NHL '94: Mini Logos + Banners

[McMarkis]

NHL '94: Mini Logos + Banners 

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v1.1 - Released 2026-03-22

I’ve been working on a patch that brings the classic NHL Hockey ’92 Mini Logos and Banners back to NHL ’94.

To make things easier for everyone, I also built a browser-based patcher that lets you apply the Mini Logos and/or Banners to any ROM, no batch files, installs, or setup needed.

The web app includes instructions and a quick tutorial.

Feedback, suggestions, or bug reports are all welcome!

Web App Link: https://mhopkinsinc.github.io/MiniLogos/

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Features:

• Default 28 team support for Mini Logos + Banners.
• Works with Widescreen Mode ROMs.
• Tested on the NHL '94 Base ROM and Fighting ROM.
• Support for 30/32 team ROMs (You may have to edit your own logos and banners).
• Export and Import functionality for modifying your own Mini Logos + Banners.

 

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Default Mini Logos + Banners:

For the default version, I created a banner set that closely matches the originals, with minor adjustments to fit the text, match the background colors, and accommodate the additional teams introduced in ’94.

 

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DREZZ Styled Mini Logos + Banners:

A huge shout-out to @Drezz for designing some amazing custom Mini Logos & Banners for the 28/30/32 team ROMs.

The 28/32 team versions are included in the Tile Editor section of the app by selecting the "Drezz" style variant.

 

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Known Issues:

1. Any custom ROM that has modified the background on the Team selection screen causes tile corruption.
   For now you will need to disable the "Team Select Banners" until this is resolved.
   
   
    
2. Some custom ROMs also modify the default palette, which may cause color corruption.
   In those cases, you may need to create your own custom Mini Logos and Banners with custom palette for those ROMs.

All builds were tested with the Genesis Plus GX emulator.

If you experience any technical issues, you may want to try running the ROM in that emulator.

If you report a problem, please include:

• The exact emulator version or console you’re using.
• The ROM you were trying to patch.
• The patching features you selected.
• Any custom .aseprite files you used.
   

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Technical Notes:

Currently, the new code and tiles are inserted at the end of the ROM.

If this conflicts with your ROM layout or you need the data placed elsewhere, leave a comment. I can likely extend the tool to allow you to specify the starting ROM address for the inserted data/tiles.

I provide this patch (along with several other NHL '94 patches) in my GitHub repository, if you'd like to review the code or apply the patch using a simple batch file with no UI.

-Mark

Edited March 22 by McMarkis

[von Ozbourne]

I didn't realize I wanted this until now...

Although all of my ROMs have @Drezz's modified menu background now, so that's going to complicate things for the time being.

[McMarkis]

On 3/15/2026 at 10:51 PM, von Ozbourne said:

Although all of my ROMs have @Drezz's modified menu background now, so that's going to complicate things for the time being.

Lol. I really just wanted the Mini Logos during game play, but the banners just looked so retro.

The issue is that there are simply too many tiles to fit in VDP RAM when a custom background is used along with all of the banners.

Good news is, I noticed that in the 30/32-team ROMs they only load the home and away banners into the top portion of VDP memory. I might take a look at what changes were made in those ROMs and try loading only the selected teams’ banners into that same area. If that works, it should free up enough space to make everything fit.

 

 

Edited March 18 by McMarkis

[von Ozbourne]

So I thought I came across a glitch with this patching tool, but then I conducted some experiments and think I came across something this patch does that may or may not have been intended?

I was patching a couple 30 and 32 team mods and they looked great and all, but then I noticed that the player roll call on the main menu screen had no player names. Obviously this wasn't expected. I did this with a couple 32-team ROMs and noticed the same thing. Then I tried it out on someone else's older 32-team ROM and the names were there. The difference? This one was posted before the Winnipeg Freeze bug fix was discovered. After undoing all of the Freeze Bug edits, the names returned.

But then I tried out a 30-team ROM and noticed that I didn't have that problem, but the game would skip over the User Records menu option. Not that big of a deal I suppose since that is usually left off anyway. But then I couldn't view the Player Cards. This is starting to look familiar, so I tried a Single Game Playoff series and was able to play one game, won it, advanced to the second round, selected Continue Playoffs, and the bracket was set to some other random matchups with a bunch of best-of-7s at 2-1 except for the last one that was tied 4-4 and when I opted to continue, the game advanced to a 0-player game of Team #1  vs Team #1.

So this patch seems to mimic the former Freeze Bug "fix" where any save data is overridden and any option that requires it is disabled.

However, there is good news. I applied this patch to a version of a 32-Team ROM that already had chaos's fight patch applied. Since these logos and banners are positioned right at the end of the ROM, the additional 1Mb added to the Fight patched ROMs seems to mean that the new graphics don't interfere with space required for saved data. Doesn't help with the custom menu background, but it seems that the only option is to also include fighting. Could be worse.

[McMarkis]

Hey @von Ozbourne

What you’re seeing is actually related to the ROM size impacting the SRAM routines.

Once the ROM grows past a certain size, it starts to conflict with the SRAM handling code used for things like User Records, Player Cards, and Continue Playoffs. 

Chaos put together a proper fix for this (included in his fighting ROM), which relocates/adjusts the SRAM handling so it continues to work even with the larger ROM sizes.

I’ve updated the patching tool so that when the 30/32 team option is selected, it also applies the SRAM fix automatically.

I gave it a quick test on Adam's 32 team ROM and it resolved the player names not showing during the roll call. All other features were working as well.

You can try re-patching the ROMs you mentioned using the updated tool, this should fix the issues you mentioned.

[von Ozbourne]

Ah nice. Technically the ROMs in question are already resolved because I also ended up adding fighting anyway, but it's nice to know that this is an option going forward.

Now if I can just get a patch with banners, logos, fighting and a custom menu background... I'll probably try to figure out a way to break that too.

[Drezz]

Hmm - I wonder if it's a 32 team ROM thing.

I inserted the banners and minis into my ROM with a custom menu BG and it worked fine.

 

EDIT: Just read that the Fight Patch/Menu hack also fixes some of the memory issues. That makes sense.

Play on, boys...

Edited March 27 by Drezz

[von Ozbourne]

Oh? Is your ROM a 30 team version? Or 28 with a custom background?

I've had the menu screen glitch for all of the ROMs I tested this on that used a custom background, but they were all also 32 Team versions.

That said, I was able to simply change the pointer back to the original background and it worked fine.

That also said, I have one that I did that had a custom menu background that was fairly simple and I could technically use the original background and just reorganise the tiles to make it look the way I wanted again.

[he said as if that isn't a really time consuming method]

[Drezz]

Yeah mine was a 30-team. That's why I'm wondering if it's isolated to the 32 team.

 

[von Ozbourne]

Interesting. I might have to see what you did there. I had tried this banner hack on a 30-team, but that one was also heavily modified in other ways too, so I'm wondering if there is something else at play here.

[Drezz]

Okay - I'm completely wrong. The banner edit does NOT work using the McMarkis tool if you have a Custom BG.

I had my custom banners mapped to the original 30-team location, and it used the HOME / AWAY defaults.

I must have tested it on a the original 30-team ROM that doesn't have the BG hack.

[von Ozbourne]

Rats. Oh well, that's fine. Back to "Plan A" I guess.

I do have one other question though if I may @McMarkis

I found that one really cool thing that I can do with this hack is emulate what NHL'95 does with having a different team banner for the menu and playoff screens that what shows up on the pause/game menu/jumbotron. But there is one catch in that the default only does the colour scrolling replacing white on the right side name portion of the banner now. There wouldn't happen to be an easy way to expand that highlight area to the full width again in the case where you are using this mod for something other than having a mini logo on the side is there?

 

[McMarkis]

On 3/27/2026 at 10:18 PM, von Ozbourne said:

There wouldn't happen to be an easy way to expand that highlight area to the full width again in the case where you are using this mod for something other than having a mini logo on the side is there?

 

Hey @von Ozbourne

Yeah, I actually hijacked the original routine there so the flashing palette doesn’t hit the logo part of the banner.

If you want the full-width highlight back, you can just revert that change and restore the original function.

At ROM offset 0x17652, change:

4E F9 00 20 01 80 => (This may be slightly different depending on the size of your rom)

to:

48 E7 FF F0 30 7C

That should bring it back to the original behaviour  

-Mark.

Edited March 29 by McMarkis

[von Ozbourne]

15 hours ago, McMarkis said:

That should bring it back to the original behaviour  

Yeaaaaah...... It took a few hours after I should have been going to bed, but I eventually got that behaviour back. 

I think there is an order of operations that needs to be followed with some of these transformative patches because I was running into so many issues.

I don't even know how to explain the troubleshooting process because I was bouncing around between different versions with different mods applied in different orders and losing track of what I'd done and didn't done do. But the original idea was to have a mod with fighting, menu banners, fully highlighted playoff banners, in-game banners using the original modded sprites so they can be different, clock logos.

Two problems I found were that after most of that was done, reverting to the original playoff banner highlighting code actually ended up with a ROM that only highlighted the team in the #1 slot, regardless of what team you were playing as. I then realised that this was on a version that didn't have fighting applied, and the version that did have fighting was even worse in that the game just crashed when simply trying to start a playoff. I eventually backpedalled enough to where I had a ROM that had the menu background mod removed, had an old fashioned method customized menu background and overlays applied, then had the banner mod applied to only the main menu and playoff screens, [clock logos weren't quite working in this particular instance so I omitted them], then switched the highlighting code to the original full banner setup and only then applied the fighting patch. [and then fixed all of the menu option changes that the default fighting patch undoes]

Other than that slight stutter when loading the menu screen which I attribute to likely the extra step of loading in all of the team menu banners to RAM, everything else seems to be working as intended. Don't know if there is anything to be learned here other than be careful of applying multiple patches that may conflict with each other and sometimes a habit of testing limits will just end up testing your limits.

Edited March 29 by von Ozbourne