A fresh romhack adds a 5-player mode to classic SNES hockey titles, letting five human players jump in at once instead of the usual two or four on original hardware.
The setup is delightfully simple: by taking advantage of the SNES multitap, the hack reassigns inputs so that extra controllers can be mapped to skaters on the ice. Instead of one person controlling an entire line, multiple players can split responsibilities, turning what used to be a solo or versus experience into a full-on couch chaos session.
This isn’t some mini-game or side mode, either. The new 5-player support is woven into the standard gameplay structure, so you can run full matches with a mix of human and CPU teammates. It brings the SNES hockey experience closer to the feeling of modern co-op sports games, where half the fun is yelling at your buddies for missing a pass while everyone fumbles for the right player on the screen. For people still breaking out original hardware, or building “party boxes” around emulators and multitap support, this is a serious upgrade.
Unfortunately, this hack is SNES only, which stings a bit, because NHL ’94 for Genesis just got its own fantastic fan project, which unlocks proper fisticuffs. You can throw down, or you can pile onto the ice as a five‑stack, but not both in the same game, at least not yet.
Still, taken together, these hacks point in a fun direction. Instead of just updating rosters, the community is finding new ways to squeeze more life out of old sports games, whether that’s more players on the ice or more punches thrown after the whistle.
Source: Romhacking.net
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