Players can read computer-generated preview articles for upcoming games and see a play-by-play breakdown for all simulated games in season mode.Ī lot of this is made possible by NHL 04’s out-of-gameplay interface, which was built primarily in HTML and ripe for modding from the beginning. The game offers not just updated rosters, but a completely new user interface, dubbed “ESPN.” This offers entirely new features, particularly in season mode. These days, seven people do the bulk of the ongoing work. Around 200 people have contributed to NHL Rebuilt at one point or another, according to Trent.
Then, in 2009, EA Sports stopped offering PC versions of its NHL games altogether. “We had very nice little community going for a year or two,” said Trent.
This is the only game, for me, that still feels like real hockey.”īecause of this, Trent and a few like-minded people decided to update NHL 2004, long after most modders abandoned the game in favor of newer titles. “But I still get my arse kicked in NHL 2004. “I was able to win my first NHL 09 game, at the hardest difficultly, 8-0,” he said. NHL 05 to 09 were all, in Trent’s opinion, easy to the point of being broken. “When NHL 05 came out, I was disgusted,” he told Digital Trends. He’s the coordinator of NHL 2004 Rebuilt, and feels strongly that NHL 04 is the best hockey game EA Sports ever built. Trent (not his real name) is a longtime hockey fan who lives in Finland. So who made this? And why? Gamers just liked NHL 04 better There are so many little tweaks that make this possible. Players and coaches’ in-game faces are up-to-date as well. Jim Hughson, the game’s play-by-play man, calls the team the “Winnipeg,” and also knows the names of most players who joined the league after 2004. Their rink, the MTS Center, is re-created with accurate on-ice paint, and even advertisements on the boards. “This is the only game, for me, that still feels like real hockey.”įire the modded game up, though, and you’ll find the Jets.
You might assume, then, that you can’t play as the Jets in NHL 2004 Rebuilt. In 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Manitoba and became the Winnipeg Jets. It’s in the game (because fans put it there) But this is the best PC hockey game you’ve never heard of. There’s the latest rosters, player photos, arena designs, and a complete alternative to the default interface.
The graphics are, by today’s standards, woefully outdated, but the mod is surprisingly modern otherwise. The result is NHL 2004 Rebuilt, a patched version of a game first released in 2003. So fans took the matter into their own hands. Hockey fans would either buy a console or stop playing hockey video games.
Pre-Internet, the story would likely end there. EA Sports hasn’t released a PC hockey game since the year before the first iPad came out.
The Stanley Cup Final is just around the corner, meaning one team will drink from the best-looking trophy in professional sports. Gamers who want to play along at home, however, will have to buy a Playstation 4 or Xbox One. If you want to alter the physics of the game, or incorporate rule changes that came after the 2003-04 season, you can.
It’s “NHL 2004” with everything from 2021 - the players, arenas, jerseys, goal horns, pregame ceremonies - included in an enormous, downloadable series of “patches.” If you want to play as Cale Makar, or the Seattle Kraken, or at Climate Pledge Arena, or in the Penguins’ new alternate jerseys, you can. The Original Six, all nine of them, are part of a community that’s larger still: the tinkerers, enthusiasts and obsessives behind what’s known as “NHL 04 Rebuilt,” a nearly full-scale reimagining of what many believe to be the greatest hockey game of all time, pulled from the past and kept fresh, vital and current through sheer force of will. They’re at the cabin to play a computer game that EA Sports sent to the dustbin nearly two decades ago - a game older than Shane Wright, the consensus No. Those are appetizers and incidentals, though. That’s the mindset that keeps them coming back - from cities like Jyväskylä and Tampere, once a year, Thursday through Sunday. There are nine of them now, but the name of their club is unchanged. Every spring, the general managers of The Original Six make it so. In the town of Längelmäki, on the banks of one of Finland’s 188,000 lakes, there is a cabin where it’s always 2004.