NHL ’94 (Genesis) Review

Overview

NHL ’94 was released in October of 1993 for the Sega Genesis, and is widely considered to be one of the best sports games of all time. It’s also the first game in the series to hold both the NHJLPA and NHL team licenses. Now, you might be asking yourself why I’m reviewing this now considering the fact that I technically already did one for the SNES version. The answer to that is actually twofold: one, the review is dated. I mean, way dated. I wrote that review back in April 2012. To put that into perspective, I joined Vizzed on March 12, 2012. It’s got “first review syndrome” written all over it. The other issue was that the review was five sentences long, literally. That said, let’s observe how the game holds up today.

Graphics

From a purely graphical standpoint, this game looks nice and colorful. The opening splash that bears the title “NHL Hockey ‘94” looks pretty detailed for its time. To this day, I still can’t tell whether it’s supposed to mirror a real-life hockey scene or simply be generic eye candy to get you hyped. Moving on, the menu design consists of a concise interface that lets you switch through options. The background here focuses on the boards of a hockey rink, which is rather bland, if you ask me. I much prefer the crowd focus of ’95 or the center ice focus of ’96. The pre-game consists of a still image of Ron Barr doing a quick breakdown of the teams and players. I do think they could’ve drawn the player portraits better, tough. As it stands, I can barely tell who they’re supposed to represent in some cases. In-game, everything’s pretty colorful. The Mega Drive’s color palette makes it pretty easy to distinguish one team from another. Everything is distinct, from the blue ice to the goalie crease. The crowd looks kind of copy-paste, but that’s probably a system limitation.

Audio

The audio’s as great as ever. While the opening theme isn’t quite as memorable to me as NHLPA Hockey ‘93’s, it sets the mood as good as a Genesis tune can (for the record, I like the Sega CD arrangements better), as does the pregame and intermission music. The organ music really adds a nice little bit of ambiance, too. Every check, slap shot, and siren sounds crisp and clear. That’s about it.

Gameplay

Here we go: the reason why a lot of people love this game. Yeah, it’s just basic hockey, but I think the pacing is just right here: not too fast or too slow. Fights were sadly removed, but the devastating “one-timer” shot was added in, really opening up scoring chances that were rather hard to come by in the previous iteration. You’d probably have to play it for yourself to really know what I ‘m talking about. The game just flows so naturally (provided you turn off-sides calls). No excessive distractions, just you and the game. That’s the way I like it. On the subject of game modes, you’ve got your typical Exhibition (here called “Regular Season” for some reason) and Playoff Modes as well as a Shootout Mode.

Conclusion

NHL ’94 has its 30-something year-old fan club for a reason. This game gets constant hacks and updates for a reason. There really is no reason why you shouldn’t play this game and experience what I’ve just rambled about firsthand. It’s on Vizzed for free (excluding cost of Viz). Go play it.