NHL '26 - '95 Edition

 

Better LATE THAN NEVER FOLKS. To some clamor and fanfare, NHL 95 fans rejoice! We have an updated NHL '95 ROM for the 2025/2026 season!

 

Obligatory thanks and acknowledgements:

 

Expanded 34-Team ROM: Thanks to @kingraph. Built on the expanded architecture to include all modern franchises. Updated ice logo for nearly all of the 32 NHL Teams

 

I’ve looked to modernize much of the gameplay icons, including some modernized UI fonts, assets, banners, and scoreboards (A lot of thanks to @UltraMagnus for laying the foundation for a ton of assets with his brilliant work.)

 

Playoff / Season schedule bug fixes applied so brackets and standings don't crash deep into the post-season, thanks to @smozoma for the 128+ point bug fix!

 

Full Widescreen mode, with a huge shout-out to Paul_met for his work in expanding the game resolution.

(Standard Definition)

(Widescreen)

 

Season Mode Limitations: Please Note! Due to the hardcoded limits of the '95 Season Mode, the teams are not in alphabetical order (for divisional alignments). The game can process only 26 teams for a Season playthrough. Therefore, only the first 26 teams in the ROM are playable in Season Mode.

 

Unplayable in Season Mode (Teams 27-32): Utah, Carolina, Columbus, Ottawa, Anaheim, and Seattle. (We're currently looking into whether it's possible to hack the engine to include all 32 teams in the future! I’m not sure, but I will take a hard look this year.)

 

New ice is white, and the rink colors are updated. Player icons, etc.

Features for 1.05 (Released: March 8th 2026)

 

34-Team ROM Architecture implemented.

Uniform and player card updates to native 3bpp format.

Updated center ice logos and decompressed UI elements.

Playoff bracket bug fix applied in season mode, where teams with 128+ would be kicked out of the playoffs.

Teams 1-26were  mapped for Playable Season Mode, with the divisions as close to accurate as I could get.

 

Note (Again): Utah, Carolina, Columbus, Ottawa, Anaheim, and Seattle are playable in Exhibition/Playoffs but not currently supported in full Season Mode.

 

 

 

NHL 95 - 2026 Edition v1.05.bin

 

 

 

Edited March 8Mar 8 by vancecookcobxin
duplicate pics

Very nice to see a New Rom. Also for the 2026 season, and based off Nhl95!

My only main issue (for me anyway)  I have noticed is  various players had the wrong handedness (many other Roms have this issue sometimes). Very much noticed it on the NHL Legends and Allstar teams players. But also some players on the 2026 teams such as Brady Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Rakell, etc. Several players have the wrong handedness. 

 

Sam Reinhart on Florida is also accidentally named Sam Reinhast. 

I'm very glad however to see this type of Rom and also being another New Rom in general  too being released and at this very point in time. 👍🙂

Edited March 9Mar 9 by RT1977

Ahh! Appreciate the heads up on that @RT1977 I'll get on it!

Edited March 8Mar 8 by vancecookcobxin

This looks great! A nice update to the tireless work of UltraMagnus - we need more folks to tackle these ROMS and keep it fresh!

im very very happy to see this and thank you to all guys involved creating this magic game 🤩

however..im having huge problems playing it. when one player gets injured the game completely freezes and every time the opponent team scores the games freezes again 😕

im playing it using batocera and i have tried switch the emulators from auto to pico drive but i get the same result.

how does it work for you guys?

edit: i tried using retroarch on my pc and i have same problems there.

i played with utah vs anaheim

Edited March 9Mar 9 by Octopolus

@OctopolusI did a full game of utah vs Anaheim on retroarch using the Genesis Plus GX Core and had no issues. Played it on my phone too and my phone is by no means high end at all. Id try out that core and to be sure youre using the latest version of retroarch and to keep your cores up to date. 

Edited March 9Mar 9 by Jpark
Tagged the person I was trying to quote

1 hour ago, Octopolus said:

im very very happy to see this and thank you to all guys involved creating this magic game 🤩

however..im having huge problems playing it. when one player gets injured the game completely freezes and every time the opponent team scores the games freezes again 😕

im playing it using batocera and i have tried switch the emulators from auto to pico drive but i get the same result.

how does it work for you guys?

edit: i tried using retroarch on my pc and i have same problems there.

i played with utah vs anaheim

Probably the issue has something to do with just the expansion teams. Season mode for example  seems to only allow 26 teams i think and the other teams might be buggy? That same problem that was in the early Ultramagnus Roms must still exist?

Try regular games with  without games with trades and see if that stops the freezes? I lately have been releasing some of the top players from teams like Nashville and San Jose (I've been playing against these teams) and have not had any freezes or problems yet despite that. I often play games with trades but am usually a major team versus a expansion team. The only time I noticed a freeze is when I play games with trades while being the NHL Allstar or Legends Teams when playing a game with trades versus a expansion team.

My own  main concern in the Rom was the incorrect player handedness issue.  So Sorry to hear that this Rom has been  freezing on you Octopolus!

I do not use Retroarch as my emulator. I actually play on one of several of my Amazon Fire HD tablets to play the Roms. I actually personally for Sega Genesis Roms Emulation use a Android emulator called EmuMD XL by Pentawire. It's a nice small size  emulator too as it only takes up 20MB of space installed.

Since most of my own tablets only have both either 32GB and 64GB storage with all the other stuff installed the smaller emulator is nice to have in my case. 

Edited March 9Mar 9 by RT1977

11 minutes ago, Jpark said:

@OctopolusI did a full game of utah vs Anaheim on retroarch using the Genesis Plus GX Core and had no issues. Played it on my phone too and my phone is by no means high end at all. Id try out that core and to be sure youre using the latest version of retroarch and to keep your cores up to date. 

you played with or without trades?

i played with utah home and anaheim away, maybe it matters i dont know.

this shows when i edit lines playing with anaheim and gems freezes after: 

4 minutes ago, Octopolus said:

you played with or without trades?

i played with utah home and anaheim away, maybe it matters i dont know.

this shows when i edit lines playing with anaheim and gems freezes after: 

The issue definitely occurs only in games with trades. I just tried it and it duplicated exactly the problem in your screenshot during games with trades. But in regular games mode i could edit the lines just fine. 

12 minutes ago, RT1977 said:

The issue definitely occurs only in games with trades. I just tried it and it duplicated exactly the problem in your screenshot during games with trades. But in regular games mode i could edit the lines just fine. 

yep, i did what you suggested and played without trades and when anaheim scored against me playing with utah i had no freeze this time

1 minute ago, Octopolus said:

yep, i did what you suggested and played without trades and when anaheim scored against me playing with utah i had no freeze this time

Okay Good. Really the main thing I just  hope can be fixed in this Rom is the correct player handedness of several players. 

And hopefully that other issue some day can be corrected. Who knows.  I think its just a issue or something that they haven't found yet a fix or work around  with Mods of Nhl95.

43 minutes ago, Octopolus said:

you played with or without trades?

i played with utah home and anaheim away, maybe it matters i dont know.

this shows when i edit lines playing with anaheim and gems freezes after: 

I played without trades. The problem was definitely playing a game with trades. I tried playing one just now and like you, when trying to edit the lines it would glitch out and freeze. It wouldnt freeze when someone would score but it froze and glitches after the game was over. Best to just play without trades for now. 

11 minutes ago, Jpark said:

I played without trades. The problem was definitely playing a game with trades. I tried playing one just now and like you, when trying to edit the lines it would glitch out and freeze. It wouldnt freeze when someone would score but it froze and glitches after the game was over. Best to just play without trades for now. 

it didnt freeze for you when you play with trades and the opponent scores?

maybe it just happens with the new teams.

also anaheim (again haha) has 13 in overall..13..why?

28 minutes ago, Octopolus said:

it didnt freeze for you when you play with trades and the opponent scores?

maybe it just happens with the new teams.

also anaheim (again haha) has 13 in overall..13..why?

Can confirm it did freeze for me too when anaheim scored. Dont think there would be a difference on original hardware neither. 

21 minutes ago, Jpark said:

Can confirm it did freeze for me too when anaheim scored. Dont think there would be a difference on original hardware neither. 

thanks for confirming. good to know it wasnt just for me but very sad to see this problem.

hope the guys can fix it

Yo! I just saw this. I didnt even have much time to get on a computer yesterday. A lot of these issues seem to come from lineups or the roster configuration...Thanks for the heads up!  I will be working on this 

1 hour ago, vancecookcobxin said:

Yo! I just saw this. I didnt even have much time to get on a computer yesterday. A lot of these issues seem to come from lineups or the roster configuration...Thanks for the heads up!  I will be working on this 

Appreciate it and hope you can fix those issues 😀 personally making trades is a big deal for me because I want to be able to keep all team rosters up to date. The gameplay looks really good though 😃 definitely a more modern look and better graphics. That red arrow on the ice I have seen before in another game, but what is it for?

Edited March 10Mar 10 by Octopolus

2 hours ago, Octopolus said:

Appreciate it and hope you can fix those issues 😀 personally making trades is a big deal for me because I want to be able to keep all team rosters up to date. The gameplay looks really good though 😃 definitely a more modern look and better graphics. That red arrow on the ice I have seen before in another game, but what is it for?

I have a sneaking suspicion that it is because I need to allocate more free bytes to each team so that when players are traded, and their name takes up more chrs than the player that they replaced, it bricks the rom. I'm going to test this and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

The red arrow was always there....I just made it solid instead of just the outline...it indicates the direction the player is off-screen from the puck (it sometimes doesn't though lol)

Edited March 10Mar 10 by vancecookcobxin

3 hours ago, vancecookcobxin said:

I have a sneaking suspicion that it is because I need to allocate more free bytes to each team so that when players are traded, and their name takes up more chrs than the player that they replaced, it bricks the rom. I'm going to test this and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

The red arrow was always there....I just made it solid instead of just the outline...it indicates the direction the player is off-screen from the puck (it sometimes doesn't though lol)

Thanks you're the best 😃

On 3/9/2026 at 4:56 PM, Octopolus said:

you played with or without trades?

i played with utah home and anaheim away, maybe it matters i dont know.

this shows when i edit lines playing with anaheim and gems freezes after: 

Thats because of the line changes in NOSE were set incorrectly with a HEX error

3 hours ago, UltraMagnus said:

Thats because of the line changes in NOSE were set incorrectly with a HEX error

Oh, that means it can be fixed 😃

7 hours ago, Octopolus said:

Oh, that means it can be fixed 😃

Yup. It's a brutally tedious lesson to be learning right now lol.

25 minutes ago, vancecookcobxin said:

Yup. It's a brutally tedious lesson to be learning right now lol.

you'll be better for it though.

6 hours ago, vancecookcobxin said:

Yup. It's a brutally tedious lesson to be learning right now lol.

I bet it is 😄

i made a front boxart to this rom. its based on the old nhl 95 mega drive cover but with the new logos for ea sports, nhl and nhlpa

On 3/8/2026 at 3:53 PM, vancecookcobxin said:

NHL '26 - '95 Edition

 

Better LATE THAN NEVER FOLKS. To some clamor and fanfare, NHL 95 fans rejoice! We have an updated NHL '95 ROM for the 2025/2026 season!

 

Obligatory thanks and acknowledgements:

 

Expanded 34-Team ROM: Thanks to @kingraph. Built on the expanded architecture to include all modern franchises. Updated ice logo for nearly all of the 32 NHL Teams

 

I’ve looked to modernize much of the gameplay icons, including some modernized UI fonts, assets, banners, and scoreboards (A lot of thanks to @UltraMagnus for laying the foundation for a ton of assets with his brilliant work.)

 

Playoff / Season schedule bug fixes applied so brackets and standings don't crash deep into the post-season, thanks to @smozoma for the 128+ point bug fix!

 

Full Widescreen mode, with a huge shout-out to Paul_met for his work in expanding the game resolution.

(Standard Definition)

(Widescreen)

 

Season Mode Limitations: Please Note! Due to the hardcoded limits of the '95 Season Mode, the teams are not in alphabetical order (for divisional alignments). The game can process only 26 teams for a Season playthrough. Therefore, only the first 26 teams in the ROM are playable in Season Mode.

 

Unplayable in Season Mode (Teams 27-32): Utah, Carolina, Columbus, Ottawa, Anaheim, and Seattle. (We're currently looking into whether it's possible to hack the engine to include all 32 teams in the future! I’m not sure, but I will take a hard look this year.)

 

New ice is white, and the rink colors are updated. Player icons, etc.

Features for 1.05 (Released: March 8th 2026)

 

34-Team ROM Architecture implemented.

Uniform and player card updates to native 3bpp format.

Updated center ice logos and decompressed UI elements.

Playoff bracket bug fix applied in season mode, where teams with 128+ would be kicked out of the playoffs.

Teams 1-26were  mapped for Playable Season Mode, with the divisions as close to accurate as I could get.

 

Note (Again): Utah, Carolina, Columbus, Ottawa, Anaheim, and Seattle are playable in Exhibition/Playoffs but not currently supported in full Season Mode.

 

 

 

NHL 95 - 2026 Edition v1.05.bin 2 MB · 170 downloads

 

 

 

i love the job you did with the new york rangers home jersey, now they look much more like they do in real 🤩👍

ok so after i traded sam girard to penguins from avs for brett kulak and played with pens vs avs using the trades the game didnt freeze, thats great news. so only some teams causes that error, not all teams.

i also noticed some defensemen are set as forwards for example john carlson, mikey anderson and drew doughty.

no line changes in any teams can be saved/loaded.

edit: not possible to make trades with anaheim ducks. game freezes.

if its too much work to correct all this, maybe someone could fix all rosters so they are up to date instead?

i really like to play this rom 🤩

Edited May 8May 8 by Octopolus

It would indeed be nice to see a Trade Deadline Roster Update of this Nhl95 Rom. It might be alot to ask for along with also those particular "Tedious" to fix past issues brought up by people. It would all certainly be very nice to see of course. 🙂

This is absolutely AMAZING! Thanks for this. NHL 95 just might be my favorite one. I grew up playing this on snes. That f**king theme song OMG lol.

Its way better for genesis than snes.

You made the ice....WHITE! hahahaha so insanely great! It plays like a dream! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i wanna correct my self from an earlier post. when using the mode "regular game with trades" the option to save/edit/load edited lines will be available (except for anaheim and a few other teams).

when you play a game without trades you can still edit lines but you will not be able to load or save them

Edited May 30May 30 by Octopolus