NHL 94: 2025 Edition by Adam Catalyst

[Octopolus]

42 minutes ago, UltraMagnus said:

Im working on all the roms needed from 1909-2025. but ill be going in reverse.

this is amazing! so do you know if these roms work on the mega drive mini console? 

[Alistair Johnston]

Looks great! Can’t wait to give it a try.

[Snowboo]

Great job with the box art. Would you consider including individual box art images (spine, back, clear art logo, screenshots)? I use launchbox to keep track of my library on my computer. I end up having to use some artwork from the original game to make everything look so pretty. It even has 3D boxes to look at and rotate. I'm sure many others would appreciate a full collection of artwork.

 

 

https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/389213-nhl-94-2023-24-edition

https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/638-nhl-94

Edited August 25 by Snowboo

[AdamCatalyst]

Thanks for writing in! Sorry, no time right now. The PNG I provide is very high quality, you can definitely use it to adapt the needed components for LaunchBox. I'll put a pin in this email for a later date though. Not saying no. Just not right now.

[Snowboo]

1 hour ago, AdamCatalyst said:

Thanks for writing in! Sorry, no time right now. The PNG I provide is very high quality, you can definitely use it to adapt the needed components for LaunchBox. I'll put a pin in this email for a later date though. Not saying no. Just not right now.

No worries friend! I was suggesting adding it to maybe next season's version if you end up continuing this amazing hack.

[Drezz]

On 8/10/2025 at 12:07 PM, UltraMagnus said:

Im working on all the roms needed from 1909-2025. but ill be going in reverse.

Same here, but for NHL 94.

[Sean]

35 minutes ago, Drezz said:

Same here, but for NHL 94.

👀

[towlBwan_knalB]

On 6/2/2025 at 5:01 PM, AdamCatalyst said:

@towlBwan_knalB I finally got the error that you have been reporting! This is good, gives me more insight. You seem to have a unique knack for triggering this crash. Would you be willing and able to privately test out a potential fix?

Sure! sorry It took me so long to answer!

[mrg]

On 8/10/2025 at 10:30 AM, Octopolus said:

hey there everybody! im new to this place and to these roms and this is absolutely awesome what you guys make here for us so that we can play the sega mega drive (genesis) nhl games with todays teams and updated rosters 😍

so i have not tried any rom to play on my pc yet. the plan is to get a sega mega drive (genesis) mini console, mod it with project lunar so that i can add roms to it. so the question is: does these roms that you guys make work on the sega genesis/mega drive? have anybody tried them?

from what i understand both .bin and .md roms work on that console

I play it on the Genesis mini with hakchi2 CE installed on it without any issues. You need to install the Genesis Xtreme GX core on it to get the game to work properly (otherwise you'll notice the goalies face the wrong way and all the shots are backhand).

[Octopolus]

16 hours ago, mrg said:

I play it on the Genesis mini with hakchi2 CE installed on it without any issues. You need to install the Genesis Xtreme GX core on it to get the game to work properly (otherwise you'll notice the goalies face the wrong way and all the shots are backhand).

Thank you for your reply. It works great for me to doing exactly how you do it. Are you using any shader?

[mrg]

4 hours ago, Octopolus said:

Thank you for your reply. It works great for me to doing exactly how you do it. Are you using any shader?

No

[Octopolus]

4 hours ago, mrg said:

No

alright thanks m8

[whiznant]

Hi Mr.Catalyst! First of all thanks to all who contributed so much for all the painstaking work you all have done on NHL’94! Been playing this continuously since, well ‘94 (actually ‘92 with the original). Avid fan. I have a few, what I think, could be good suggestions for possible additions to this already great mod.

Reason I’m posting for the first time is, I’m wondering if (and excuse the naivety of this question) there’s a way to apply all of the gameplay (puck size, physics , skating etc…) of the 2025 patch to the original nhl ‘94 roster? I’ve been trying to do this using the online patchers and the add-ons that come with your rom to no avail. Also, I can’t get the “No horizontal camera movement” patch to apply to the “preemptive 2026 summer…” rom you released. Not sure if this is intended to be possible or not?

Would appreciate the help from anyone who has any input. Thanks fellas.

Michael W

 

 

 

Edited September 2 by whiznant

[mrg]

Noticing a bug on v3.8, haven't tested extensively, but been playing 2 players as teammates and after scoring a goal and doing an instant replay, when the faceoff happens; the background is missing for the "zoomed in faceoff" in the top left corner, you just see the players and the ref.

[AdamCatalyst]

@whiznant Nice to meet you! Welcome!

OK, so I think you might be getting two different ROMs confused. I haven't released anything in months, the "preemptive 2026 summer…" release would be someone else's, which would explain the differences. You'll have to chat with them about porting any features or elements from my ROM, and they can always contact me to try and troubleshoot an incompatibility. I've only test the limited camera movement patch on wide screen mode ROMs. If you are trying to apply it to a wide display mode ROM and it is not working, please send it to me, and I will take a look!

[AdamCatalyst]

3 hours ago, mrg said:

Noticing a bug on v3.8, haven't tested extensively, but been playing 2 players as teammates and after scoring a goal and doing an instant replay, when the faceoff happens; the background is missing for the "zoomed in faceoff" in the top left corner, you just see the players and the ref.

oh no! I've never seen that one. Can you send me…

- hardware / emulator used.

- frequency that this happens to you.

- any game conditions that you might recall corresponding to the bug.

- screen cap, if possible.

Any and all info is appreciated. At the moment I have never seen that error, so I will need to get some more info to be able to track down what might be happening.

NEVERMIND, I was able to recreate the error! And yeah, it is an error on my part. In order to stop certain glitches from happening, I was over-zealously clearing either video RAM or a drawing plane in Instant Replay mode. I can definitely fix this, but it will take some time. Thanks for the super accurate report. Sorry about the glitch.

FYI, I am 99% positive v3.7 does not have that glitch, since it would have been introduced with other bug fixes. Here is the 3.7 release in case you prefer it.

EDIT. I have a working solution, but it needs test playing, which I don;t have time for. Anyone who wants to help with that, please PM me and I will send you a v.3.9 tester.

 

Edited September 3 by AdamCatalyst

[AdamCatalyst]

On 8/28/2025 at 6:05 PM, towlBwan_knalB said:

Sure! sorry It took me so long to answer!

No prob, but guess what, I figured it out! I wrote a patch to fix it in v3.8. Should never happen again! Thanks again for your diligent reporting on this. I couldn't have fixed it without you. You gave me lots of great clues to figure out what I was looking for in the code.
 

 

Edited September 3 by AdamCatalyst

[whiznant]

2 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

@whiznant Nice to meet you! Welcome!

OK, so I think you might be getting two different ROMs confused. I haven't released anything in months, the "preemptive 2026 summer…" release would be someone else's, which would explain the differences. You'll have to chat with them about porting any features or elements from my ROM, and they can always contact me to try and troubleshoot an incompatibility. I've only test the limited camera movement patch on wide screen mode ROMs. If you are trying to apply it to a wide display mode ROM and it is not working, please send it to me, and I will take a look!

Ah. My bad. For some reason I thought that was yours. However, the other part of my question remains, how to get your NHL 94: 2025 Edition with original ‘94 rosters? This seems like an elementary ask but I have no experience with hacking ROMs. Is there a version like this floating around already?

To be honest, just having the puck sized more appropriately and not the size of a dinner plate adds multitudes to the experience for me. Could be even smaller if you ask me. I can’t even play another version now! Literally! This is something I’ve been wishing for for a long time.
 But I like the nostalgia of the players from the original ‘94 era since players like Mario and Gretz are my idols to this day.  I’d like to have that as an alternate way to play vs the current rosters. 

Many kind regards,

Michael W

[AdamCatalyst]

23 minutes ago, whiznant said:

To be honest, just having the puck sized more appropriately and not the size of a dinner plate adds multitudes to the experience for me. Could be even smaller if you ask me. I can’t even play another version now! Literally! This is something I’ve been wishing for for a long time.

LOL you literally have me laughing out loud. Yeah, me too.

I'm sorry to say no-one has done what you are asking for. Folks around here tend to work on their own ROM hacks, rather than modifying others, so we don't get variants like that. And me, I'm not so interested in the original rosters, I like the updated stuff, so I don't invest the time. 

There PROBABLY isn't an easy fix for that you are asking for, UNLESS you are willing to get under the hood with '94, and start out the way I started out, downloading tutorial form the forum, and trying to do one single thing. Like replace the puck sprites. It doesn't require incredible technical knowledge or anything, but it does take some time to wrap one's head around the basics of what you are even doing. I knew NOTHING about this stuff when I started. But if you cared enough, and had the time to spare, I'd recommend finding the basic tutorials on the site to use TileMolester (TIleM), opening up the ROM, seeing how to graphics work, and then opening up my ROM, and trying to copy and paste elements from one to the other. It would be an insanely complex task to port it all over, but the puck? Totally doable. 

Another option would be to take my ROM, and re-do the rosters, etc. manually. There are a number of good tools on the site to help you with that kind of thing, but I've messed with the ROM so much, you'd probably better off starting from the OG, and just adding in some modern graphical touches.

 

[whiznant]

Thank you for your time in answering all my questions. I really do appreciate it. I most likely will start dinking around with hacking it during the winter/spring when I’m not working. That is if the wife doesn’t overload me with honey-do’s! I’ll start with decreasing the size of the puck. That seems like a good one to start with. I actually do have the mentality for the tedious stuff, just a matter of having the time to dedicate to it. I’d like to share a few of my ideas with you, if you’re interested. Should I PM or just put them here?

ps Someone appears to be working on putting fighting back in the game which I’m really excited for! People are beta testing it now. Do I have enough clout to become a tester LOL. ?

thanks again,

michael

[AdamCatalyst]

48 minutes ago, whiznant said:

I’ll start with decreasing the size of the puck. That seems like a good one to start with. I actually do have the mentality for the tedious stuff, just a matter of having the time to dedicate to it. I’d like to share a few of my ideas with you, if you’re interested. Should I PM or just put them here?

That really is a manageable one! Once you get a basic understanding of how to find and modify the puck pixels, contact me with a PM, and I can give you something to help copy paste elements from my ROM in TileM.

Feel free to share any feedback, but to be honest, I don’t usually pursue other peoples ideas. I have a roadmap of what I want to try to achieve, and more ideas that I could ever get to. Of course I'd be curious to hear what's on your mind, but just don't be disappointed if I never get to trying them out. I do try to always jump on glitches & bugs, and opportunities to make them game better for everyone, even if they were not issues that were affecting my enjoyment.

 

48 minutes ago, whiznant said:

ps Someone appears to be working on putting fighting back in the game which I’m really excited for! People are beta testing it now. Do I have enough clout to become a tester LOL. ?

Why not! Go ask. It's a small community. I'm sure others will appreciate another fresh face around here!

 

 

Edited September 3 by AdamCatalyst

[jmj]

This looks like a great rom. Will this work on Krikzz Everdrive cartridges? I assume it will but perhaps someone has tested it and can verify?

BTW, maybe this is discussed elsewhere but any plans to update the rom for 25-26 season?

[AdamCatalyst]

Hi there @jmj!

I don't know for sure if it will work with an Everdrive, but it really should, I've tried to keep it original hardware compatible. Please do report back if you have any issues with it!

[AdamCatalyst]

OK, I haven't really been discussion 25–26 publicly recently, but it's been on my mind. Here is the answer to the question.

tldr; I might not release a v25–26, and almost certainly not anytime soon.

the long version. I started heavily on v.26 in January, and made great progress. I actually design to a "roadmap", where potential features are allocated to different version concepts, and a roadmap is developed in advance for a specific concept and feature-set. The roadmap for v.26 was/is very ambitious for myself, with many interdependent changes that cannot happen in isolation.

As luck would have it something very good happened to me this summer. It's bettered my life overall, but it's meant that I've had no time to work on the ROM these past two months, when I had planned to be making the most significant progress. The ROM is currently in an un-releaseable state, requiring extensive further work and play-testing. And I'm only talking about the codebase and gameplay. I've not even finished drawing the Mammoth's logos yet, let alone touched new rosters lines, photos, etc, and all the other stuff that go on top of that.

At this moment in time, I don't know when, if ever, I will have time to complete v.26. It’s been suggested to me that I could just slap a new splash page and logo on v.25, update the rosters, lines, logos, and photos, and it would make most users happy. I don't know if this is true, but I wish I could do that for people. The truth is, at the moment that doesn't interest me very much. Part of the reason I continue to do these ROMs, is because I am not an old-school purist like many of the greats on this website. I want to play a modernized version that continues to evolve every year, and I really enjoy figuring out how to do. It’s like sitting down with a very difficult but even more rewarding puzzle for me. Furthermore, it doesn't sound appealing to me to skip updating the codebase, and jump to splash, logos, photos, etc. I've been doing a lot of visual design work lately for other unrelated projects, and I just don't have the passion at the moment to work on more graphics in my free time.

I still think I have one, great, ROM left in me. And I would love to get it done and share it with you. But I can't promise when, or even if that will ever happen.

So that’s where we are at. I reserve the right to change my mind at a moment's notice, but for now, nothing is happening, and there are no firm plans to make anything happen. Once the hockey season starts, I'm looking forward to playing along with some of the great ROMs I know my colleagues have in the pipeline. Who knows what will happen as the season progresses.
cheers,

-Adam

p.s. FYI, there will be one more release of the v.25. Someone has discovered an obvious graphic glitch in wide display mode, and I just need some play testers to let me know if my solution has any unforeseen consequences. PM me if you can help with that.

Edited September 5 by AdamCatalyst

[Drezz]

Adam, you've done plenty. Thank you tremendously for your years of dedication and hard work on these yearly updates. You earned a break long ago, yet you still manage to whip out a banger every year that excels over the last. I can only imagine how exciting and exhausting it all is - perhaps there are others who will carry the torch going forward.

 

[bcrt2000]

I am both happy for you for whatever happened in your life but also incredibly saddened. It was going to take 6-12 months I think for my bigger mod projects to start bearing some fruit, but I was eager to work with you once I had something. Either way, thank you for all you've done for the community, and hope to have you back one day on the creation side.

[RT1977]

Is there going to be any chance this year AdamCatalyst  for a NHL 2026 season of your typical Rom series? 

[RT1977]

Sorry Man for asking.  Seems like you had or got alot going on. So I assume it's a No for a 2026 Rom. Take Care of yourself Adam and I can just fire up your older Roms on my Emulator from time to time.

[SrGenesis]

On 11/8/2025 at 5:12 PM, RT1977 said:

Sorry Man for asking.  Seems like you had or got alot going on. So I assume it's a No for a 2026 Rom. Take Care of yourself Adam and I can just fire up your older Roms on my Emulator from time to time.

No 2026 season? So I assume it's a No for a 2026 Rom? Thanks for your information.

[RT1977]

10 minutes ago, SrGenesis said:

No 2026 season? So I assume it's a No for a 2026 Rom? Thanks for your information.

There actually are three different  2026 Roms coming out I think. But not by Adam Catalyst. One Rom is for Nhl94 Genesis by Von Osbourne (not sure i spelled his username right), another is a SNES version of NHL94 and a new update is planned soon for that by Kidwasted. And the last NHl26 in the works is for NHL95 by Ultramagnus.  Ultramagnus just came back yesterday or so to make Roms again. Adam Catalyst and somebody named Naples39 are currently on Hiatus. I think Naples39 left this site because he was upset with someone else? I think "The Sauce" also is no longer making his Roms anymore too. 

Edited November 12 by RT1977