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Hockey Stars 1 [the proper one]


von Ozbourne

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Recent breakthroughs developed the necessity to Revisit this one, but then the question was what to call it. It's not an update since the original 30-team game was abandoned in favour of a ground up Rebuild with 32 teams. So what "Re" word applies here? Remake? Remaster" Redux? Rewind?

Nah. On second thought, to paraphrase a '90s icon,
Maestro Fresh Wes - LargeUp
"That previous one was just a mic check."

Or maybe "Retcon" is the word I'll use now. So yeah, you might find some other version on the interwebs out there, but that one isn't the Real version. You might call it a prototype, or a poor excuse for a hack that was put together by some hack, whatever. Time to Reload.
image.jpeg

 

Back in 1988 SNK released arguably the best baseball game ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

image.png

It was loads of fun back in the day [as long as your Nintendo's 10NES chip didn't erroneously flash the memory and erase your save] and despite the engine being reused for three more, less successful, NES entries, as well as seeing two pretty solid, but much less charming sequels on the NEO•GEO MVS and AES systems, which were later given NEO•GEO Pocket/Colour ports, it remains a classic to this day. So in reverence to that game, we're going to try to fix the story of what the hockey version would be.

The backstory for this one is that it was released in 1992 by Romstar [SNK's North American distribution arm in the late '80s/early '90s] on the Sega Genesis, the first Hockey Stars features many recognizable teams and player names from it's baseball contemporaries as well as familiar box art.

image.png
Although it looks like it was completed with some of the prototype art as screen photos. Eh well, these things happen.

On to some familiar art... Okay so some of the assets were good enough to keep from the prototype.
image.png  image.png
Including the trademark stark white splash screen and "Be a Champ" words of encouragement.
Might have taken the advise of reformatting the title screen to the more common English layout.

image.png  image.png
The main menu got a face lift thanks to some amazing "behind the scenes" work and calls back to design elements from some of the baseball games, while the Pre-game intro screen has some fixes and a new subtle background. Teams are still divided up by league; You will find mention of the "Exciting", "Fighting", "Professional" and "Legends" leagues in the team intros. These are not exclusive in Versus play as in the NEO•GEO releases, but will determine what division you play in during the Playoff mode.

image.png  image.png
Although not as sharp as you will find on AES hardware, full colour cartoony depictions of player photos are still present and take their art style from the previous "Professional" game. And just as in most other SNK games, the pre-match presenter has another SNK character making a cameo in Athena from Psycho Soldier. Got her moved down to line up nicer with her text block though. The jumbotron gets a Stars-y facelift and the arena looks bigger, while the classic Zamboni returns with a perspective shift.

image.png  image.png  image.png
Each player has an individual photo and stats you can look up. The fixed View Player screen gets a treatment similar to the NES games, although the NES wouldn't have been able to handle the colour shifting. In another similarity to the Baseball games, player stats seem to be directly imported as they are wildly different. Meaning that play-style can vary quite drastically even among line mates. Some may wish to play with line changes off and create a "super line" of each team's best players, but if you are looking for the added challenge of having to adapt to each player's varying abilities, you may want to keep line changes on.
As an aside, as one of the now six "Create-a-Team" options, the Turtles are the "Veterans" and submitted the old photos. While each of the other teams take their skill set theme from the original baseball game as well.

image.png  image.png
The Playoff Cup from Professional makes a return, only this time it is put on a pedestal as hockey deserves. The colour coding now makes sense as each "League" is contained to a divisional playoff format and the faint watermark on traditional green is carried through.

image.png  image.png
There's more of that SNK branding...
And since "Stars" is in the name they get some adjustments and prominent features as well.

image.png  image.png
At least the 3-stars icon isn't another SNK logo. AI shooters could use some help though.

 

There, that's a little better.

Hockey Stars 1 [1.2].bin

 

Edited by von Ozbourne
Fixed ROM
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1 hour ago, BlueJacketRebel said:

Do you happen to have a teams ranking list?

I guess there's this. It's a bit misleading though as the ratings are based on team average and some players have high stats in some aspects and low stats in others. The inconsistencies are so that you will have a vastly different experience depending on if you play with line changes on or off.

image.png

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6 hours ago, von Ozbourne said:

I guess there's this. It's a bit misleading though as the ratings are based on team average and some players have high stats in some aspects and low stats in others. The inconsistencies are so that you will have a vastly different experience depending on if you play with line changes on or off.

image.png

Where in Gods grown earth can I find this program above. Or js it only for that 92 or 93 rom.

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4 hours ago, UltraMagnus said:

Where in Gods grown earth can I find this program above. Or js it only for that 92 or 93 rom.

It's EARE, but it's only for 94.

I need to roll these abilities into NOSE..

 

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9 hours ago, smozoma said:

It's EARE, but it's only for 94.

I need to roll these abilities into NOSE..

That would be pretty cool when done.

Curious though. Would that mean that the functionality could be expanded to the other games? Or at least '92 and '93 given their similarities anyway.
I get that '95 is a bit different with its season mode and different simulation settings, and '96-'98 don't even support default match settings given the different way the menus are set up. Not going to lie that that would be awesome if it can be done though.

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8 minutes ago, von Ozbourne said:

That would be pretty cool when done.

Curious though. Would that mean that the functionality could be expanded to the other games? Or at least '92 and '93 given their similarities anyway.
I get that '95 is a bit different with its season mode and different simulation settings, and '96-'98 don't even support default match settings given the different way the menus are set up. Not going to lie that that would be awesome if it can be done though.

NOSE reads 95 and other versions (not sure if it does allll of them?), so I'd just have to figure out how it treats the games differently and find the relevant bytes in the other games (or outsource the work for people to find the bytes for me and I update NOSE with them)

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20 hours ago, von Ozbourne said:

I guess there's this. It's a bit misleading though as the ratings are based on team average and some players have high stats in some aspects and low stats in others. The inconsistencies are so that you will have a vastly different experience depending on if you play with line changes on or off.

image.png

@wboyis this possible to bring into NOSE. Not even sure how long this would take. As it would be an amazing add to NOSE. @smozomadoes EARE do this for 95 expanded roms.

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2 minutes ago, UltraMagnus said:

@wboyis this possible to bring into NOSE. Not even sure how long this would take. As it would be an amazing add to NOSE. @smozomadoes EARE do this for 95 expanded roms.

I have the NOSE source up on github (private, but anyone who wants to work on it just let me know and I can add you to the project).

Those shouldn't be too hard to add to NOSE

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Just now, smozoma said:

I have the NOSE source up on github (private, but anyone who wants to work on it just let me know and I can add you to the project).

Those shouldn't be too hard to add to NOSE

I'm not that knowledgeable of getting that to work. Really beyond my scope of knowledge unless it's not too tricky.

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1 minute ago, UltraMagnus said:

I'm not that knowledgeable of getting that to work. Really beyond my scope of knowledge unless it's not too tricky.

I'll see about running some "NOSE programming tutorials" in the coming weeks, see if we can get a few people trained up on it and working together...

Anyone interested, please send me your email address on Discord and I'll add you to the GitHub (source code repository). UltraMagnus is already signed up!

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  • 3 months later...

I used to play a lot of the 1st Baseball Stars but I never played the 2nd one... just out of curiosity tho, i loaded it up...  And I noticed that it actually has two Title Screens:  One has a bigger font, which is kinda cool.  So, I made an alternative Title Screen for this using the larger font.  Your Hockey Stars 2 Title Screen is really cool:  This one has a Hockey Stars 2 only because i ripped it directly from Baseball Stars 2 ...So, just ignore that one, as it's merely an artifact leftover from doing all the bit manipulation.

...Also, if you need more Female portraits, there's an entire team of girl players on Baseball Stars 1 called the Lovely Ladies.

 

HockeyStars.zip

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On 4/9/2023 at 4:34 AM, von Ozbourne said:

Back in 1988 SNK released arguably the best baseball game ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

FALSE. The superiority of Baseball Stars as the best NES baseball game is inarguable.

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On 8/17/2023 at 11:50 AM, AdamCatalyst said:

FALSE. The superiority of Baseball Stars as the best NES baseball game is inarguable.

Well fine, I suppose if I wanted to get pedantic about it, I could say that I am in fact capable of making a series of statements on the many aspects about the game that profess its superiority.

What I would not be capable of however, is credibly refuting these assertions.

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