“It’s not even so much me as it’s Roenick. He’s good.” — Vince Vaughn, Swingers
If you knew what you were doing and you got to pick your team first, you snatched up the Chicago Blackhawks in NHL ’94 — an iconic edition of the Electronic Arts video-game franchise celebrating its 20th anniversary this month.
For one reason only: winger Jeremy Roenick, whom the developers must’ve had a crush on, because they made him better than Gretzky and Lemieux and Neely.
Immortalized in a 16-bit trash-talking scene of the 1996 classic Swingers (nerd alert: Vaughn and his pals are actually playing ’93, but their references to the removal of fighting are all ’94), and later spoofed by Roenick himself, NHL ’94 is arguably the most memorable release of a series that has seen new additions every year since it debuted in 1991.
Besides the legend of Roenick, the title emphasized the one-timer, speed and hard cuts across the crease. The live-action NHL was enjoying a surge of offence, and the sit-down version reflected that.
“It got me through a lot of tough nights,” Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman John-Michael Liles told NHL.com. (Fun fact: With Alexei Kovalev retired, Roman Hamrlik, Jaromir Jagr and Teemu Selanne are the only three active players you can go back and manipulate in ’94.)
Personally, I resisted throwing out my old Super Nintendo System for 17 years after the fact solely so I could play ’94; the cartridge never left the slot. And believe it or not, diehards can still find active leagues.
NHL.com has done a fantastic job celebrating the game’s anniversary this month.
Like snapbacks and 100-year-old Millionaires jerseys, what’s old is fresh again. So DeAndre Jordan’s posterizing of Brandon Knights gets the NBA Jam treatment, and NHL.com has applied the midi music and star-shaped skating shadow of NHL ’94 to a couple of the most video-game-like rushes of the 2013 season.
Patrick Kane’s spin-o-rama backhander during the Chicago Blackhawks’ thrashing of the Dallas Stars:
Pavel Datsyuk’s dekeing of 37 Nashville Predators:
Current NHLers reminisce about NHL ’94: