The Man Who Programmed NHL 94 Knew Nothing About Hockey

[RaychelSnr]

“Do the developers even watch hockey?” is an insult that frustrated sports gamers often type on the Internet to express their dissatisfaction with the (lack of) authenticity in Electronic Arts' NHL video games.

The day-to-day realities of making sports video games, however, often require designers and producers to convey their gameplans to programmers who may not have much experience with the sport that their scripts are designed to simulate. This remains the case today, to a large extent. But as the tools and languages that companies use to make video games are becoming more standardized -- and are being widely taught to thousands of college kids -- the number of sports gaming programmers with relevant, real-life sports experience is on the rise.

Read More - The Man Who Programmed NHL 94 Knew Nothing About Hockey

[Hellisan]

It was a damn good game for its time. Kudos to him!

[bukktown]

Funny that he was an EE.

[mikeymayhem]

same thing can be said about the current programmers

[Arrowhead21]

Re: The Man Who Programmed NHL 94 Knew Nothing About Hockey

during an intermission, NHL 94 showed a list of scores and even ran some highlights from games around the league.

NHL 94 had that.

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[Eski33]

Still have NHL 94. Still fun as ever. Same with Live 96 and Madden 93. Still hold up to
The test of time.

[kazjason]

Who knew Peter Dinklage had so many talents.

[snc237]

Still have NHL 94. Still fun as ever. Same with Live 96 and Madden 93. Still hold up to
The test of time.

Hold up the test of time might be pushing it but then again I was 4 at the time madden 93 came out. NHL 98 is my game that holds up, suppose its where you were at that time that makes the games so amazing.

[actionhank]

Re: The Man Who Programmed NHL 94 Knew Nothing About Hockey

I think being a hockey player, or avid viewer gets wayyyy too much attention. A good programmer doesn't need to a fan to make things work the way they should. There might be things that are helped (skating would be something that i think could benefit from someone actually having done. Just so someone understands the movement, and the way things are changed by small movements, but again, not required to be good at programming it.)

I think the issue isn't that EA Vancouver doesn't know/watch hockey (I'm sure more than a few play/watch religiously.) The problem appears to be that the shots get called by the higher ups, and the higher ups seem to think that outside of HUT, it's all playable decoration. HUT is their meal ticket, and they don't seem to be very concerned with the lack of forward progress in the rest, which concerns me for the future of the NHL series.

I get that your best child obviously gets the most attention, and HUT is that, but my beef with EA comes from the fact that even with a release that was (in my opinion) as botched and poorly executed, from the gameplay itself, to the release of information before/after the release, EA has done just about everything in it's power to keep talking/showing HUT highlights, and so little to address of remedy so many of the big problems.

From what I've seen, their Roster updates are still underwhelming, and pretty infrequent, and simple things like player editing are still oddly absent (Unless that's been patched in recently and i just missed it). My issue isn't with the fact that HUT is the glory child and gets all the attention...it's that EA forgot it has other kids locked in the basement that they haven't checked on in a week...

[ericromain]

In the year of the '94 games, EA got a lot of money off me. NHL 94, FIFA International Soccer, PGA Tour Golf II, NBA Showdown 94, Mario Andretti Racing were all superb. I even bought the EA Sports 4-way play to play with all my friends.

I love NHL 94, the first game to have the one-timer, both team logos and player names together, hats on the ice after hattricks, checks into the bench.
Still, I don't understand why that game is so universally singled out as the cultural icon of NHL. The pool of blood in NHLPA 93 was something special that was never seen again, and NHL 95 was the first game to have the the crowning achievement of all sports gaming that generation with the first savable 82 game season, with full player stats.

I think NHL 96 is the masterpiece. The game plays the smoothest and looks great and has every feature you could have wanted at the time.

[AdamJones113]

Re: The Man Who Programmed NHL 94 Knew Nothing About Hockey

Here's another good article, one that takes a broader view but focuses on NHL 94 as a whole.

http://readonlymemory.vg/john-madden-hockey