Editing team banners - NHL 95 genesis

[Griffo1979]

Hey there, I'm new at ROM hacking.  Wondering how to edit the team banners in NHL 95 Genesis version.  It looks like some of the team banners share letters with other teams, so editing one screws up another.  All I'm looking to really do is change the cities/nicknames for a few teams.  Thanks!

[segathon]

@UltraMagnusis the big brain on this.  I Tagged him, but not sure how often he get back on.

[kingraph]

If you're using the 34 team ROM, here are the references on how to change the team banners: 

 

If you're using the base ROM, that's quite a bit more involved because as you mention, the banners share tiles.  

[Griffo1979]

Thanks!

 

In regards to using the base rom, exactly how involved are we talking…??  I’m assuming there’s no “simple” way to free up space to where tile-sharing isn’t necessary?

Edited December 19, 2025 by Griffo1979

[kingraph]

16 hours ago, Griffo1979 said:

Thanks!

 

In regards to using the base rom, exactly how involved are we talking…??  I’m assuming there’s no “simple” way to free up space to where tile-sharing isn’t necessary?

From my memory, I believe there was a decent amount of free space in the base '95 ROM.   While I shuffled things around, I didn't have to expand it from 2MB so creating space should not be an issue, especially if you're keeping to 28 teams.  

If you have some experience here, you will have to find the locations and pointers of the original banners - there may be two sets, I forget -- and in '95 there is the team names on the scoreboard banner, as well as the calendar/season mode initials.  

You then have to find new space to create the new image with no shared tiles and change the pointers to the new location.  

I explain how to remove shared tiles here: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/19978-how-to-decompress-graphics-in-sega-genesis/

So this really depends on how much experience you have here.  If you've done some graphic editing and moving, are familiar with hex editing and Tile Molestor, I think this is manageable.  Having no experience, this will take quite a bit of time to understand.  

 

[von Ozbourne]

If I may interject with an example, this is a version of the NHL95 base game ROM that I was able to make without having to share many tiles. It did consist of minimizing the number of tiles required for each team and being lucky that it worked out.

I was just learning how '95 was put together at the time of making this mod so there was a bit of trial and error, but essentially it came down to getting all of the important bits in there and then a lot of counting tiles when it came to the hex editor portion. All of those striped bits at the bottom represent the location of the hex code that determines how the banner tiles are arranged. The banners are 11 tiles wide, so you can set your hex editor to [11x2] 22 bytes per row to get the data lined up, but then it's counting and putting in the numbers. [I'm glazing over a lot, but this is basically the workflow once you're familiar with the basics]

 Another option I'd used before was mono-spaced fonts and sharing all of the letters, but that's leaning into the tile counting even further.

Actually it looks like I used this method for the team banners in the Pause Menu since there are less tiles to work with. Should probably reiterate that the 34-team mod is a little easier to work with in this regard. 

Edited December 20, 2025 by von Ozbourne