REQUEST: NHL 96/97/98: 2026 Edition

[Octopolus]

whichever is the least hard to crack for the new nhl season 🙇

Edited September 13, 2025 by Octopolus

[von Ozbourne]

If you're looking to make a roster update, I've done some stuff with all of them and would probably say that '98 is your best bet for a starting point.

Caveats being that including the All-Star teams, the game only has 31 active slots [plus two hidden teams, but they replace the East/West teams when activated]
So you'd need to pick your least favourite team to omit.

Season mode has been cracked in that the schedule order can be edited, but not to have the standings include more than the original 26 teams.
So you'd have to pick your six least favourite teams to omit from the season.

Unlike '94, no one has made an expanded ROM for '96-'98, so you would be at the mercy of the memory space available for graphics. This just means that without being able to relocate the offsets for logos and such, some attention needs to be paid to how some logos are sized and organized. New York Islanders are a specific one that comes to mind in that the season mode thumbnail logo is smaller than every other team. Why? Ask Thomas Fessler? Some shenanigans can be pulled to switch up the alphabetical order of teams to avoid having to rearrange every logo at least.

The title and menu screens are also limited in space available, but if you're only thinking of changing the year number and keeping everything else intact, that shouldn't be too hard to manage.

All this said, I have clearly thought about seeing how feasible a current season version of '98 would be, but my free time is already taken up with other projects, so I'm not likely to get around to it any time in the foreseeable future.

[Octopolus]

11 hours ago, von Ozbourne said:

If you're looking to make a roster update, I've done some stuff with all of them and would probably say that '98 is your best bet for a starting point.

Caveats being that including the All-Star teams, the game only has 31 active slots [plus two hidden teams, but they replace the East/West teams when activated]
So you'd need to pick your least favourite team to omit.

Season mode has been cracked in that the schedule order can be edited, but not to have the standings include more than the original 26 teams.
So you'd have to pick your six least favourite teams to omit from the season.

Unlike '94, no one has made an expanded ROM for '96-'98, so you would be at the mercy of the memory space available for graphics. This just means that without being able to relocate the offsets for logos and such, some attention needs to be paid to how some logos are sized and organized. New York Islanders are a specific one that comes to mind in that the season mode thumbnail logo is smaller than every other team. Why? Ask Thomas Fessler? Some shenanigans can be pulled to switch up the alphabetical order of teams to avoid having to rearrange every logo at least.

The title and menu screens are also limited in space available, but if you're only thinking of changing the year number and keeping everything else intact, that shouldn't be too hard to manage.

All this said, I have clearly thought about seeing how feasible a current season version of '98 would be, but my free time is already taken up with other projects, so I'm not likely to get around to it any time in the foreseeable future.

i forgot to include "request" in the title, im sorry about that.

since i never play nothing else than "regular games" (no season or playoffs) i would be just fine without the worst team in NHL, that would be san jose probably. nothing but a cool logo, i would never play with them or against them anyway. i believe nhl 98 is a much better game than nhl 94 so its totally worth it if you ask me.

and when it comes to changes i personally just wanna have the current teams and their rosters. thats the important thing for me. if some other changes to the mod would worsen the grahics then it wouldnt be worth doing them i think

 

 

Edited September 14, 2025 by Octopolus

[Drezz]

On to the list it goes...

[Octopolus]

1 hour ago, Drezz said:

On to the list it goes...

Is that long huh 😆