OT: EHM will feature the license from the NHL&NHLPA!
 

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05...s_6096669.html

NHL license for Eastside Hockey Manager
Sega Europe and Sports Interactive announce that their upcoming hockey management title will be endorsed by both the NHL and the NHLPA.

Sega Europe and Sports Interactive today announced that they have secured endorsements for Eastside Hockey Manager from both the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA). Following today's announcement, the game will not only feature all of the official names, logos, and images of all teams and players in the NHL, but has also been renamed NHL Eastside Hockey Manager.

"While ice hockey is played and followed throughout the world, the NHL's teams and players are the game's elite," said Miles Jacobson, managing director of Sports Interactive. "We feel that these two agreements are crucial in that they will allow us to add the finishing touch of authenticity to what is already an exceptional game, thereby making it a must-have for all serious ice hockey fans across the globe."

NHL Eastside Hockey Manager, which is Sports Interactive's first non-soccer title, will feature a total of 20 hockey leagues from around the world, including those from the U.S., Canada, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Norway, Slovakia, and the UK. We'll bring you more information on the game, which is currently scheduled for release in July, as soon as it becomes available.

By Justin Calvert -- GameSpot
POSTED: 05/10/04 08:22AM PST

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I know this has been all but confirmed, but I assume this is the big thing that Marc was talking about last week. Definitely huge news for any text-based game to get an official license. Maybe I should give this game a look sometime.

Just wanted to pass this along to you hardcore hockey fans ;)

Sweet.

Damn! I was so looking forward to EHM having a 2004-2005 season.

Oh, um, sorry. :-D

Now this is sweet indeed.

Nice to hear. Now maybe OOTP will do the same and get a MLBPA license.

Game on.

Something I've wondered, what does the Eastside mean? Is it a hockey reference or something else entirely?

Yeah this was one of the big things we were planning to announce (other recent one of course being the adoption of OOTP) ....

PS. You beat me to posting about it (teach me to have lunchtime meetings ;) ) ...

Nope. Riz is from the east side of his hometown (forgotten what city).

Did anyone catch the last sentence... July release!!!!

Addenda:

Rock on Riz, Rock on SI.

According to Amazon.co.uk, the release date in July 9, to be exact!

NHL Eastside Hockey Manager. I like it! I love having "NHL" in the title. I cannot wait.

I think I should start thinking what team I will take. I can't take the Wings. Too big a budget. I would like more of a challenge. At the moment I am leaning towards Edmonton. I will have to see. That said, given his impending retirement, you can put good money down on the fact that any H_B managed team will soon be coached by Steve Yzerman.

This game will be like crack for me. I can't wait.

Who's going to run the first league?

Glad to see the NHL and NHLPA can actually agree on something. ;)

CR

mmm IHL Hockey? :)

The joys of dealing with Boston management.. Providence is sounding more and more positive ;)

Well considering he is 93 years old I can't imagine he will coach very long for you. :)

Ugh......

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

schwing!

i wish we could take a team from one of the minor leagues and work our way into the NHL like CM :)

The replies I've recived from SI Staff about the licences and any restrictions have been positive, hopefully that will ease some of the doubters over on the OOTP boards.

This is super news, and the most exciting part is that the game is coming out in July!!!! Now I'll I'm waiting for is confirmation us Noth Americans will be able to walk down to EB Games on the release date and pick the game up, instead of waiting for delevery from England.

Aww, man! Come on! He's only 39! Just turned 39 yesterday as a matter of fact! He's still in the prime of his career! He's got at least 3-4 good years left in him.

Happy Birthday, Mon Captain!

I'll never understand why people fear the MLB licencing of OOTP. The PA and league have alread shown they are less restricted as can be seen in the changes to games made by EA & Sega. It also seems that Baseball Mogul 2005 will be going back to dollars, while still keeping the licences (see Mogul site).

Plus, SI has already demonstrated that they can negotiate with North American leagues. They've confirmed EHM will be using dollars, and that there will be no game restrictions due to the licences with the NHL & NHLPA (http://community.sigames.com/6/ubb.x...25&m=368102803)

I could not have said that any better. It may be the only time I regret having a wife and son kicking around the house... ;)

Did anyone get their hands on that magazine demo yet?

I ordered it. The magazine wont be out until May 27.

i just want the 2 threads to be side by side...

Never mind me...

will this game have fictional players too?

ootp is great with fictional players option

With CM, there is an option to make all the players fictional. I think it mainly renames players and moves them to different teams. Not entirely new players, but fictional names on real players on different teams.

Something about it being too difficult to make a completely new database of a few 100k players.

Just crack? Why not a more addictive drug?

BTW, crack also isn't the most potent or exclusive drug out there. Its like a poor mans coke. Are you equating EHM with a poor mans coke?

Is this game gonna be sold in America?

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Be true to the hometown and go with the Plymouth Whalers :)

Well I don't want to kill myself, so this can't be my heroin. No, I think crack suits me just fine. :D

Dola-

If you take that last line out of context, I'll have to kill you.

Come get some!!!

Awesome!

(The game that is, not the plumber's crack...)

Even though I said I wont buy it....i probably will.....it looks really good....anyone know if i will be able to take control of a junior team....work my way up to the ahl.....and eventually nhl.....I think that would be really cool....

I'm pretty sure you will be able to go from the AHL to the NHL but the junior leagues may not be playable.

Okay, where's my kleenex? ;) (No it wasn't the plumber's crack that did it)

There should be some very good text sims in our future with the recent SI news. This is very good news indeed.

I will just have to mark this down as another game to get, that I can spend my entire life playing.

Outstanding!

*bang*

I think you can play as Tier I junior teams, but unfortunately not Tier II. Not sure about that first point, though.

Not buy it? J-Man! BReak out of it! Stop the insanity!

I imagine you'll be able to move up the GM ranks. It's definitely a big part of the CM series.

I expect the ECHL to be in the game. Better said, I *hope* the ECHL is playable within the game.

I am not a hockey fan but I am very interested in this game.

ECHL. I miss our New Orleans Brass. :(

Woohoo! :)

Where's my wallet?

Probably Helsinki, Finland.

ECHL, the league of thuggery.

Alas, entertaining.

You haven't lived until you've seen a Toledo Storm game :cool:

Yes, after last week's incident and the inflated PIMs throughout the league, I'd have to agree.

I just finished my first season as a season ticket holder for an ECHL team. The skill level of players was tremendously higher than I had expected, and we averaged fewer fights per game than the majority of NHL teams actually. I don't think anybody on the team was even assessed a major penalty for anything other than fighting. Most of the knuckle-draggers that had been in the league in the past have been forced out. Everything began to change when the ECHL made a solid push towards affiliations with NHL clubs.

I've been a season ticket holder for the AHL Manchester Monarchs for 3 years, and I love it. Like Tekneek and the ECHL, the skill level has been much better than I expected.

Yes, there is some thuggery, but more fighting than anything. More "team level" brawls than you see in the NHL today. Kind of reminiscent of the NHL in the 80s. I still remember this game against the Manitoba Moose. The Monarchs were winning handily, and it had been a very physical and emotional game. You just KNEW there was going to be trouble. Finally, with about 3 seconds left there was a scrum that ended up involving everyone on the ice except the 2 goalies - a nasty, nasty fight. After that all got cleaned up, they sent more guys out for the final 3 seconds...you can guess what happened - gloves went flying before the puck even hit the ice, and again all 10 skaters squared off. Water bottles were being thrown between the 2 benches. Just a crazy fight. I can't remember the number, but there was an insane number of penalty minutes in that game.

BOO

That's what made the league so much fun :mad:

There's enough to go around, but it doesn't dominate. It sounds like you would be more interested in the Central Hockey League, or the UHL. ;)

Actually, I have been to a couple Flint Generals (UHL) games. The quality of play is so bad that no amount of fights could make up for it.

Oddly enough i don't really care about using real NHL players.I don't want to have Gretzky on my team,i want to develop and nurture my own Gretzky.

I think the best thing about using real "NHL" players is getting to know all of the prospects and players on other teams you've never heard of. It's good fun in CM. It's a good way to make legends of players who just aren't or never will be.

This used to happen a lot in the old Strat-O-Matic leagues I was in. For whatever reason, some player would just get on fire. My favorite was Danton Cole. He's currently the coach of the Grand Rapids Griffins (The Wing's AHL farm club). He had one 20 goal season in Tampa, but when it came to Strat-O, the guy was a force. Another good story was a late-in-his-career Stephane Richer. I got him in a trade and he ended up getting 15 goals in 12 games. The best part was, he only had 1 assist.

The Gretz comment made me think of something...

Does CM (or in this case the CM 3 engine) have the ability to accept historical player rosters? I am just wondering what the ability of EHM is going to be in that regard.

I doubt it does, but I just wanted a better answer than the one I can come up with on my own. ;)

As far as I know, the CM3 engine does not really support the importing of historical rosters (like OOTP). There is an editor in which, if one had the time and motivation, one could input all the attributes for a historical era. This would be a lot of work. As it stands right now, I'm not sure SI have decided whether or not to include an editor with this initial release.

There has been a lot of discussion about this on the OOTP forums, because the folks there are worried about losing the ability to import historical rosters into SI's future version of OOTP. Markus seems to have eased most of their concerns on that subject though.

I am pretty sure that was his career high for any given season in the NHL:D

I'm surprised he got one.

No worries about having Gretzky on the team. He retired 5 years ago.

It wasn't intentional. Shot. Save. Rebound. Goal. Assist.

I remember in Wayne Gretsky Hockey 2, they had a few old teams. My memory is fading but I remember the Canadiens, Bruins, Blues and Blackhawks. I think that was it. I used to create the Oilers, Flames, Flyers, Canada and Russia and go at it. Great fun!

We need something like OOTP for hockey for customized leagues and rosters.

I met Riz yesterday at E3. Seemed like a really nice guy. NHLEHM looked good. Didn't look too deep since I have never played it, but I think I just might need to now.

Uhh Riz...go home and finish EHM :)

You know...I do have my laptop here and I do play the game at the stand to find out things that need to be tweaked....and all this results in me being here at 0:55am working on those things on the laptop while checking emails and watching the replay of the CGY-SJ game on ESPN ;)

One more day at the E3 stand to go and a hell of a lot of interviews scheduled. Dangarion, it was good that you got to the stand to see us (don't know if you were the one that mentioned FOFC while we were talking or not) but anyways, it has been a pleasure demoing the game to people here. Not to mention the fact that I can play the game myself the whole day at the same time :cool:

That sounds like a dream.

My wife asked me if it would be ok if she took our son and went off to visit family in Ohio for a week in July. Of course I won't mind, as long as EHM makes the announced release date! :)

but if EHM is released in late July you're gonna feel dumb :p

Yep that was me! It's nice to put an actual person to the game!

Yeah, after spending a week doing nothing but being bored and taking the puppy out for his potty sessions.