NHL Hockey ['92] and EA Hockey [Base ROM with fixes]

[von Ozbourne]

Figured I'd post these here.

These are essentially the base ROMs of the original NHL Hockey [NTSC] and EA Hockey [PAL] with two minor fixes.

First up: Finally figured out why the away team bench players had weird colours. They use different sprites from the home team... but... why? Corrected the sprites to match the home team and display the right colours.

North Stars are darker because the original game was using the pants colours for the entire uniform.

Using mod of EA Hockey to better display colour issue. Old yoke for both Home and Away teams used skin highlight tone and sweater in the pants colour.
New sprites have the bench players' sweaters match the players on the ice. Also shortened the pants so they don't go down over the knee anymore.

Fix number 2:

All-Star teams are teed up for Playoff mode shenanigans/personal modding options in NHL Hockey.

United States and Yugoslavia are available to try to win the EA Hockey League playoffs in EA Hockey.

Fix #3 Penalty box player socks.

Problem with these ones is that unlike the bench players where the home and away players use different sprites for whatever reason, the penalty box players use the same sprites, but different palettes. Unfortunately I was not able to figure out where the code that determined this is located. If anyone can be bothered to figure this out, let me know eh.

Never mind. Many thanks to @kingraph for figuring that one out.

92 - NHL Hockey+Teams Fix.bin  92 - EA Hockey (E)+Teams Fix.bin

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by von Ozbourne
reuploaded updated ROM

[77]

id love to see quieter music in 92 & 93, the title music is so f**kin loud

[The Dopefish]

On 12/10/2023 at 7:46 AM, 77 said:

id love to see quieter music in 92 & 93, the title music is so f**kin loud

Counterpoint: that music is not loud enough!

[kingraph]

On 12/10/2023 at 2:56 AM, von Ozbourne said:

Problem with these ones is that unlike the bench players where the home and away players use different sprites for whatever reason, the penalty box players use the same sprites, but different palettes. Unfortunately I was not able to figure out where the code that determined this is located. If anyone can be bothered to figure this out, let me know eh.

 

I figured this one out for you.  There are three locations that need to be changed from 0100 481D to 0100 681D

73F18
73F4E
73F84

In short, the socks are a 1x2 block. So the "0100" signifies that and the tile of the socks starts at 1D.  It's inverted (add the x8xx) and originally using the third palette (home team) which is 4.  You have to change that to the away team, which is 6.  There are 3 instances of this as you can have 3 players in the box and each time uses a different location.

Many thanks to @AdamCatalyst for giving me the starting idea in his "How To: Change the Colour Palette..."

Happy to put a more extensive "How To" on how I found the tiles, and worked my way through in the future if anyone is interested.  In the meantime, enjoy!

[von Ozbourne]

2 hours ago, kingraph said:

I figured this one out for you.  There are three locations that need to be changed from 0100 481D to 0100 681D

73F18
73F4E
73F84

In short, the socks are a 1x2 block. So the "0100" signifies that and the tile of the socks starts at 1D.  It's inverted (add the x8xx) and originally using the third palette (home team) which is 4.  You have to change that to the away team, which is 6.  There are 3 instances of this as you can have 3 players in the box and each time uses a different location.

Many thanks to @AdamCatalyst for giving me the starting idea in his "How To: Change the Colour Palette..."

Happy to put a more extensive "How To" on how I found the tiles, and worked my way through in the future if anyone is interested.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Well shoot. There was my problem. I was looking in the animation code after the penalty box player sprites. And here it was hiding in the code before the sprites. Thanks eh!

Actually if anyone is interested, a simple Find of the same Hex values, with including the preceding bits, worked to locate the same code in EA Hockey.
012E 0100 481D @ 72AB4
0137 0100 481D @ 72AEA
0142 0100 481D @ 72B20

I like it when stuff just works.

I'll re-upload the ROMs including this fix in the original post.

 

[EagleXIII]

On 12/10/2023 at 7:56 AM, von Ozbourne said:

United States and Yugoslavia are available to try to win the EA Hockey League playoffs in EA Hockey.

I first heard about this a couple months ago and it kinda confused me, because I vividly remember owning EA Hockey as a kid, but I don't remember either team being unable to compete in the playoffs. I dunno about Yugoslavia, but I definitely would have noticed USA not being able to. I figured I must have misremembered but...

I owned the Double Header version, an official PAL exclusive released around '93, or at least after they dropped the EASN branding. Sure enough when I fired up a ROM, Yugoslavia and USA are playable in the playoff mode. Which means they went back and fixed it up for this release, along with a few other things like the EA Sports branding.

I dunno if anything else like the bench sprites got fixed up, or if it has any use for the community, but thought it was worth noting if anyone was interested in what other changes they made to the code.

[EagleXIII]

Double post so the edit doesn’t get overlooked, as it turns out I was wrong, and misremembered my experience as a kid and from a couple months ago!

Just started up EA Hockey via Double Header, and Yugoslavia and USA aren’t selectable for the playoffs. But they do appear as opponents — I must have got my home/away teams mixed up when cycling through the matchups last time I checked.

I clearly lacked basic observational skills as a kid, and apparently they never improved.

My bad 😬

Edited December 22, 2023 by EagleXIII