Ok, so I’m watching the Edmonton Oilers play the Anaheim Ducks and up until now the Oil have been getting their asses handed to them.
*Edit* The Oilers have tied it up on a Leon Draisaitl PP goal (99th point of the year!)
**Edit** Anaheim has scored again… 3-2 them… Boo-urns. Good thing Draisaitl has those 99 points, he might’ve wanted to check the guy in the slot there…
So… I saw SPR’s tweet below and it inspired me a little. Full disclosure, I’d been looking for a way to get some the games I played growing up on a handheld device so I was already in the mud so to speak.
I figured out how to get this on my phone… Somebody save me! #nhl94 https://t.co/dYXTiRDoIL pic.twitter.com/hrP2a2Hu9Y
— BLH (Edmonton Oilers Enthusiast} (@BeerLeagueHeroe) February 26, 2020
Now, this isn’t going to be some in-depth tutorial. I’m going to give you a step by step of how I did it and then leave the rest of the magic up to you. I don’t have ALL of the answers here but I’m happy to share my methods and help if I can.
Let’s get to it!
What you’re going to need is an Android phone. I have a Samsung Note 5 and the game works flawlessly so far. I don’t know if IOS users will be able to use this method. IF you can get the files below from the Apple Store, you should be able to but don’t quote me there.
Next, what you’re going to want to do is head into the Play Store and find an app called, “RetroArch“. Download that, install it, and allow it permission to access your phone.
After that, you should have an app that can unzip files like “Zarchiver“. You can get that in the Play Store as well and that’s the app I used. So grab that and install it and allow it permission to your phone.
Now is the tricky part. You’re going to want to hit up the Google machine and search for “NHL 94 ROM“. There are a shit ton of them online and the file is probably under 600kb bit, so don’t worry about it taking a bunch of room on your device. Oh, there are multiple versions you can select from by the way. SEGA, Super Nintendo, SEGA CD, etc. So don’t be confused. Pick the one you like and download it to your phone.
You might want to have an anti-virus app installed on your phone just in case. You never know when downloading these kinds of files. I haven’t had any issues but I feel like I should offer some sort of warning or something like this.
Once you’ve finished these three steps you’re going to want to unzip the NHL94 file. Go into your app that you downloaded to perform that job (Zarchiver for me) and find the directory (mine is in the downloads folder) that you downloaded your NHL94 into. Uncompress that file and you should get something like NHL94.md or nhl94.smd.
We’re almost there. Head over to the RetroArch app and open it up. The first thing you’ll be doing here is downloading the emulator (game system) you’d like to use. The menu will give you some options,
- Load Core (Where emulators are found)
- Load Content (This is where the downloaded and unzipped games are found)
- Load Recent (You can start off from the last game you played)
- Online Updater
- Netplay
Click “Load Core” and then “Download a Core” this is where you’ll find your emulators (aka old gaming systems) like NES, SNES, SEGA, SEGA, PS1, etc. Scroll down until you find “Sega – MS/GG/MD/CD (Genesis Plus GX)” and click that. It should be the second one in the “Sega” grouping. Click it once and you’ll see some text at the bottom of your screen telling you that the emulator is being downloaded and installed. It only takes a few seconds.
Now, it’s time to play a game!
Head to the main menu of RetroArch and click “Load Content”, then find the directory where you unzipped your NHL 94 game. Go into that folder and just use the search function at the top right of the screen to find it if you have a lot of stuff on your phone, it’ll be easier that way. Click on the .md or .smd file and VOILA! The game should come right up.
The on-screen controls can be a bit weird because you’re not using a physical controller, but if you’re used to playing games on your phone, this might not be a big issue for you. There are some buttons at the top of the screen that you should fiddle with a bit.
From left to right,
- Circle with big dot: click that if you’d like the joystick instead of the directional pad. It won’t work for this game but it might for other ROMs.
- Circle with an “A”: click this if you’d like your directional pad and A/B/X/Y buttons to be bigger.
- RetroArch logo: this will pause the game and give you the option to go back to the main menu.
- “Reset”: this should reset your game. It didn’t do anything in NHL 94.
- Circle with a big dot #2: This will add a joystick on the right hand side of the screen and move some of the other buttons around.
- Arrow up: this will remove the controls from the display
I’m probably going to get one of those controllers you throw your phone into and then just play your games like a PSP just because I hate the feeling of on-screen controls.
OH! And you’ll want to rotate your phone so that you can play the game horizontally. Unless you want to feel like you’re playing an old Gameboy. Still, it’s kinda small and uncomfortable.
If you’d like to know more about this game or want to really dive into the rabbit hole that is NHL94 today, head over to NHL94.com! It’s a really rad site with anything you could ever want to know about this game.
I hope this works for you! If you have any questions, please hit me up on Twitter or Instagram!
