King of 94 VIII - Toronto

King of 94 - 8 (September 23-24, 2023)

(As remembered by Halifax - Oct 2023)

**Pics Below Courtesy of EA, Halifax, Smozoma, The Professor.

A change of venues as we landed at FreePlay Toronto. A very cool arcade bar near the downtown core of Toronto!

A new format as well, where we introduced a round-robin "Super Group" for each console. These were the top 5 players based on previous results at the King of 94, and they were playing for the top 5 seeds. This also allowed newer players to play more competitive games during the round-robin vs getting blown out by one of these top 5 players.

We made a change to the mercy rule for the round robin. Previously, a 6 goal lead, would result in a completion of the game, but we listened to the feedback from a survey we conducted after the last tournament. Players wanted to finish the game regardless. For the round robin, we left it in. However, a game goal spread would be a maximum of 6. This is to prevent one group from ending up with an inflated plus/minus due to a potentially weak player in their group. So the final score would be the loser's goal total + 6 for the other player. Example: A 10-2 final score, would be recorded as 8-2.

A playoff game would still observe the 6 goal mercy rule and end immediately.

We were fortunate to have Christopher, an indie game developer, demo his game "ODR Hockey Heroes" and gave everyone an opportunity to give it a shot! Check out the website ODRhockeyheroes.ca and follow him on Twitter @odrhockeyheores.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

When the SNES Super Group was announced, Kingraph modestly noted there were four super players and then him. He finished, 2-2 and took the second overall seed after the tiebreaker. Koke_45 went 4-0 to take the top seed.
Group F was one of the more interesting groups. Gameshark, a new comer, shocked everyone by going 4-0 in his group defeating some strong players along the way, Rooster (Ranked #14 in the world), and Angryjay93 (Ranked #16 in the world). One of Gameshark's wins came over 94 Problems, where he staged a comeback after being 5 goals down at one point. The final score was 11-10.
Group D was the only group to have had three players (Eliopoulus, Tony Twist and Baby Piranha37) go 3-1 and all qualify for the King Bracket.

SNES Round Robin -> Results

SNES Round Robin -> Stream

In the Duke of 94 final, Smozoma went with the expansion matchup to try and slow down his opponent, Taurus (a former Duke of 94 winner). Smozoma played a shut down style, and his strategy worked with a 2-0 victory.

In the Puke of 94 Final, Halifax and Chaos, two of the nhl94.com admins would meet for a battle of the pukiest SNES players. Halifax held a 1-0 series lead (best of 3) due to not having lost a game to that point. However, chaos would not be deterred and took the game 5-3 to tie the series. And that's when the USA flag came out as chants of "USA! USA! USA!) filled the area. The USA flag draped around Chaos back. The canada flag was then draped around Halifax for one last game. (See pics below)
Chaos managed to build a 3-1 lead in the second period. Halifax scored before the end of the period to cut things to 3-2 and then managed to tie 3-3 part way through the third. It took a breakaway with a minute to go as Halifax scored to take the lead 4-3 and held on to win the Puke of 94 trophy (Valeri Zelepukin is on it).

SNES Duke of 94 Results

SNES Puke of 94 Results

SNES Bracket

When it comes to bracket play, the one thing that everyone looks for is upsets. TheWiz84 (10th seed) first took down Skankhunt (7th Seed) 4-3, 2-7, 8,5 and then a big upset vs KingRaph (2nd seed), 3-6, 6-3, 4-3 making it to the winner's semis for the first time. Thewiz84 would ultimately finish in the top 6.

Another upset run was Angryjay93 (15th seed). He lost his opening round series to KingRaph (2-4,4-6) and dropped down the loser bracket which is a one game elimination. He rallied off 4 straight wins and finishing 4th in the tournament.

The final three players featured Koke_45 (1st seed), the professor (3rd seed) and Dangler (4th seed).

Dangler (winner of King 94 - 6 and finalist in King of 94 - 7) managed to find his way into his third straight final defeating Koke_45 by a 5-3 score.

SNES Bracket - Stream

The final would prove to be an exciting one. It is a best of 5 format with The professor starting off with a 1-0 series lead, as he had not lost a series at that point. Dangler would take game one 4-2 to tie the series at 1-1. Game three would have an exciting finish with some late heroics and forcing overtime, which theprofessor won 6-5. In game 4, Dangler appeared to have TheProfessor on the ropes but theprofessor scored late in the third to force overtime once again. He scored in overtime to win 7-6 and his first SNES world championship title!

TheProfessor, "Such a well-run tourney. We were done so fast that it all felt like a blur. We’ll do it all again next year."

SNES King of 94 -> Results

SNES Finals -> Stream

Pictured - The Professor (Toronto, ON) holding the King of 94 trophy.

Sunday, September 24, 2023

The Sega Super Group had three current and former world champions competing. Angryjay93 (2017,2018, 2022), Kingraph (2019,2020) and kgman (2015). After group play, Angryjay93 would top the group at 4-0 and be the number one seed.

For the most part, the group winners and qualifiers during the round robin went as expected.

Group F saw Mr Bandwagon come back to the tournament since playing in 2019 and went 4-0 in the group. Including a win, that some would consider an upset, over Kaze.

In Group C, Mr T Ex (2-1) need a win in his final game over Scribe99 (3-0), and Mr T Ex managed to pull of a 4-3 win to qualify for the King of the 94 bracket.

A group of 4 players made the trip from Philadelphia. During the group reveal stream, I jokingly made a comment that they were the 4 horseman (from the WCW days). They took this to an all new level and had shirts made with the four horseman on the front, and the NHL94 logo on the sleeve with their gamer tags on the back (see pics below). They mentioned that they have four other guys that wanted to come but couldn't so there may be larger contingent coming to the tournament in 2024. It was a great trip for them, and they would have a lot of success in the Duke and Puke playoffs.

The Duke of 94 had joemullen07 (of the 4 horseman) face off against Chris O in the final. Chris O hadn't lost a game in the playoffs and would need to be defeated twice in a row. JoeMullen07 would win 7-3 and 4-1 to win the Duke Trophy!

The Puke of 94 bracket saw some interesting events play out. the opening game between Flamshelter and halifax was scoreless for three periods, with some amazing saves at both ends. Over 9 minutes had gone by in overtime before Halifax ended it. It was the longest game of the day.

A new player, 94 problems, lost his opening game before rallying 4 straight wins to make the Puke final. He took the first game off of Crawdaddy (one of the four horseman), 5-2 to force a final game. However the streak would end as Crawdaddy took the Puke of 94 Trophy with a 6-1 victory.

Sega Round Robin stream

Sega Round Robin Results

Sega Duke of 94 Results

Sega Puke of 94 Results

Sega Bracket

15 players qualified for the King of 94 bracket and there were plenty of upsets in the open round best of three series.

1. Kaze (11th seed) defeated dantml7 (6th seed) 4-2, 2-5, 4-3

2. Scribe99 (10th seed) defeated chaos (7th seed) 3-2, 4-3

3. Smozoma (12th seed) defeated EA (5th seed) 2-1, 2-3, 4-3

4. Tecmo jon (14th seed) defeated corbettkb (3rd seed) 3-2, 3-6, 7-3

5. szpakman (15th seed) defeated Kingraph (2nd seed) 6-0, 1-6, 3-1

1st Seed Angryjay93 had a bye in round one and then cruised to the winners final series with victories over thrillhouse (8th seed) 7-1, 4-3 and kgman (4th seed) 7-1, 7-2 and waiting to see what would happen on the other "upset" side of the bracket.

Last year Scribe99 got knocked down the loser bracket early on and was eliminated from the tournament quickly. This year he had different plans. He defeated Szpakman 5-3, 4-5, 4-2 and then tecmo jon 3-2, 3-2 (OT Goal filmed from iPhone) in a very close series to make it to the winners final and guarantee himself a top 3 finish. He then lost to AngryJay93 in another close series 5-3, 5-4 and waited for the lower bracket to catch up to play him in the semi.

The loser bracket saw a great run from kaze. He dropped down early and then rallied off 4 straight wins to make it to the loser final to meet scribe99 and what would be an epic game.

Check out this penalty shot save from Scribe99. The reaction from Kaze says it all. Scribe would score late to tie and then win in overtime 5-4.

The best of 5 series starts off the Angryjay93 with a 1-0 series leads since he not lost a playoff series. Angryjay93 would win 6-2 and held a commanding 2-0 series lead. No one had beaten Angryjay93 all day so winning three straight would be extremely difficult. Scribe99 was not fazed and he won the next game 8-5 handing Angryjay93 his first loss of the day and narrowed the series to 2-1. But that would be all, as Angryjay93 took the last game 6-2 to win his 4th world title in the last 7 years.

Sega Bracket and Finals Stream

Sega King of 94 Results

Pictured - Angryjay93 (Sacremento, CA) holding the King of 94 trophy.

One final story from Halifax.

I'm at the toronto airport and my carry on gets flagged.

Airport employee (who looks about 25 years old) says “this has been flagged as there are wires in here”. (It’s my power bars and extension cords). As he continues look through, he pulls out the NHL94 case that Eric V (aka EA) got everyone at the venue to sign. The employee looked bewildered for a moment and then says “NHL94?”. I say “best game ever bud”. And he says “and it’s got a bunch of signatures on it?”. Me “Yes.....of the greatest players in the world”.