The Making of NHL 94 - 30th Anniversary Documentary
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
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NHL 94 is largely considered one of the best sports games ever made. 30 years after its release we talk to the developers about that era of sports game design and the magic that went into the development of NHL 94.
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00:00 - Intro
02:28 - The Origins of Madden
06:38 - EA Sports Network
13:47 - Mark Lesser Sports Game Design
20:45 - NHL 94 Features
30:24 - Fights
33:14 - Testing & Production
36:28 - One Timers
38:42 - Maine Magic
42:01 - NHL 24
46:48 - The Series After 94
49:54 - Why is NHL 94 Special?
53:48 - CREDITS
Edited by Jeremy Jayne
Additional Editing by Danny O'Dwyer
Filmed by Jeremy Jayne
Gameplay Capture Frank Howley
Motion Design by Dan Silverstone (Pica)
Twitter: / pica_creative
IG: / vivapica
www.pica.me.uk - Ігри
Mark Lesser made an incredibly inspiring impression. So much of the brilliance of this game clearly comes from him, yet he still attributes it to the "Maine magic" without a hint of of irony or egotism.
Plus having to do it in isolation, with only occasional, if highly valuable feedback. Absolutely inspiring. Legend.
I wish EA was as inspired and dedicated to the product today as Lesser was back then. Now it's all about microtransactions and squeezing money out of the game.
Lesser is a living legend
True Mainer with that Common Ground Fair shirt he’s wearing.
Great video!
51:54 🎉🏒🥅⚽🥅🏒🏈😂
He should be in the Hall of Fame as a builder.
Picture it: Christmas season in 1993, my mother took me to Sears to pick out my "Santa" gifts. Back then, Sears had a pretty robust electronics department and an excellent selection of videogames. I already knew I was getting Star Fox from one of my brothers so I was looking for something out of the box for a kid that grew up in north Georgia. The budget that was given to me allowed me to get two games that day. One that would forever change my life and the other was Jurassic Park. After walking around for a while and feeling dejected, I spotted a bin of games that must have been brought out when I wasn't paying attention. I walked over and sitting on top of the pile on sale was NHL 94. Keep in mind I had never followed hockey up to that point and really only knew about Gretzky. Something inside me spoke out and said to give it a shot so I picked it as my second option. On Christmas day, I popped in Star Fox and blew through the story pretty fast, granted it was fun; just super short. I moved onto Jurassic Park next and spent all of 30 minutes playing it and decided it was simply not a good game. Finally I popped in NHL 94 to see what it was all about and jumped immediately into an exhibition game with the default selected teams. Before I knew it, I had been playing the game for almost 8 hours. I was getting yelled at about needing to go to bed! Long story short, this crazy fun videogame is what got me into becoming obsessed with hockey to the point of where I worked for the Atlanta Thrashers (RIP) for a few years! Thank you Mark Lesser and Doug Wike!
Awesome story and yes Jurassic Park sucked lol. I still remember keeping my codes so I could start at the second level. It just wasn't fun lol
Now THAT is an epic story of how a video game helped "shape" your life. I grew up in Milwaukee, a city without a NHL Hockey franchise. We had an IHL, AHL, basically a minor league Hockey team, the Milwaukee Admirals. They were/are a great event in Milwaukee, but not knowing the teams, having a home team, I only knew the main guys. Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and the older Legends. Gordie Howe and others. Still I loved Hockey. I used to play during the winter months. Scout Lake would freeze over and they'd set it up for ice skating and Hockey. When the NHL Hockey game came out I immediately got into it. NHL 94 however set that bar really high. I loved it! We had tournaments with between 4-8 friends. Hours and hours were spent with it. I was taking care of my Mom and she demanded that we played out where she could watch. She'd yell, cheer, even boo me if I picked a "fight". Those were magical days. Oh and BTW, I used to love the old Atlanta Flames team back in the day. I used to have those team logo magnets and the Flames was one of my favorites! Great story again, and Christmas 🎄 time was always better with video games!
Stories like this from people like you are why documentaries like these get made! So glad you got to have that experience growing up
Glad you shared that great story! My first NHL video game was NHLPA Hockey '93 on the Super Nintendo - which wasn’t quite the big hit (no pun intended). One year later, I gave NHL '94 a chance - and man, what a game. As a German Rangers fan since 1993, this one blew me away. None of the other SNES NHL titles that came after it (three more) could ever reach the glory of NHL '94. One-timer party all over! 🤣
It didn’t change my life, but I also when to a shop (Kay-Bee or Caldor) and “settled” for NHL 94 when nothing else caught my eye. Then my brother and I played the heck out of it. Loved setting decibel records and having the goalie score. The game was so good, I can’t imagine fighting would have made it better.
Mark Lesser saying so nonchalantly"...they changed the name to something like Looking Glass..." with a straight face had me dying.
The fact that this game has an online community and multiple leagues running per year is a testament to its timelessness.
No one is going to be playing HUT 2023 in 20 years, that's for sure.
@@Borodin410 I think the only game in the past 10-15 years I'd play in say 5-10 years again would be Zelda or Mario and I'm not a hardcore fan of either but enjoy them both for years. Nothing really modern makes me say wow. I still play Street Fighter 2 but have never cared for 5 and 6. Played SF 4 on and off. I still play Pacman, Dig Dug, Tecmo Super Bowl etc because they stand the test of time. Not many games today will do that. I'm sure Red Dead Redemption 2 will still be talked about. I never played it but I know it was a big deal.
What's the community link
94, 93, and 2004 all have dedicated followings.
@@Pensfan5919 Yeah 2004 PC mods are amazing. I had 93 on Super Nintendo and it was bad but Genesis version very nice.
I will always maintain the belief that this game created more new hockey fans than anything Gary Bettman did during his entire tenure as commissioner
Watch out, the bro gamer has entered
Agreed
This is actually a fact, go look at the stats lmao
Grew up in New Zealand, Canadian grandparents sent it over for Christmas. Probably would not have started playing hockey if that didn't happen.
I am one of them! It all started when Peter Forsberg scored the winning shootout goal against Canada in 1994 Olympic games, after that I bought NHL 94 on SNES... and the rest is history!
The hours of game play with NHL 94 in my room with my friends on a cold winter night were amazing. . Damn I miss those day …😢
We didn’t know how good we had it.
@@stevewilliams8590 100%
I’m 43 now. Damn right those were great days.
Fact: Jaromir Jagr was in the first NHL Hockey game that came out on Sega Genesis only in 1991 and he's still playing professional hockey (overseas at moment) to this day at 53 years old. The Penguins are retiring his jersey in early 2024 so maybe he is finally hanging it up. Just wild to me. I know Nicholas Lindstom was in NHL 94 on the Detroit Red Wings CHK line as a rookie but he's been retired a decade say now and Jagr marches on.
in 94 Montreal had a good team.
They retired his jersey on the night he was playing against them lol.
There's not a single doubt. No sports game has this much playability and support A YEAR after release, let alone 30 years. Nhl94 is the GOAT!!!
Tecmo Super Bowl I would say is bigger. I love both. Still play both. Actually got Tecmo Super Bowl 2024 physical cart for the NES this time around for fun. Besides those two I wish we had some kind of roster update to NBA Jam or NBA Live 96 every year too
@@DannyP-dm1pw mad respect for that community too yup!!
@@dantml Two of my all time favorites. My dad actually bought NHL 94 for me but he played it too. Great family memories.
I still play NHL94 on an emulator to this day, I won't touch the newer versions because of the AI and controls
93
I lived in a huge neighborhood. So many kids had this game. We would post flyers on stop signs inviting anyone to get involved in tournaments. It would get INTENSE. The age gap ranged from 12 to 18. The game was responsible for our street hockey obsession. Every kid had a favorite team and would get an NHL jersey with their favorite team and player. The impact this game had is insane. NHLPA 93 was the game that turned me into a diehard Hawk fan. I live in Rochester NY (1hour outside Buffalo) and have been to every Sabres vs Hawks game since 96. I've been to 10 Blackhawk playoff games in the UC. 3 games vs Detroit at Joe Louis arena and game 5 of the 2013 Stanley cup final vs Boston. All of this started from NHLPA 93 and NHL 94. Best sports game(s) ever created. No other game in any genre has done what these have. Life changing.
No CHEL. No HUT. No BS. Just a great game.
Odd comment, maybe, but this felt so much like a holiday/Christmas special for some reason and that's actually really appreciated. Even knowing nothing about this game, it did feel like something special was in the air. Perfect for the season.
Man, you can see how much Mark Lesser put into the fighting system for NHL 94. If only some private/wealthy person could pass him a year's salary to re-program it into the game...especially seeing how fights would result from tension, and "tension" was built in such a great variety of ways. It makes me grateful to be a songwriter/composer who does not answer to a label or any other larger entity. I can't imagine having to remove a section of a piece, when all of the sections are interlocking and composed with each other in mind. I believe him when he says it was traumatic.
I find I hop back and forth between NHLPA 93 and NHL 94. 94 feels fuller and more complete, from the music and sound effects to the way a game plays out. I like that it keeps user records by name (allowing records to be kept for multiple people), and that it supports 4 players. The one-timers are great addition too, obviously. But the "rebound" effect is basically gone (a slap shot bouncing off the goalie), and the aiming of shots is hyper-responsive. Both of those things are still described in the manual, a carryover from the 93 manual, but in practice they've been janked out of the game. I find myself playing with the sole focus of setting up one-timers, whereas in 93 it seems like goals can happen in a bigger variety of situations. I also prefer the skating speed and momentum in 93, and fights. But then, playing *without* one-timers feels lame. In the end, both are great games, and this was such a fascinating look at the inner workings of early EA sports games.
It's possible to get rebounds in 94, but you have to shoot at the right speed. Try guys with shot power in the 63-80 range, and tap the shoot button instead of doing a full wind up. It's a great move for nullifying a human opponent's manual goalie control because it locks out the ability to take goalie control when the goalie is doing a save animation
one of the best and well balanced sports games ever; absolute classic
i spent so many hours on this game over the years
Worst NHL gsme ever . Period . Every other year is alot better
anime pfp@@buttonz6139
I put countless hours into NHL '94 when it came out, it was such a fun game! The attention to detail these gentlemen put into making it really shined through in the gameplay. I 'm not even a hockey fan!
I want to give you some praise for the HL doc that just dropped, I don't think you were credited nearly prominently enough.
Honestly, it could've been 6 hours and i'd have enjoyed it even more. Great work as always. Excellent to see you being paid by the devs to produce your stuff.
I saw this game for the first time a few days ago when my sister was watching Swingers. It’s only on screen for a minute, but I could tell at a glance it was something special. It really drew me in! I immediately wanted to know more about it and lo and behold Noclip to the rescue! What a great instance of serendipity!
Swingers used NHLPA 93
The nostalgia is coursing through my veins. Still one of my favorite sports titles 30 years later.
It's still incredible to play today. Somehow they were able to capture the flow of hockey better than any other game before or since.
Phenomenal. Priceless to hear about the inner workings of the game systems from Mark Lesser.
This game is so good the community still updates the rosters every year
If only we could get this era of EA back
You know a sports game is great when people are making roster updates (like NHL 94 and NFL2K5)
Early Christmas present! Can't wait to watch this tonight. Your live stream preview from a few weeks ago had some fascinating tidbits that were discussed a lot on the NHL94 discord chat, like the fighting momentum and how much of the momentum system made it into the final game, and how it might affect competitive league & tournament play.
I know a lot of people don't like sports games, but NHL94 is the last NHL game without season mode, and should maybe be thought of as more of a vs game like a street fighter or even 2D rocket league (if you've ever seen 4-player NHL94..)
I thought it had a season mode for PC? I know it it didn’t have one for snes or sega. And none of the platforms you could trade. Trades didn’t happen until nhl 1995.
@@alwillk Oh yes, PC had season mode. This doc is about the Genesis version, though, and in my opinion its legendary status is in large part due to its console (and these days online) multiplayer which is why I compare it to Street Fighter and Rocket League, for people who dismiss sports games out of hand or who don't understand why a hockey game without season mode is popular.
When I was a kid living in Edmonton, I was a huge hockey fan. NHL 94 is the only hockey game I ever that completed the season and playoffs to win the Stanley Cup for Edmonton. NHL 94 will always be the best hockey game ever made to me.
There is no Season Mode in NHL ‘94...
@chris. For the the PC version nhl ‘94 had a season mode.
when he said they wanted to focus more on fun and gameplay than realism...this is the key to that game and other game makers need to learn this lesson.
95 on Mega Drive is the pinnacle of the series for me, a massive upgrade over 94 especially in the controls and game modes departments. An excellent documentary all the same!
I have fond memories of watching my dad play this with his friends back when I was little. Awesome to see you cover it all these years later!
*I remember when my dad came home and surprised me with '94...still have it...miss you dad!*
my brother and i were in college when 94 came out. we go home for Xmas, and we played from 6pm til 6am the next morning. My dad wakes up for work, and got pissed, we were still playing and kicked us both out of the house into the snow. Great memories
Danny, this was truly brilliant. NHL 94 is such a fond memory for me, and a huge reason why I l still love the sport today. It was a blast watching all this footage and remembering all those players just by their numbers. You all at Noclip continue to put out World Class work. Congratulations!
Favourite Documentary channel covers my favourite sport franchise. Thank you !
Always loved this game. I used to play this game all the time with friends but as we into the 2000s, life happens and people move on or away. In 2005, I discovered the nhl94 online community. Honestly such a great group of class acts. They host leagues in all sorts of formats and for different skill levels... from the classic game pick a team for the season, to a draft league, to even a 2on2 league (where you play with a partner and all other skaters are removed from ice... like nba jam with goalies). There are even live tournaments in host cities a couple times a year... those are my favorite. If you love this game, you should check it out.
I haven't enjoyed a documentary more than this in years. I can't thank you enough. I love this! Shared on my Facebook page.
What a great documentary! Your ability to get so perfect interviews is amazing, I don't know what but you certainly are doing some things right. Thanks so much
That was such a fun game. Modern NHL hockey may be more 'realistic' but they aren't fun. The checking, one timers, goalie saves, players getting laid out by the puck, the crowd, the simple player stats, the speed - it was so cool. There were a handful of fun NHL games made in the 2000's, but I haven't played any of them past '18 since they made checking boring and the gameplay slow - all for 'realism' of course.
Man, after watching an NHL game tonight, I really get a sense of just how fast the NHL players skate comparing it to the way the host of this video skates. And NHL 94 is a total classic and its super cool to hear this story. The usual awesomeness from noclip!
This dude wasn’t skating at all he was trying to stay balanced lol he’s wearing freakin rental skates for gods sake
@@joemazza2583he’s wearing rental figure skates 😂
@@brianjohnson7484 I know! Lol wtf
This was such an awesome doc, one of my favorite games all-time, thanks so much Mark for the memories
Maaaan No Clip should get millions of views. The production is soooo top notch! Thank you for existing No Clip!
26:25 ''and figuring this stuff out and apprectiate it'' we did sir...i tell you that, coming from a french canadian i was 12 years old for NHL94 i got it on snes for christmas and we played the shit out of it and loved every seconds of it! THANKS SO MUCH FOR THIS GAME!
So glad this doc exists. Great work!
What a classic game! I love that these videos celebrate the accomplishment of legends in game development.
Really appreciate you covered this game. Not what I'd expect from your channel but it truly is a classic
I poured hours into NHL ‘94 on my Sega. Loved it so much.
Thank you, this was an awesome documentary! NHL'94 is the greatest sports game of all time.
This was a wonderful, really made documentary - thank you to all involved for making it!
I think one of the great miracles that makes NHL 94 so perfect is how Mark Lesser builds upon the foundation built by Jim Simmon, along with Michael Brook and Scott Orr at Electronic Arts. You get the best of both worlds, the peak of everyone's talents, and it all gels together so perfectly. Note how NHL 95, which is purely Lesser's baby, continues some strengths but also lacks many others, and even the highly-respected NHL 96 felt more like a skilled solo album than a band masterpiece. All of this just goes to show you how impossibly rare it is to capture lightning in a bottle.
Oh, and for the record, all the 1980s kids loved those Mattel Electronics sports games, even with those simplistic lights and beeps.
Had my sister in Ottawa ship this game to me when it came out(I lived in the middle of nowhere). The Genesis version, it had some sorta limited edition Gold Sticker on the box. Still my favourite NHL game ever, like so many other people.
There are about 350,000 limited edition gold sticker copies :). I think the game sold about half a million copies, so it's actually easier to find a limited edition copy than a later version.
Mark lesser has the limited edition 00001 copy :)
Well done video, love to hear stories bout how these older games I spent a lot of years playing got made. Very helpful to have a guy who really likes to talk! You prob have hours of him :)
This is EASILY my favorite hockey game of all-time. My friends and i would take each new NHL schedule and do our own season modes. We discovered a trick where you could skate in just over the blue line and slapshot 5-hole and score like 90% of the time; we called it "The Spot." We angered so many other friends who didn't play as much as we did with that move.
So many of my teen memories are based around this game. I'll never forget it.
Thank god for Mark Lesser, I remember dumping so many hours in that game as a child, to this day as a millennial I still go back to it periodically. They def captured Maine magic in a bottle, Mark is an inspiration for all aspiring game devs, wonderful documentary!
What an awesome video to make. This was perfect. Ty.
Truly wonderful. I don’t know what else to say. Thank you for taking the time to put together something fans of this absolute classic can enjoy. I pre-ordered this game in September of 1993 at the EB Games at Yorktown Mall in Lombard, IL. To this day, ‘94 is the most fun I’ve ever had in gaming. Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour and my Hawks certainly helped. Cheers.
Don't forget Steve Smith and Chris Chelios! I used the Blackhawks a lot in '94
Every time I was a Noclip doc, I'm reminded why I love games. Thank you so much for giving us these incredible insights into the games industry!
This was the best video I ever watched on UA-cam. Thankyou for reviewing my childhood. Excellent
Great doc. Did not expect to see this when I woke up this morning. Quite enjoyable.
SEMINAL game in terms of not only what I looked for in playing video games, but ALSO a game which worked as a learning tool for me to get more info about hockey and the rosters and the players, who was good who wasn't so good, getting into different players, etc. Great doc!!
Snoopy's Home Ice is a gorgeous barn, so jealous you got to film the to camera pieces there. (Also, decent one timer for not having played hockey, Danny.)
One of my favorite hockey memories is I happened to be in Santa Rosa during Senior World Hockey Tournament week, so I grabbed a drink, sat down and took it in for about a half hour. Beautiful barn and just a great time to watch the seniors.
Loved this, thank you guys so much!!! Just a little thing I spotted, in the captions at 41:14 and onwards, you guys have "Umaine" when Mark is talking about "U Maine" (the college and their hockey team), great video though :)
Amazing as always. 94 was the game that got me into playing games the way I do now.
I'm actually not that big a hockey fan, but I remember 94 because going into University, everyone on my dorm floor was playing it. It was just such a fun game to play multiplayer, that we used to have tournaments for it throughout the year.
When EA Released NHL 2008 (I believe) my friends and I all on the same dorm floor had tournaments, because NHL 2008 had an NHL '94 edition built in it 😂
A history lesson with a lot of charm - signature Noclip style now. And as always, just a joy to watch.
I wasn’t alive in 94/95, but man that intro was engaging, stoked to keep watching.
Yes, NHL '94 is the best sports game ever
Damn right!
Of 94
No
It's right up there with the best of them for sure, this, NBA Jam TE and PES 6 for me. All timeless and infinitely playable.
NHL 2004, NHL 2K5, and NHL 14 are better
I remember being really bummed when we ripped fighting out of 94, but before I could even find out why or form a protest, I was back onto the Strike Series. Those "early" EA days were great, though. Good on nabbing Ken, because he expresses how things were back then. There was a comradery and even friendly competition among the teams at EA. We weren't pitted against each other and there wasn't a stranglehold on creativity or downward budgetary pressure, as there is now. We were gamers that made games for gamers.
NHL95 on PC has to be one the most played games for me. A case of beer, nhl95 and friends = good times.
I always wondered why none of the other entries in the series never hooked me like the 94 one. I'm happy I'm not the only one. 😊
You can hear the passion and/or the determination behind the hard work. Gaming was entering its golden age and it wasn't all about the money for the so called triple A studios. This video had me nostalgic to the core, very good production. 👌
Mark Lesser really had a gift for game mechanics. He really captured the fluidity of hockey while still making it fun. The earlier games felt more disconnected, where your player was adrift and you could just nudge him one way or the other. NHL 94 tightened those mechanics to a point where a skilled player could truly skate circles around a lesser opponent. So many little details baked into that amazing game. Lesser could probably write book about game design and mechanics.
I loved this game, I still have my copy! Thanks for making this!
Amazing video. Thanks so much.
Lesser giving props to QA (being a QA Lead on a sports game) and you shooting footage from the Santa Rosa rink where my kid has played countless times. Love this video, love NHL 94, this made my week thank you
I was looking through the comments for more infos about that rink since I was surprised to see 7 Swiss canton flags next to Canada and USA at 51:10 so thank you for that haha!
I still haven't really found the reason for these flags, my guess being that it's just to add to the Swiss chalet vibe ^^
@@Skalifrey there’s a cool Charles Schultz museum right next to it. A lot of cool Peanuts stuff. There’s a decent size Snoopy outside the rink you can take a picture with
Still play this on my original sega to this day. Try-hard team is the canucks with Courtnall/Bure/Ronning speed demon line and sleeper team is the Islanders with the one-timer king himself, Pierre Turgeon😊
Wow, just love the intro sequence with the games and music and everything, its soooo good.
Would love to know how many takes this took 😂 amazing as always guys! 1:57
2
Oh yeah thanks a lot, Danny.
Now this heart-stopping jumpscare at 6:40 will haunt my dreams forever.
NHLPA 93 was the first hockey game I ever had. Fun fact 93 was the only game that you could get in a fight and make the opponent bleed on the ice after winning the fight. surprised it isn’t mentioned here. I also have a poster I’ve had since I had the game that was a promo poster for all the EA sports games for 93 and it is autographed by Doug Gilmour ❤ 😂
Man, I remember when I was like 7 or 8, we bought NHLPA Hockey 93 on SNES at a garage sale in 1994 for like 5$
We didn't have a lot of money growing up, so we played this game SO much. Pretty sure this is what really gave me the video game passion I have today
Great video! I remember playing this with my friend Adrian in his basement apartment when we were in high school. Amazing laughs playing NHL 94. I always played L.A. and he was convinced the programmers put in cheats for that team :) Cheers to the entire team involved, miss those days.
This was SO awesome!
This is super interesting. As a programmer I have always wondered how the hit detection was implemented
Who wants to tell him he's wearing figure skates? But still awesome video thanks.. lol
Brilliant video about a brilliant game, brings back great memories
This documentary was very well done and makes me want to check out other ones in the series. Anything that gives a platform to the actual developers of the game and not just snippets in gaming columns or blogs makes it so much more digestible and relatable when combined with flashes of the game play. Two key takeaways I get from this is how much John Madden and NHL feed off of each other back and forth during development in those days especially in that it was being built by small teams. The other secret sauce aside from Mark Lesser's talents was the game testers and being open minded to their constant feedback. It's easy for a developer to get so wrapped up in the grind of building the game that it's easy to lose track or sight of what the purpose of the game truly is in the first place. To me that's something that's missing from a lot of big budget games today especially when combined with giant 100+ sized teams of developers having miscommunications as well as being able to glue together all those moving parts for the finalized product. From a programmer's perspective I am a bit surprised that the entire game was purely procedural or a top down traditional game loop without C++ or objected oriented elements at all. It's also a miracle that some of these games were able to be ported to the Super Nintendo with many of the same elements given the Genesis CPU was almost twice as fast. I could go on and on in paragraphs but I'll leave it there. 😎
As a high school student (class of 98) I worked at a grocery store here in Michigan. I remember every few months at the end of my shift i would pick up a hockey news. Then I’d sit down for hours and update all of the rosters. That was probably NHL 96 and 97. Good times.
Still one of my favourite games. I wasn't even interested in hockey before I played it, but I have been ever since.
covering this game and that intro music...just got yourself a new subscriber lol
What a trip down memory lane. Playing all day tournaments on a Sega Genesis until you couldn't feel your thumbs. Such an amazing game!!! Cool video.
Thanks for taking me back!
I had the Swedish Hockey League version on Mega Drive (Elitserien '95). I remember playing the SNES version of NHL at a friends house and couldn't understand why it was so slow and zoomed in.
Great video. Love the early NHL games!
NHL 94?! My friend had that when it first came out on Sega, that was the best hockey game since Blades of Steel that I have ever seen! We got it and played it for years
One of my favourite years of hockey as well when I did follow it since I was a Vancouver fan.
When I was a toddler in the late 90s, my older brothers picked up a sega genesis model 3 from I think Toys R Us. They bought a bunch of games from I think Gamestop or Game Crazy which was like a Gamestop at the time. One of the games they bought was NHL 95. My brothers were never into hockey, and didn't know anything about hockey, especially me being a toddler. I played the Genesis a lot and my oldest brother would play games like Streets Of Rage with me, or sometimes all of us would be playing Sonic or other games we had. A game my oldest brother and I would play and go back to the most was NHL 95. Much like 94, the gameplay was very pick up and play and very addicting. He'd always play as the Toronto and I'd cycle between teams but would stick to Tampa Bay cause I liked their colors. I didn't know at the time how bad they were being an expansion team. Even though I'd always lose playing against him, we'd play all the time and play for hours on end. It was so pick up and play that even a toddler like me could play it and score some goals. We had other hockey games like NHL All-Star Hockey '95, but it was so different and played so different compared to NHL 95 that we'd just drop it and go back to playing that. It's the game that got me into hockey, that made me a hockey fan and made me a Canucks fan. We'd also spend many hours playing NHL 2k2 on the dreamcast. We wouldn't know about how great NHL 94 was until years and years later. With NHL 14 having the NHL 94 anniversary mode, I bought it the day it came out and I was hooked playing the anniversary mode. My oldest brother and I would be playing that a lot that year like how we would play NHL 95 being kids. Many memories of him and I playing those games for many days and hours. Seems like since NHL 14, there hasn't been a NHL game like that to really keep us coming back. NHL 94 is definitely the king, and in my opinion all the NHL games on the genesis have their charm, but with me, it all started with NHL 95.
wow brilliant conversations here. thanks for this! I remember being about five or six playing this on my genesis.
My college dorm had an NHL '94 tournament and I won it... and I am still playing NHL games to this day. My college roommate and I are still friends, and whenever we see each other, we still break out the Sega Genesis and play some NHL '96 (we like it better than any other version).
We always imagined that EA had a big team of hockey fans and programmers making these games. It's crazy that it started with just a couple of guys who barely knew anything about hockey.
Enjoyed this documentary thanks
you're the goat of video game journalism danny but that's a man who didn't play much hockey as a child 😂
hahaha
I loved NHL '94, but my favorite by far was '98. I would play that version for hours on end; I would even leave my Playstation on when I was doing other things and listen to the menu music! that soundtrack was something else, far different than anything I was listening to back then. and I loved it
For PS1 nhl face off was better. The players were blocky and the gameplay was cumbersome from nhl 98-01. It got better with ps2 and GameCube.
Oh my God the NHL games I am not a sports guy by any means but at that time I fell in love with the Philadelphia Flyers and my long time Co-op season best buddy, we were convinced that Mark r e c c i was the fastest character in the game, anytime he would even get close to breaking away we would yell "awwwWWWW It's TIMEEEE!!" Which turned into " Yo RECCI TIME THEY AZ BOI!!" Thanks for all the memories and insane one timer last second victories
I am a big fan of games and gaming but sports is a genre I never cared much about... However because it's a noclip documentary , I watch every second of it... And love it❤
Great doco. I learnt that Blue Sky became Looking Glass, amongst many other things. Lesser said it best that the hook in games is really all in the fine tuning.
I used to be so addicted to this game that I would write down the stats of the game and would update it as I went along in the season I created. I have multiple notebooks filled with an imaginary seasons worth of stats.
LOL We all lived the same childhood. I never got as far as you but I'd do something similar from time to time. I'd do it on other Genesis sports games too