What If...

I'm not sure if there's a sports game for one of the old consoles that's loved and celebrated more than EA Sports' NHL '94. I own a copy of the game for the Sega Genesis, and I admit that I still play it on occasion. While it has its shortcomings in some areas, it's still a blast to play as the likes of Mario Lemieux, Pavel Bure, and Teemu Selanne on their original teams. There have been some folks on the internet who have updated the ROM portion annually to have updated rosters and teams in the game, but it dawned on me that there might be an update that no one else would do that I could possibly tackle assuming I had enough time and effort.

It's a lofty project as I'm learning how the ROM is set, but what if there was a U SPORTS women's hockey game that had a pile of teams in the mix? What if I told you that part of the project was already done? Check it out below including two "all-star" teams!

Before anyone gets angry about their team not being there, I had to make some decisions that were based on history of winning, appearances at Nationals, and university recognition. I will also admit to there being some bias towards the nine Canada West teams that appear, so that's on me. You can be unhappy about that, but the vast majority of the teams in the list above have played often at Nationals, won Nationals, or medalled at Nationals.

The next steps are to fill out the rosters with players, and I'm making a decision based on what I know about names in NHL '94: all fifth-year players and all red-shirted players will be excluded. You can complain all you like about this, but rosters of thirty players simply won't work in NHL' 94, and I already know there are some hyphenated names that are going to monopolize the byte count on the hexadecimal names. I completely understand if some people don't like this, but I only have a limited number of spaces for players on this game.

If I can master this re-design, there will also be updates to things like the center ice logos for arenas, some stuff on the setup screens, and every team will wear their proper colours in the game as the Alberta Pandas are below, and not all teams have to wear white at home.

Again, because there are byte limits on the colours and design, every team automatically has the same design (that happened in the original game too) and I'll try to match colours as best as I can by using the Pantone hexadecimal along with the RGB colours that the game allows me to change. The RGB colours eat up less memory in the ROM, so that's the limitation that I'll need to work with to make this game look as good as the teams do on the ice. In short, the design worn on the ice might not match exactly, but the colours will be as close as humanly possible to what is worn on the ice.

Do I have a deadline for this project? The answer is no, but I hope to have all the U SPORTS rosters updated by the season's end with everyone who played in 2023-24. As I work towards getting uniforms correct and rosters set, the remaining stuff I want to update will follow. I suspect I'll have some more time to make progress on this after August when my life becomes considerably less busy, but the initial start has me excited to see if I can make this project a reality. If it becomes reality, I may publish the ROM here for people to download and play on their own!

I have no doubt that a number of you who are reading this might be thinking I'm crazy, and that's ok. I have been committed to making people more aware of U SPORTS women's hockey since I started promoting the local team on the radio, and it will continue as more and more teams have reached out for player chats and interviews. It's ambitious, but I'm committed to making this a reality for all those players who have been at the top of their sport for long.

I'll post updates when I can, but who's in for some U SPORTS '24 action starring the women? I got next!

Until next time, keep your digital sticks on the ice!