I had been playing FF9 on my phone for awhile, and was proceeding quite well; and then I decided to catch up on one of the side-quests available in the game (chocobo) when I kind of lost interest. Instead I started playing, of all things, NHL94 on SNES – the fabled hockey game from almost 20 years ago!

It’s not actually that great of a game. There is no save (so your settings, including lines) get wiped out if you restart. The emulator has an automatic save function, which saves some settings; but other important ones like your lines, are not saved and have to be re-entered each game. The gameplay also kind of sucks as the skating is a bit loose, perhaps on purpose to cover other issues, so your players don’t react how you want them to (even worse on a touch screen).

The main reason to play is nostalgia. I get to play the ’93-’94 edition of the Maple Leafs, with Gilmour, Clark (the trade for Sundin happened in the middle of the season), Todd Gill, Dave Ellet, and Felix Potvin amongst others. It’s fun and a quick time waster (it loads very quick and directly into the last state). Aside from that, I don’t know why one would play it because the later EA Sports’ NHLs are much better.

But surprisingly, people still do. I found a ROM that has been hacked to include the 2012 rosters (although it crashes on my emulator). I found another which has been updated to the ’02-’03 season where the Leafs had Sundin, Roberts, Mogilny, McCabe, Kaberle, Belfour and had epic playoff battles with Ottawa (another great nostalgic season for Leaf fans). Of course, don’t forget the essential JG Games’ NHL’94 editor to hack the ROM and update to your preferred lines (must run in Administrator mode).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: games, hockey