If you’re a hockey fan and are a little bit older, you must’ve played NHL ’94. But most importantly, you must’ve absolutely loved it.
The game, made by EA Sports for Genesis, Super NES, and Sega CD, was released 30 years ago, in October 1993, but it’s still talked about as a cult classic.
Many sports fans, especially hockey lovers, rank the game as the greatest in the sports section. And there are some things about the game that you just never forget.
For instance, Jeremy Roenick was probably the greatest player in the game. Roenick was a great hockey player, no doubt about that, but in the game, he was utterly unstoppable, and to this day, fans still talk about how broken Roenick was.
It was impossible to take the puck from him, and Roenick still gets questions about how and why he was so great in the game.
But there were other players that were OP—overpowered, in gaming terms—as well. Theo Fleury, for example, was a beast in the game, and he thinks he knows why. When guesting on the Todd Shapiro Show some years ago, Fleury told an amazing story about the game and why he was so great in it.
”I was like the man in that game. But, you know, how that came about…” Fleury said.
”I was at one of the All-Star games, I think it was in Tampa Nay. The EA Sports guys were there, so I took them out a Theo night, and it was unforgettable.”
Theo Fleury thinks, without a doubt, that his special night with the workers at EA had something to do with his powers in the game.
”I think that’s probably the reason why they made me so good. We ended up at Thee Dollhouse in Tampa, and let me just say this: They had a wonderful time. So it was good,” he said.
Theo Fleury also had Paul Kariya with him that night, and it just so happened that Kariya was another one of those overpowered players in the game.
”Paul Kariya was actually hanging out with us that night too, and he was good in the game as well. They boosted us little guys, we dominated the game.”
