, I'm imagining that there were a lot of "best guesses" made when it came to player data that wasn't readily available, and no way to double check if something was accurate when you did have a list to go on.

It's also easy to forget that '95 wasn't released just prior to the season starting like most years, because the actual season didn't start like most years. So in addition to having an 84 game schedule instead of transposing those numbers, it would be about three months after the game was released before we found out just what the rosters would actually look like.

Admittedly for this '96 edit, I only used the player data from '97 to reflect the "playoff" rosters. I didn't go through and double check that every player had the correct real life data in the process. If that was a thing you were looking to edit though, I would probably recommend downloading NOSE from the tools section on here since it's easier to look through the rosters that way. At least it is on a Windows machine. I don't recall what sort of processes you might need to do to run it on a Mac.

On the plus side though. All of the player data is found in a simple hex code string immediately after each players' name. So it you're only option is a hex editor, at least it's not in some esoteric impenetrably compressed location.

[EddieSpaghetti]

10 hours ago, von Ozbourne said:

I noted some of the Left/Right stuff back in the day myself, although I can't really remember any specific players anymore. Having the tools to dig into the rosters now, I do wonder if it had anything to do with how the games are set up. I only realized this after setting up spreadsheets for each game and finding some stats weren't going to work without messing with my formulas, but just looking at the hex codes for each game, it seems that while in NHL Hockey ['92] and NHLPA'93, they started with 0=Right and 1=Left. [they also use a 0-15 player rating scale] However, the programming was flipped for NHL'94 so 0=Left and 1=Right. [in addition to switching to a 0-6 scale] But then it was flipped back for '95 so 0=Right again, only to switch again in '96 through '98 to 0=Left again.

This makes me wonder if the programmer in charge of compiling the player stats may have been working off a lot of recycled information from the previous season which would inadvertently make those righties and lefties switch back and forth depending on how the stats may have been intended vs how the game was configured.

The players and numbers probably ended up falling into different trap in that the games needed to be programmed in advance of the season, and the rosters were probably set well in advance of any summer trades and signings. As someone who recently had a lot of fun trying to interpret some old media guides that were written in the age before the internet, I'm imagining that there were a lot of "best guesses" made when it came to player data that wasn't readily available, and no way to double check if something was accurate when you did have a list to go on.

It's also easy to forget that '95 wasn't released just prior to the season starting like most years, because the actual season didn't start like most years. So in addition to having an 84 game schedule instead of transposing those numbers, it would be about three months after the game was released before we found out just what the rosters would actually look like.

Admittedly for this '96 edit, I only used the player data from '97 to reflect the "playoff" rosters. I didn't go through and double check that every player had the correct real life data in the process. If that was a thing you were looking to edit though, I would probably recommend downloading NOSE from the tools section on here since it's easier to look through the rosters that way. At least it is on a Windows machine. I don't recall what sort of processes you might need to do to run it on a Mac.

On the plus side though. All of the player data is found in a simple hex code string immediately after each players' name. So it you're only option is a hex editor, at least it's not in some esoteric impenetrably compressed location.

Awesome! Thank you.

That makes sense now if the Left/Right coding was switched so many times that errors would pop up. They must've been extra diligent in '96 for some reason. '95 has a lot of problems, and '97 & '98 have a lot of problems, but unless I missed them, I'm pretty sure Sacco is the only player in '96 who shoots the wrong way.

And a lot of that probably explains some other strange roster decisions that were made. Obviously they didn't have space for everyone that actually played. But there's not a single third string goalie programmed into NHL '96, which is weird to me. Especially considering, in NHLPA '93, San Jose had four goalies. I think at least one other team did, too. But there are also players who played one or two games that are in the game, and players who played 30+ out of the 45 total that year who aren't. So weird.

And I'm assuming they compiled right defensemen last or something, when they were running low on space, because I did a game-wide positional surplus/deficit thing. I used four players at a given position as the mean. Essentially, if someone at that position is injured there's a backup available. So game-wide, there's a +14 surplus of RWs, a +29 surplus of Cs, a +18 surplus of LWs, a +9 surplus of LDs, and a -12 deficit of RDs (along with the -26 deficit of goalies.) So I usually split my created player slots up entirely with goalies and right defenseman, just for injury and trade reasons.

But I'll look at NOSE. I literally decided to see if I could fix some of this stuff yesterday, then looked around through the editing guide. I'm on Mac and play my games in OpenEMU. I do have a mini PC, but it's not in great shape. It's old. I stopped using it because I couldn't even run Open Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 without noticeable lag. But it might still be functional enough for something like this. I'll have to check. Hex Fiend should be able to get the job done, though. The interface is different than Hex Workshop, and it doesn't have a lot of features Hex Workshop has, either. But fixing handedness and a few player numbers, hopefully, shouldn't be too much trouble.

Edited April 12 by EddieSpaghetti

[von Ozbourne]

On 4/12/2025 at 11:08 AM, EddieSpaghetti said:

Awesome! Thank you.

That makes sense now if the Left/Right coding was switched so many times that errors would pop up. They must've been extra diligent in '96 for some reason. '95 has a lot of problems, and '97 & '98 have a lot of problems, but unless I missed them, I'm pretty sure Sacco is the only player in '96 who shoots the wrong way.

And a lot of that probably explains some other strange roster decisions that were made. Obviously they didn't have space for everyone that actually played. But there's not a single third string goalie programmed into NHL '96, which is weird to me. Especially considering, in NHLPA '93, San Jose had four goalies. I think at least one other team did, too. But there are also players who played one or two games that are in the game, and players who played 30+ out of the 45 total that year who aren't. So weird.

And I'm assuming they compiled right defensemen last or something, when they were running low on space, because I did a game-wide positional surplus/deficit thing. I used four players at a given position as the mean. Essentially, if someone at that position is injured there's a backup available. So game-wide, there's a +14 surplus of RWs, a +29 surplus of Cs, a +18 surplus of LWs, a +9 surplus of LDs, and a -12 deficit of RDs (along with the -26 deficit of goalies.) So I usually split my created player slots up entirely with goalies and right defenseman, just for injury and trade reasons.

But I'll look at NOSE. I literally decided to see if I could fix some of this stuff yesterday, then looked around through the editing guide. I'm on Mac and play my games in OpenEMU. I do have a mini PC, but it's not in great shape. It's old. I stopped using it because I couldn't even run Open Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 without noticeable lag. But it might still be functional enough for something like this. I'll have to check. Hex Fiend should be able to get the job done, though. The interface is different than Hex Workshop, and it doesn't have a lot of features Hex Workshop has, either. But fixing handedness and a few player numbers, hopefully, shouldn't be too much trouble.

I just randomly remembered some other interesting mistakes/omissions/overlooked bits[?] that are a bit interesting.

After a completed '95 season, you are treated to an award ceremony, but you might notice a couple things. One, there are a couple of longer delays in the presentation. This is likely due to the fact that the trophy sprites include images for the Calder, Adams and Lady Byng, but these trophies are not presented in the game. I'm guessing that they probably put all of the trophies in there before they may have even known what they were for and how they would even calculate how to chose a winner. [especially in the case of the coach of the year] And while the game is not displaying the trophy or finalists, but is still scrolling through the data, causing the slight delay. Also, more obviously, they got the wrong "Lester" trophy in there. The description is for the Person, but the image is of the Patrick.

They fixed this for '96 in that they removed these trophies that couldn't be calculated, and they got the right Lester trophy this time. Although it is interesting that the Conn Smythe winner is calculated by the player that gets the most points in the playoffs, but it will always show up in the winning team photo. I found this out when Jaromir Jagr was awarded the Smythe in the ceremony, despite the Penguins not even making the Finals in my play through, and the trophy still showed up in my Stanley Cup Champs team photo.

There was also this oversight though where they accidentally used the previous season's logo for the playoffs. Forgot to note that I changed that is this edit.
 

'98 [and I think '97 but I didn't look] changed some of this again, as well as adding the Calder, but I don't know how they calculate for the winner as there really doesn't seem to be any way to differentiate a "first year" player unless they only included player created players. They also for some reason tripled up in the MVP awards by having the Hart, the Pearson and an "EA Sports Trophy" that still awarded to the "League MVP", but uses an image of the old design of the Pearson that had been retired a few seasons prior. This feels like an odd addition since the calculation for all of these awards seems to literally just go to whichever player wins the Art Ross.

That said, I have no idea how the game programming my be complicated to test for some other way to pick different winners.

 

Edited April 13 by von Ozbourne

[EddieSpaghetti]

I only played a few full seasons in '95 (when I was a kid), but I do remember the awards ceremony being both laggy and, at times, nonsensical. Had no idea why until now. In '97 & '98 I only ever simulated the season to see what happens, so I never wondered much about how the winners were tabulated. Just assumed it all made sense. Clearly not. And even some of the newer (or "newer" now, how time flies) games mess it up. I think it's NHL 15, Jonathan Drouin isn't marked as a rookie, even though he'd never played an NHL game at that point. I played a season with somebody and traded for him, but he wasn't showing up in the rookie scoring leaders. Turned out he's just not marked as a rookie for some reason. I know there was a lot of drama surrounding him and his eventual NHL debut, but I don't know why that'd impact his status in a video game.

But I've played tons of '96 and had no idea that Conn Smythe "bug" was in there. I assumed it was just the playoff points leader—but that was always me, so I never had a situation like you're talking about crop up. I usually play on Pro difficulty with 10 minute periods, line changes on, offsides on, and penalties on. I've found over the years, if I go full sim, and play 20 minute periods on All-Star, all that does is balloon the save totals to ridiculous proportions. The goalies make some saves they probably wouldn't in Pro, but in the end I score just as much. I put up ridiculous point totals, but still don't win every game. Just a supermajority of them.




*I thought I screenshotted my playoff stats from my last season, with the Ducks, but I can't seem to find them.

Having three trophies that are all awarded on the exact same information is silly. The Hart and Pearson I get. It's a Genesis game, you have limited resources, and they're both real trophies. You gotta do what you've gotta do. But adding another one that's just a re-skin... why?

And I saw in one earlier posts that you fixed the playoff bracket card graphic. That always irritated me—to the point that, in my head, I just imagine I'm replaying the '94-'95 season if there'd been no lockout. 

Edited April 14 by EddieSpaghetti