After 20 Years NHL 94 Remains One of the Best Sports Videogames of All-Time

[Money99]

Quote: Originally Posted by DJ

I get what you are saying about expectations, but at the same time a lot of us that grew up playing NES, SNES and Genesis were kids or teenagers. Videogames were still a new thing to us so we were just happy to have something that resembled the sporting events we watched on TV. It's only natural that as the games evolved, our expectations for what to expect from said games would evolve as well. I do think that sometimes our expectations are unrealistic and that we can forget that we're supposed to play these games for fun. NHL 94 definitely ranks as a top-10 all-time sports game for me. I played it for several years; tons of head-to-head matchups against friends (like you and Rudy, I also had league where we kept track of records, stats, etc. in a notebook) and of course, the CPU.

Very true. I think that's what I miss - my ignorance to thinking it could be even better, haha.

Another '94 story. I have a very good friend that is just horrible at video games. He makes us all feel like superstars.
He'd come over on the weekend and we'd have a 4-team tournament (3 HUM, 1 CPU) with the top 3 making it into the playoffs.
But we'd always have to include all 4 teams because my buddy would go 0-3, haha!
He'd try to refuse and stick to his principals, but we forced him to play mostly because we'd all be laughing as the CPU would outscore, hit and fight him all over the rink, LOL!

I eventually took pity on him, and because I had both the Genesis and SNES, I lent the Genesis to him for a week so he could get better.
After 5 days he reported back that he was now able to beat the CPU more than 50% of the time. He was feeling confident and sure.
Then his 13-year-old sister walked in the room, saw the game and asked to play.
He gladly accepted the challenge feeling he'd make himself even more confident by beating on this rookie.
He lost by 4 goals. She had never played the game in her life and destroyed him.
My friend didn't let that deter him. He continued playing the CPU to get better and better.
Then one day, his 50+ year old father sat down to play him and after 2 periods HE was beating my buddy by multiple goals.
That's when he shut the console off, packed everything up and drove it back to my house, "Here! I don't want to see this thing ever again!", Hahaha!

P.S. My friend was so bad at video games, he would routinely get beat-up by Glass Joe on Mike Tyson's punch-out. I'd say his record against Joe was 3-10.

[keator]

Penguins, Rangers and Canuks (sp) were also very deadly in that game...

Plus the addition of the one timer, and how much easier to was to score going down than going up for me...

I love this era of videogames.. The game boxes were awesome, EA was still king, and you had to use your imagination as well. We didnt worry about patches or bugs, just played the game and had a blast.

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[MelBosco]

Personally I find the earlist games in the genre are often the best.

Tecmo bowl is (IMO) the best football game every (in terms of enjoyment)

Blades of Steel (IMO) is the best Hockey game (in terms of enjoyment)

None of this picking NHL teams and line juggling. You had the option of the fat guys, the medium guys or the skinny guys.

Personally I liked picking the fat guys. Big hitters and huge shots.

[tofubrain2]

personally I blame 1 ) the internet and it's cynical "what have you done for me lately" attitude and 2) the business plan to move online with DLC and online tournaments and such. I never thought at this stage of video game hockey one company would OWN the rights and yet puke put such a multi-colored rainbow of suck.

I'm 36 BTW and I played NHL '94 on launch( March 1993). Way before pre-orders and the only hype was in Gamepro magazine or the occasional commercial that I really didn't get on my TV. It disgusts me where EA is as a company right now.

[Bulls321974]

"Can you believe NHL 94 was released 20 years ago this month?" Yes, I can. The number "94" indicates that pretty clearly...

[Kingdawgydawg]

94 was the best, being a Kings fan I used Gretzky, Sandstrom and Robitaille all day and the Bruins with Cam Neely and Ray Bourque! I probably spent 6 months real time playing that game!


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[testorz]

NHL '94 was one of the best sports game ever ! Loved playing it back in the day !

[murph17]

OK all this 20th anniversary talk got me motivated to finish hooking up my media PC/emulator down in the man cave this weekend.