King of 94 - 9 - Toronto

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 King of 94 - 9 (September 28-29, 2024)

(As remembered by Halifax - Oct 2024)

**Pics Below Courtesy of EA, Halifax, The Professor, NJ Killer, Len the Lengend

Back for another year FreePlay Toronto. A very cool arcade bar near the downtown core of Toronto! 

We kept the same format as the previous year, which had a "Super Group" for each console. These were the top 5 players based on the previous tournament 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 brought back the Auto Goalie tournament that we had not had since 2019. The hope here was to bring in new players or previous players that want to play a more casual-style tournament. 

This was also the first year we had players outside of Canada or the USA participate. Anders Lindberg (Limpan) and Paul Sellerholm (Sellerholm) travelled from Sweden to compete in the tournament.

The Sega Genesis tournament was on Saturday. We had the most Sega Genesis players attend since the first King of 94 tournament.

This year's round robin groups had some great stories. In group B, first time competitor, NewJerseyKiller , drove all the way up from Pennsylvania (about an 8 hour drive) and went 5-1 to qualify for the King bracket. 

Group C had favourites Szpakman and EA, however, they were both upset by Rigsby in round-robin play. Even more interesting was that Rigsby finished 3-3 and didn't qualify for the King play in series. Our Swedish friend, Limpan went 4-2 along with EA to head to the playing games and Szpakman finished 5-1 to qualify for the King bracket. More on Szpakman's great playoff run later on.

Group D was an interesting one. It was led by two-time champion, Kingraph. We heard rumours that Cash Money was likely the best of the Philadelphia Horseman crew, but we had no idea how good until he started playing. He swept the group 6-0 and qualified for the King bracket in his first tournament appearance. Kingraph ended up 4-2 also suffering a loss to Annatar (5-1) and was bumped into the play-in bracket. Another new player, know as simply as "OT" ended up 3-3 in a tough group. 

No surprises in Group E as we expected smozoma, SOH and Chaos to finish in the top three. smozoma (6-0) and SOH (5-1) both qualified for the King bracket and Chaos (4-2) was sent to the play-in.

Group F ended up being a tough group. It was the only group to have 4 players with 4 wins or more!

McMarkis (5-1) qualified for the King bracket. Stantanator (4-2), JoeMullen07 (4-2) and Thrillhouse (4-2) would go to battle it out in the playin round.

Group G was a shocker to many. Mr. Tex and Mr. Bandwagon had both qualified for King bracket the prior year and it was expected they would top the group. However, Mr. Bandwagon didn't get the results he wanted and went 1-5 in the round robin. Mr Tex finished 3-3 and missed out on a chance to qualify. Newcomer, Kidswasted, went 4-2 to qualify for the playing. Crawdaddy won the Puke of 94 the previous year and said before the tournament "I've got bigger plans this time." He went 5-1 and qualified for his first King bracket.

SEGA Round Robin -> Results

SEGA Genesis -> Stream1, Stream2, Stream3

Play-in Bracket (Players that won 4 games) -> Results

8 players went 4-2 and were competing for the 15th and 16th seeds in the King bracket. PLayer that lost their playing game would drop down to the Duke Bracket. Not surprisingly, Kingraph balzed through his two games, beating Kidswasted 9-5 and Thrillhouse 6-0 to qualify as 15th seed. EA defeated stantanator 5-3, and Limpan 8-2 to move on as the 16th seed.

Auto Goalie Tournament - > Results

The Auto Goalie tournament had 4 players and they were all first time players to the tournament. They each played each other twice in the round robin and then advanced to the playoffs. Greco lead the way with a 5-1 record. He defeated SuperMario7 (1-5) in the opening round of the playoffs 1,0 and 6-0. SandboxHero85 (3-3) beat ChrisHL (3-3) in the semi in a close match up 5-3, 3-5, 5-3. Greco and SanboxHero85 met in the final with Greco taking it 3-2 and 4-1!

Puke of 94 Bracket (players with 2 or less round robin wins) - > Results

17 players competed in the Puke of 94 bracket. The final was between NHL94 podcast extraordinaire, Len the Lengend and DPS, who may be one of the best retro sports video gamers there is. He's won several Tecmo Super Bowl Tournaments and is an elite NBA JAM player. It was Len's goal before the tournament to get a Puke trophy. He needed to defeat DPS twice to take it. He wont the first game 5-3, but the second game DPS recovered and won his first NHL94 trophy!

Duke of 94 Bracket (players with 3 or 4 round robin wins) -> Results

12 players competed in the Duke Bracket, and at a first look of the names, this was appeared to be a  wide open tournament for the title. However, it was one player​ that went to the forefront and never looked back. "OT", as he simply known as, travelled up from Michigan to compete for the the first time. He won 5 straight games, defeating Dantml7 in the final 7-4 and was crowned Duke of 94 champion!

The SNES Super Group was led by reigning world champion, The Professor who finished 4-0 in the group, followed by koke_45 (3-1). Angryjay93, Kingraph and dangler rounded out the group at 1-3.

Group B was interesting. Annatar led the group at 6-0, which surprised no one. However then we saw Taurus qualify for the King bracket for the first time at 4-2. Newcomer Blazer941, travelled in from Quebec and also finished 4-2 to qualify for the King Bracket. Halifax went 0-3 to start the round robin but managed to rally and win the last three games to qualify for the Duke bracket.

Group C Stantanator topped the group at 6-0. Gambi qualified for the King bracket for the first time at 4-2. JotaC007 played in his first in person King of 94 tournament.  He finished the group at 4-2, however due to his overall plus/minus he would need to qualify through a play-in game.

Group D more less went as expected with McMarkis leading the way at 6-0 Skankhunt 5-1 and Streetxox (former duke of 94 champion) also getting into the king bracket at 4-2.

Group E was a tough group with 5 of the 7 players collecting at least 3 wins. Mooney (5-1) and OM94 (4-2) qualified for the King bracket, while Rooster was headed for a play-in game.

SNES Round Robin + Playoffs stream

SNES Round Robin Results

Play-in Bracket (Players that won 4 games) -> Results

SNES had less players overall compared to the Sega Genesis Tournament. In his particular case only one playoff in game was needed to get into the King bracket. We seeded all players that had 4,5, or 6 wins. JotaC007 and Rooster finished 4-2 and had the lowest plus minus and squared off in the playing. JotaC007 would 6-3 to join his friend Blazer841 in the King Bracket.

Auto Goalie Tournament - > Results

The Auto Goalie tournament had only 2 players. Jazz Jackrabbit returned to the tournament since playing in the very first one back in 2015. Joining him was The Professor's son, Cohen, AKA SpaceGoat. Cohen (age 15) is our youngest competitor ever and has played in three previous King of 94 tournaments. The competitors decided to play a best of 7 for the trophy and it was a well play series! Cohen came out on top in 6 games, 2-3, 3-1, 3-2, 0-6, 9-4, 10-5.

Puke of 94 Bracket (players with 2 or less round robin wins) - > Results

The Puke bracket saw something never done before. A player, who went 0-6 in the round robin, went on to win the Puke of 94 Trophy. Eliopuolous finished 0-6 in Group B, losing 4 games by one goal and the other two by two goals. He took out his frustration on his opponents in the playoffs rallying off 5 straight wins for the title and scoring at least 7 goals every game along the way!

Duke of 94 Bracket (players with 3 or 4 round robin wins) -> Results

The Duke of 94 bracket had 6 players. While a small group of players, these players were all relatively evenly matched. This was apparent, as the bottom two seeds Limpan (5th seed) and Halifax (6th seed) ended up in the finals. Limpan started with three straight wins to get to the final. The road for halifax was a bit tougher. He won his first game but lost to Tecmo Jon in his second game 3-2. This dropped him down to the lower bracket. He won his next three including a double OT win over Kidswasted 4-3. He beat limpan 4-2 and 7-4 to win his first Duke of 94 Trophy.

This is a tournament re-cap post from one of Swedish competitors, Limpan via Instagram.

Note that below is google translated from Swedish to English, so there's some text that didn't transfer properly, but you'll get the gist of the great experience he had!

Back to reality again after the Atlantic trip and NHL 94 World Cup in Toronto, Canada. Extremely difficult competition with the best from the NHL 94 community with 1500 members in place. Paul and I were the first contestants ever outside of North America! We threw ourselves into the wasp nest against experienced online players, with good courage. Saturday focus on the SEGA version of NHL 94.

16 places of the barely 50 participants made it to the A-finals, to settle for the title. 5 of these places were already reserved to seeded players in group A who only played for which seeding place they would get the playoffs. These 5 guys had come in the top 5 in last year's tournament. Thus, there were 11 places to play about for the remaining groups. The groups moved on and the top two. Then there were two places left to play about. With 4 wins and 2 losses, I grabbed second place in group C, which was enough for a qualifying place for the A playoffs. 8 players made it up in qualifying for the last two places. I won my first qualifying match (which was also live-streamed, with nice support from home in the stream chat 🥰) to then fall on the goal line when I coded the second qualifying match. Just outside of the A-game, a little sour, but at the same time ok considering the resistance 😬😅👍

Still in "town", we had also registered for the Super Nintendo tournament on Sunday. Yes, the Sega and the Super Nintendo versions of the game differ significantly, so just because you are good at one doesn't mean you are good at the other. I have hardly played the Nintendo version, but once in front of the game, you want to win, of course. Therefore everything was a fun bonus and was pleasantly surprised that I did not become a punching bag but won 3 out of 6 games in the group stage, which was enough for the B finals. In the playoffs, I barked all the way to the B-finals, but there it stopped. But overall far above expectation!

A very fun trip and experience that ended with a fun and challenging tournament! Met many new nice acquaintances 🇨🇦🇺🇲. Also very fun to do this with @paulsellerholm 🤩

Also thanks to Henrik at @nostalgibutiken.com who sponsored our t-shirts 🇸🇪