NHL Series (98, 99, 2000, 2001, 2002)

[Matt]

Hi Richie,

Yes, unfortunately 2003 is a complete lost cause on newer Windows because EA stupidly linked it to now-ancient versions of Internet Explorer and Javascript. I've never heard of anyone getting it to work. Someone had a trick once that let you access the main menu, but once there you can't click anything.

Not sure if you've ever used a virtual machine, but NHL 2003 does work beautifully inside VMware Player. If you still have a Windows XP disk somewhere or can find XP floating around on the 'net, that would be something to look into.

As for 2004, I don't own a copy myself, but it must still work because there's a huge mod community for it at nhl04rebuilt.

[Richie]

Thanks for the response Matt,

I was afraid you'd say that! I have XP dual booted with my Ubuntu desktop PC so I should be able to get it to work - just not as portable as the other older games! And you're right, there's always hunting around for an XP licence to stick in a virtual machine if I really have to transfer to another, more travel friendly, machine.

As an aside, if you have a professional edition of Windows 7, you can install Windows XP mode (installs through Windows Update with some prodding) which uses Microsoft's Hyper V virtualization system - the net result is the same, a fully functional Windows XP machine to load old software on. I have it on my work desktop for compatibility with some old work-related software but not sure I can get away with playing NHL games on it in an open plan office!

Thanks again for your excellent guides.

[PockRock16]

Hi Matt,

first of all mighty thx for your fix guides on the EA-NHL Series of the the Win95/8-era!! It's really hard if not impossible to get those oldies but goldies now in any other way started, for example on VMs.

Btw. I installed so far NHL2k on a Win8.1x64 OS.

Anyways, the following could be a useful help for gamers who got a non-english-distribution.

I installed the game following your instructions, and everything appeared to work out fine, but I also had to use a nhl2k patch/crack I'd got before to execute the nhl2k.exe.
Tbh I've found it even more pretty cool that I got the English user interface now instead of the German one. But the language option in the modified registry-file for the drive must be named as the language folder of the cd-rom because of the sound.
Otherwise the game will freeze and crash when the commentary starts (nonetheless you turn it down in the sound options).
So I edited the registry file and modified the language entry to
"Language"="[.\SETUP\'LANGUAGE']" or as in my specific case to "Language"="german".

Now I got the distribution interface and (poor) commentary, but the game also runs stable.

[luke]

Hi Matt,

when I open NHL2k game it says "Please run the game on CDROM" I tried to copy the application to the CD, but there's no space. Help?

And I followed all of the steps you posted.

[Matt]

Pock, thanks so much for the kind words and helpful info. I'll work that into the guide eventually with credit. Virtually everything on the site is US-centric, but I need to rethink that now as I know for a fact that most of my visitors are from Europe. lol

Luke, that can be a very frustrating error to track down, but it usually does relate to the registry key in some way. Two questions -- which version of Windows are you running, and did you try setting the NHL2k.exe to run as an administrator?

Give me a day or so and I'll put up a video version of the tutorial; might be easier to follow.

[luke]

I'm running it on Window 10, and yes I have tried to run it as an administrator, but it doesn't work. And thanks!

[Drezz]

I want to thank you, Matt - for your dedication to keeping these older games alive and playable on newer OSes. This site and the Zeus software listings have been a godsend.

I was heavily into modding EA Sports games back in the early 2000s up until 2009 or so, when EA Sports decided to pull the plug on PC Sports titles in favour of the console versions. I recently used some of your patches to revive NHL 2001 on an old beater laptop running Windows 7, and they worked like a charm. That was a great start to my day.

I'm looking forward to trying out these patches on a number of old games I've been longing to play again.

Anyway - I wanted to shed some light on the NHL 2003/2004 issue. Because the front-end is built primarily with Javascript and Internet Explorer functions from that era, you can't play the stock game if you have IE8 or higher. BUT, the modding community at NHL04 Rebuilt have figured out a way to remove those functions for NHL 2004. I believe they are similar in NHL 2003 - the guy who helped engineer these edits is vod, so if you're looking for a bit of info on how to get NHL 2003 and 2004 running by bypassing the old IE code, he'd be the guy to talk to.

He released a "Vanilla" version of NHL 2004 with these edits that can be downloaded from the site. Perhaps that will give you some insight on how to update and start up NHL 2003 with full functionality.

Thanks again - I'll be trying out a few more of these tweaks with some of my older sports titles and I'll be in touch if anything goes awry. Keep up the good work!

[Matt]

Hi Luke, here's that video - sorry it took so long!



I believe you when you said you followed all the directions; I just want make sure we are on the same page. I've gotten a couple requests in the past for a NHL 2000 video tutorial anyways, so this was a good excuse to finally do it.

Unfortunately, there is always that possibility that maybe it just won't work on your system, even if you follow everything to the letter. There are so many things that can cause these games not to work it is unbelievable.

[Matt]

Drezz - you're quite welcome! It's always nice to hear that someone found a use for this dump. haha. I had fun doing the writeups and hope to get back to them one of these days.

I was actually lurking the 04 rebuilt forum earlier this year -- saw someone ask vod about NHL 2003 and he basically said he didn't have it so he couldn't help. And Trent thinks NHL 2003 is arcade crap not worth bothering with.

He's probably right, but it would still be nice for the sake of completeness.

[luke]

Thanks Matt!

I did everything that you did in the video, but when I try to run it, it says "Your 3D Accelerator card and/or your video card could not be initialized properly. Please update the drivers for your 3D and/or video card. Contact your manufacturer to obtain the latest drivers." I went on the regedit and made sure the game directory and CD directory were set to the same CD drive.

[Matt]

Ok, I think that's a good thing believe it or not lol. Should be easier to fix that than the CD error..

Do you have nGlide installed, Luke?

[robert]

Hi Matt!

I found your site and i'm in seventh heaven! Finally getting use for my old cds collecting dust! I have been playing NHL since 1994 and up and till now, but since i'm a nostalgic i found the most joy with NHL 98-2002!

So i used your guide on NHL2K. I've fixed the registry to run to my E:-drive and the CD at K (!). I've installed Glide. I even added the dx6z. And ofcourse changed compatibilitymode! But all i get is a "NHL2K.EXE has stopped working".

Any ideas?

I'm on Win7 x64 Home Premium.

Thanks Matt!

[robert]

Hi again Matt!

Did a new try with NHL 99, after your installationguide i end up with "The game is not properly installed on the harddrive. Please re-install and try again."

So this far in my NHL-list i'm 0 for 2 Any ideas? Thanks

[luke]

uh, no I haven't yet Matt. Thanks! and is there a tutorial for that?

[luke]

I got it to work! thanks Matt!