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I just read the funny and ridiculous game-bugs section at this site. I had to think of a bug that happened to me twice in my "NHL94-career". Here is the story:

I played playoffs "best-of-seven-series" (line-changes automatic) with the Florida Panthers on Sega Genesis. In the second or third series during a shift out from nowhere a Florida-player with number 0 appeared on the ice. He was fast as hell and had a slapshot like Al. So it took only a few seconds before I scored. While I was still bemused the next shock: After I scored the game crashed down and after restarting the Sega I saw that all records were deleted. Afterwarts I played couple of Panthers Playoff-series but nothing irregular happened.

Then months later the same thing again. Player number 0 on the ice, appereantly 100% at all aspects of the skills-scala. This time I managed to push the start-button to look at the lines. And there he was: Number :0 / Name: ARENA (?). I returned to the game (unfortunately to soon) and I couldn't resist to score again. With the same result as last time. And all records deleted again.

I have absolutely no idea what it was.

Did this ever occure to anyone of you or did you hear of it? Maybe somebody wrote about it on this site and i didn`t see it...

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Hey Slezky,

I have never heard of this but it sounds awesome. If this ever happens again, you have to take screenshots of the lines and of the guy on the rink. I'll have to try this out sometime.

Good stuff!

-Evan

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This happened to me once too. I don't remember how it happened, but I was using the Flyers and a number 0 appeared and had amazing ratings--many 99s. I was conscience enough to save the line, so whenever I went back using the Flyers I could hit load line and he would be in there. Unfortunately, a few weeks later one of my friends was over and saved his line during a game, and thus 0 disappeared into the night never to be seen again...

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Now that I think about it.. In NHL 95 (Elitserien 95 actually) I think similar happened a couple of times. I remember the thing with a number 0. Was such a long time ago I can't really remember anything specific. Did get a few game-resets over the time I played, if it was ever related to the number 0 guy, I don't know.

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Yeah...forget about # 99, forget about # 69, choose # 0!

Good to hear that it was no schizophrenic apparition but really a bug. If it should ever happen to me again I'll try to take a screenshot. But than it would be necessary that this # 0-wunderkind would appear also on the emulated gameversion. You know 2 or 3 times another bug appeared to me. During the on-ice celebrations after "non Stanleycup-game" (I believe it even was a regular season head-to-head match) a player lifted the cup over his head like they use to do it when you win all playoff games. Strangely enough it allways happened just on one of the two Sega-cartridges I possess, never on the other. The same thing was with Arena # 0.

I really would like to know wich bugs are coincidentally and wich are maybe intentially hidden features in the game.

A question to you Evans, as the administrator and chieftain of this NHL94-site: Did you or maybe any other member ever try to make contact with some of the original EA-developers or programmers of this game? It would be really thrilling to get some first hand-informations, would't it?

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Hey Slezky,

As far as contacting EA people or former EA people... we've thought about it. Actually, I've posted on their forums about their new games and how the old games had much better overall gameplay and fun. Seems to have some effect, since they've added nhl94 to the latest game (and their reason was because people made comments about nhl94 on forums).

Someone once posted Marc Lesser's contact info on here, but I'm not sure if it's still here. Anyway, even if I had his phone number.. what right would I have just calling him and talking to him about the game. I wish I had an email address, that would be less personal and easier to contact Marc with.

I also created a proposal to EA about making an updated version of nhl94, explaining how this game would sell better than any other current hockey game. The game would include full editing features, the classic 93-95 gameplay feel taking the best aspects from each.. a season mode, and much more. Honestly, I don't remember if I actually sent this to them.

I'm not sure if I want to grab too much attention to what I do, though I'm sure someone at EA has seen this website. If you look up nhl94 on wikipedia, this website is included. Maybe I'll just post my proposal on this forum, and if someone stumbles on it.. it was meant to be.

It would be absolutely amazing if we were able to get first hand help in making an updated version of this game.. with the perfect options and features.

Anyway, that's my thoughts.

-Evan

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Hi Evan,

getting in contact with Mark Lesser for sure would be interesting (and maybe learn about some hidden features. i wouldn't be surprised if there where some). The plan for convincing EA-sports to upgrade NHL94 should be hard to fulfil, but maybe not impossible. There so many remakes of popular oldschool-games these days. I don't know how much work it would take to "tune" this game a little bit (and finally create a season-mode all of us would love to play). But I think this could be done also by other people than Mr. Lesser and his former team. Maybe he isn't at EA anymore. When I'll have more time I'll have a look if this guy has an email-adress somewhere in the internet. If you take time you find almost everything. It really could look strange to suddenly call him after more than 12 years after developing this game, while he maybe is at lunch with his family (Mrs. Lesser: " Mark-darling, some Mr. Slezky from Germany is on the phone. He wanted to ask you some questions regarding a Arena # 0 or something like that...). Apart from that I personally think he would be glad that there is somebody, or even so many who still "adore" the game he worked on. Maybe he also still plays it stealthily at lunchhour in the EA-Sports office and prays that somebody like us contacts him...

Slez

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Thank you for the url Xstioph. Wow, what a career! At least I know now that my scenario disturbing Mark and Mary Ellin at lunch wasn`t that utopian and I know he currently lives at the coast of main. From now on finding him should be a piece of cake ;-)

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  • 9 months later...
I just read the funny and ridiculous game-bugs section at this site. I had to think of a bug that happened to me twice in my "NHL94-career". Here is the story:

I played playoffs "best-of-seven-series" (line-changes automatic) with the Florida Panthers on Sega Genesis. In the second or third series during a shift out from nowhere a Florida-player with number 0 appeared on the ice. He was fast as hell and had a slapshot like Al. So it took only a few seconds before I scored. While I was still bemused the next shock: After I scored the game crashed down and after restarting the Sega I saw that all records were deleted. Afterwarts I played couple of Panthers Playoff-series but nothing irregular happened.

Then months later the same thing again. Player number 0 on the ice, appereantly 100% at all aspects of the skills-scala. This time I managed to push the start-button to look at the lines. And there he was: Number :0 / Name: ARENA (?). I returned to the game (unfortunately to soon) and I couldn't resist to score again. With the same result as last time. And all records deleted again.

I have absolutely no idea what it was.

Did this ever occure to anyone of you or did you hear of it? Maybe somebody wrote about it on this site and i didn`t see it...

This never occurred to me personally, but I have heard about it and I do have an explanation as to why it happened. Here is a list of the FL players and their "order" in the team listing.

Vanbiesbrk - 01

Fitzpatrik - 02

Fitzgerald - 03

Mellanby - 04

Skrudland - 05

Hough - 06

Lowry - 07

Lomakin- 08

Gilhen - 09

Belanger - 0A (0A means "10" in hex code)

Lindsay - 0B (11)

Cirella - 0C (12)

Godynyuk - 0D (13)

Murphy - 0E (14)

Hynes - 0F (15)

Tichy - 10 (means "16" in hex code)

Stephane Richer - 11 (17)

post-46-1168765875_thumb.jpg

Looking at the above screen shot, I have highlighted the "SC1" line, 0E 1108 0503 04, which by looking at my list above, means Murphy, Richer, Lomakin, Skrudland and Fitzgerald making up the 5 players. The "04" at the end is the substitute player, Mellanby, meaning that if one of the players gets injured, he will be replaced on the line by Mellanby. My theory as to what happened in your case is that Richer got injured and your "substitute" player (Mellanby) was not available due to injury or penalization and the game jumped too far forward in the code and picked "Miami Arena" as a "player" . The "0E" before Miami Arena stands for 14 in hex code as established above and the 15th character after the 0E is a "00" which would explain the 0 jersey number.

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You know 2 or 3 times another bug appeared to me. During the on-ice celebrations after "non Stanleycup-game" (I believe it even was a regular season head-to-head match) a player lifted the cup over his head like they use to do it when you win all playoff games.

This happened a couple of times to me recently. IIRC (and I might not), in both cases I had a partial playoff series completed on the game (1-game series), with just the Finals to go, and was later playing an exhibition game as the same team. When I won with that team, the players skated around with the cup. I haven't been able to replicate it reliably though.

I also created a proposal to EA about making an updated version of nhl94, explaining how this game would sell better than any other current hockey game. The game would include full editing features, the classic 93-95 gameplay feel taking the best aspects from each.. a season mode, and much more. Honestly, I don't remember if I actually sent this to them.

As much as I feel that in my heart, in my head I have doubts this is true. Like how people born between 1900-1920 insisted that Rock & Roll just a lot of garbage and noise, and that once the fad passed people would go back to respecting the sweet rhythms of Big Band music. I think people are passionate about what they cut their teeth on, and I think most kids who started out with PS2s and PS3s and XBox360s are going to have a hard time embracing what NHL94 and its close cousins have to offer in terms of graphics and such, even though we feel the gameplay is far superior. (This isn't an absolutism, I know there are some young guys here, I'm talking in terms of broad trends.)

NHL 07 sold between 500,000 - 1,000,000 copies in the first quarter of last year, its first quarter of release. Let's call it between 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 for the life of the product. I'm just having a hard time imagining that a reissue of a 10-15 year old game could possibly approach those numbers, no matter how much I and a few hundred other people here (thousands? tens of thousands?) still think today that '94 is video perfection. As Thomas Kuhn said, "Science advances one dead scientist at a time." Sites like this AWESOME one help stem the movement, but as those of us in our 20s and 30s who grew up on '94 gradually quit playing video games (how many of you play as much as you did 10 years ago? how many of you have buddies who got married and/or had kids and quit playing altogether?), it will be harder and harder to find people who appreciate the gameplay/graphics balance of '94.

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As much as I feel that in my heart, in my head I have doubts this is true. Like how people born between 1900-1920 insisted that Rock & Roll just a lot of garbage and noise, and that once the fad passed people would go back to respecting the sweet rhythms of Big Band music. I think people are passionate about what they cut their teeth on, and I think most kids who started out with PS2s and PS3s and XBox360s are going to have a hard time embracing what NHL94 and its close cousins have to offer in terms of graphics and such, even though we feel the gameplay is far superior. (This isn't an absolutism, I know there are some young guys here, I'm talking in terms of broad trends.)

NHL 07 sold between 500,000 - 1,000,000 copies in the first quarter of last year, its first quarter of release. Let's call it between 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 for the life of the product. I'm just having a hard time imagining that a reissue of a 10-15 year old game could possibly approach those numbers, no matter how much I and a few hundred other people here (thousands? tens of thousands?) still think today that '94 is video perfection. As Thomas Kuhn said, "Science advances one dead scientist at a time." Sites like this AWESOME one help stem the movement, but as those of us in our 20s and 30s who grew up on '94 gradually quit playing video games (how many of you play as much as you did 10 years ago? how many of you have buddies who got married and/or had kids and quit playing altogether?), it will be harder and harder to find people who appreciate the gameplay/graphics balance of '94.

I am with Evan on this one. References to NHL 94 being the pinnacle of hockey games (and sometimes the pinnacle of all sports games) can be found in numerous reviews online and in print. Addison, I like your analogy using Rock and Roll. But I think it would again indicate that an updated NHL 94 would be a huge success. Video games aren't really just for young kids anymore. Demographics have shown that 60% of gamers are 25 to 44 years old. Sounds like the sweet spot age range for a 94 refresh.

EA where u at?! I guess they don't like making money.

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During the on-ice celebrations after "non Stanleycup-game" (I believe it even was a regular season head-to-head match) a player lifted the cup over his head like they use to do it when you win all playoff games.

That's happened to me a lot of times. I'm pretty sure we'd all like to know what kind of other weird glitches NHL 94 has to offer.

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I am with Evan on this one. References to NHL 94 being the pinnacle of hockey games (and sometimes the pinnacle of all sports games) can be found in numerous reviews online and in print. Addison, I like your analogy using Rock and Roll. But I think it would again indicate that an updated NHL 94 would be a huge success. Video games aren't really just for young kids anymore. Demographics have shown that 60% of gamers are 25 to 44 years old. Sounds like the sweet spot age range for a 94 refresh.

Actually, NHL '94 was supposed to be Big Band music in my butchered analogy.

I happen to believe that '94 is the pinnacle of sports games. But the people writing those reviews I agree with surely grew up on the game like I did. I have a hard time imagining that when today's 10-year-olds are writing and editing GamerDoodz magazine that that will continue.

Here's an interesting question. I wonder what percentage of people here never played NHL '94 before, say, the year 2000. I have a sense that number is pretty low.

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I don't see why they haven't made one by now, there are plenty of 3rd party hockey games, NHL HITZ, NHL ROCK THE RINK and a few others.

It just only seems natural that they would make some kind of release for the die hard fans, not some crappy emulated version that they included in NHL 06 that is not even worth playing. I'm talking about a remake of the SCD version made for new systems and all the season options and stuff that goes along with that.

I have had enough of the poor excuses of hockey games that have come out and the low ratings on the game sites are slowly starting to reflect the poor quality of the games. I say don't buy any of the new crap that EA comes out with until we see a vast improvement. :D

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I don't see why they haven't made one by now, there are plenty of 3rd party hockey games, NHL HITZ, NHL ROCK THE RINK and a few others.

It just only seems natural that they would make some kind of release for the die hard fans, not some crappy emulated version that they included in NHL 06 that is not even worth playing. I'm talking about a remake of the SCD version made for new systems and all the season options and stuff that goes along with that.

I have had enough of the poor excuses of hockey games that have come out and the low ratings on the game sites are slowly starting to reflect the poor quality of the games. I say don't buy any of the new crap that EA comes out with until we see a vast improvement. :angry:

That would be interesting. If they released the same exact game engine but with updated players and teams, and attached it to a game like NHL 08 or something like that, I would definitely buy it, even though I would never plan to play the actual NHL 08 game.

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That would be interesting. If they released the same exact game engine but with updated players and teams, and attached it to a game like NHL 08 or something like that, I would definitely buy it, even though I would never plan to play the actual NHL 08 game.

Thats EXACTLY what I'm trying to do with NHL MMVII without the crappy "NHL 08" game of course :angry:

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