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NHL Hitz 2003 Walkthrough
by The Lost Gamer (
[email protected])
Copyright 2002
Table of Contents:
001. General information
002. Walkthrough
002a. Hockey School
002b. Exhibition
002c. Mini Games
002d. Franchise
002e. Season
002f. Tourney
002g. Options
003. Creditz
001-General Information
-----------------------------------------------------------
This is a walkthrough for the Gamecube game called NHL Hitz
2003. It's a great game (I like it, anyway). You can e-mail
at
[email protected], but make the subject blank
if you do. Also (terrible self-promotion), it'd be nice if
you checked out my website:
http://the_lost_gamer.tripod.com/
002-Walkthrough
-----------------------------------------------------------
Okay, let's start playing hockey! Of course, you'll need to
know how to play before you actually do play, right? So
start the game and choose Hockey School to learn how!
002a-Hockey School
-----------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Hockey School! Who's the coach for today? Why,
it's Scotty Bowman, the NHL's all-time winningest coach!
(Winningest isn't a real word, by the way).
Scotty Bowman will help you go through all the lessons. When
you're done, you'll know how to do every move in the game.
First up will be Skating and Turbo.
Use the control stick to skate around. Press the R button
to do a Turbo Skate. If you use turbo, you go a bit faster
than normal. However, you can only do turbo if there is
something in your turbo meter, which refills when you aren't
doing turbo. The Turbo Skate move helps you out a lot when
you play the game, and you shouldn't have to worry about the
turbo meter going empty too much.
Next lesson is select player. I recommend doing turbo here
until your turbo meter is empty to see what it's like. You
can do that a couple of times, and then you need to get on
with the lesson. Simply press A and you get to control the
player closest to the puck. You can only do this if you don't
have the puck. This isn't hard, and you'll be able to use
this while playing without thinking about it.
Next lesson is the most important lesson: the body check.
Press X to check someone (you can't check your teammates,
which is sort of lame). Checking is important. I recommend
redoing the select player lesson again to practice your
checking. And to make it cooler, do a check while doing
turbo! Checking is awesome! And what's even cooler is the
fact that you can check people through the boards! The only
bad part is that you can't check someone while you have the
puck.
Once you've had enough fun with checking, you need to learn
how to do a stick check. Press B to do a stick check.
Basically, a stick check (sometimes the announcers call it
a poke check) is knocking the puck away from an opponent
without checking him. You should use this if your opponent
is on a breakaway, as you can be far off and still stick
check.
Next lesson is the block shot. Press L when you're in between
the player with the puck and the net. You get on your knees
and block his shot.
Next up is the block pass. Same thing as the block shot,
except you block a pass, not a shot. Not too difficult.
Next you start to work with the puck. If you have the puck,
press A to pass it. You also need to press the control stick
somewhat towards the person you're passing to. Most of the
time the passes go to the person you want. This isn't tough.
Next you need to do a wrist shot. Press B when you have the
puck (just press it, don't hold it down). There's the wrist
shot.
Next is the slap shot. Same as the wrist shot, except that
you hold B down. The longer you hold it, the harder you hit
the puck. Be warned, if you're winding up for a slap shot,
it is the ideal time for an opponent to take the puck.
Next, you learn the one timer. This is an important move,
you can score a LOT if you master it. Press A to pass the
puck to a player. If you press B before he gets the puck,
he will shoot the puck the second he gets it. It doesn't
seem like much, but it is very important.
Next up is the complicated fake shot. Press B like you would
for a slap shot, but at the top of the windup, press X. You
end up not doing a slap shot. This is useful for faking out
the goalie, and if you master it, you can score often. It's
hard, however, and I still have yet to master it.
Next up is the equally complicated fake shot pass. Hold B like
you would for a slap shot, and press A at the top of your
windup to pass it instead of shoot if. If you're really good,
you can have your other player do a one-timer then. I can't
do it, but if you can do it, you must be virtually unstoppable.
Next lesson is easier, the deke. A deke is when your player
does a little spin thingie. This stops him from being checked,
and can also confuse a goalie. Perform a deke at any time by
pressing Y.
Next is the guard puck. If you have the puck, press X to do
it. Nobody can stick check you while you do this, so if you're
on a breakaway and a defender is close behind you, you might
want to do this.
Onto the last lessons: the short dump, clearing dump, and
boards dump. If you have the puck, press L to dump it. How
hard you dump the puck depends on how hard you push down L.
A boards dump is the exact same thing, except along the
boards.
There's one move that you don't learn in hockey school, but
I'll talk about that in the next section.
Yay! You finished hockey school! Scotty Bowman expects a
top-noch performance from you now, no excuses. You've also
unlocked the jungle stadium (you unlock items as you do
certain things. The jungle stadium is simply an arena for
you to play in).
002b-Exhibition
-----------------------------------------------------------
Time to play a game of your own. Choose exhibition mode.
You get to select the home team and the away team. The
possible teams are all the NHL teams, some country-based
teams (Team Russia, Team USA, etc.), and some crazy teams
that most likely don't exist (for example the scourge or the
seadogs (every person on the seadog team is a pirate)). Once
you've decided which team is what, choose which team you will
play as and move ahead by pressing A.
Now you get to choose your lineup. Choose a person to play
center, a person to play wing, and a person to play defense.
Finally, choose who you want as goalie. The players' stats
are shown so you can get a good idea of which position is best
for which player. You can mess around with a person's stats
if you want to.
Next you choose the uniforms. Each team has two (or more)
uniforms to choose from. Once you like the uniforms, move
ahead with A.
Now you need to choose the rink to play in. You can play in
the home team's rink or some other rinks (most of the random
rinks, such as the moon, belong to the random teams I talked
about earlier). You can also choose weather conditions (none,
rain or snow). This is just a cool effect which makes it seem
like you're playing in actual rain or snow.
Once you're done, you get to start the game. While the game
loads, you get to see a refresher of all the moves (just a
screen showing all the buttons and their corresponding
moves).
Also on this screen is the one move you don't learn in hockey
school, the on-fire move. As you check and do other cool
stuff, your on-fire meter in the upper corner of the screen
fills up. Once the first meter is full, press Z. The player
with the puck lights on fire for about 30 seconds. During this
time, everything he does is better (his speed, likelihood of
scoring, etc.). If you wait until both meters are full,
everyone on your team gets on fire. It's a cool effect.
But now it's time to play. The announcers do a little pre-game
thing where they announce the starting line-ups. Then it's
time to drop the puck.
On the face-offs, you can press A, B, or X. You do a different
thing depending on which one you press. Each move can beat
another move, for instance, a B move beats an A move. If
you're good, you can use this to your advantage and win almost
every face-off.
After the face-off, it's time to play. Do your best.
There's some things that you should know. You can get a
penalty, but only if you check the goalie or get in a fight.
You can't get more than one penalty, so when you're a man
down, you can check the opposing team's goalie all you want
(it's easy to score when the goalie is on his butt).
Fighting is important. Every now and then, two players get
in a fight. This happens depending on the game play (say
two players are constantly checking each other). Now you
get in fight mode. You have to try to drain the opponent's
energy before you lose yours. Press A to punch his face,
B to hit his chest, X to grab onto him and do several punches,
Y to block, and the control stick to dodge around.
Fighting is fun!
After a period is over, you can choose new players to play (or
keep the old ones). If one of your players lost a fight, you
can't choose him or her. If a penalty is going on, one of your
players will have to come in as the person with the penalty.
If the game is over, and there's a tie, you can choose how
to end the game. You can go into sudden death overtime (you
play until a team scores, and that team wins) or have a
shoot-out (five players from each team each get a breakaway,
and the team with the most goals at the end wins).
After the game is done, you can check out the stats for the
game, or exit the game. When you're done, exit the game. A
trivia question pops up. Try to get it right, and after the
answer is revealed you get the option to save your trivia
standpoint (it just keeps track of which questions you have
answered and how many points you have---you get something if
you get over 200 points). After that, you go back to the main
screen.
If you press start, the game is paused and you get a complicated-
looking screen. It's not too hard to understand, but it
can cause problems, so I'll have to explain it here.
You get a bunch of things you can choose from: Resume Game,
Replay, Options, Stats Central, User Control, Controllers
and Exit Game.
The two easy ones are resume game and exit game. If you choose
exit game, it asks if you want to stop playing the game you're
playing right now (the hockey game, not the entire NHL Hitz
game). If you choose resume game, play resumes.
Replay is a cool feature, but it isn't long enough. Basically,
it replays the last 10-something seconds of the game. You
can look at whatever happened during this time at any angle.
Cool.
Press Z if you want to hide the help box (it takes everything
offscreen except for the game). Press A to play the footage,
and B to rewind it. Press X to play it in slow motion, and
Y to rewind it in slow motion. R zooms in and L zooms out.
The c-stick controls the target (which is always in the center
of the screen), and the control stick controls the angle.
Press Start to go back to the pause menu. The replay function
is cool (slow-motion replays of checks are awesome), but like
I said, isn't long enough.
The user control section is easy enough to understand. Move
your control stick around to go where you want. You can control
a single player (this means you control them the whole time,
no matter what) or a team. You can switch teams if you want,
and set up a team for CPU control. Not too tough.
The controllers section isn't too tough either. There are
six different control schemes you can use. I use the one the
game automatically starts with, as there's no big problem with
it. Choose another one if you don't like it.
The stats central section is also quite easy. If you choose
it, you get to choose one of five subsections: team stats,
player stats, user stats, scoring summary of penalty summary.
This shows a bunch of stats like + -, breakaways, short-
handed goals, etc.
Now onto the tougher sections. The options section has several
subsections: Game options, display options, sound options,
coaching strategy, and advanced options. The latter has several
subsections of its own.
In Game Options, you can mess around with the game speed,
skill level, penalties, fighting, tie breaker, mercy rule,
and advanced options.
The game speed is how fast the game plays (you have a meter
that you can empty/fill depending on how fast you want it).
The skill level is either rookie, pro, or all-star. The
players will play at the level you choose, so try to choose
a level you're comfortable at. The penalties option turns
penalties on (they can be called) or off (nobody can get a
penalty). The fighting option is exactly the same as the
penalty option except it deals with fighting, not penalties.
The tie breaker lets you decide what will happen if the game
ends in a tie. You can have a shootout, sudden death (I talked
about those earlier), or have the user decide if the
situation occurs. The advanced options, er, option lets you
decide which advanced options to use (you have five to choose
from, which you can make yourself, and the one the game starts
with).
In Display Options, you can mess around with camera zoom,
camera type, auto replay, score overlay, turbo meters, shot
speed, indicators, and hot spot.
Camera zoom allows you to adjust the amount the camera zooms
into the action as you play. The camera type lets you choose
where the camera is (overhead, ice, and side). The auto replay
lets you turn auto replay on or off (after a goal is scored,
you get to see two replays of the goal, a normal speed one
and a slow-motion one. You can decide not to see these replays
at all). The score overlay allows you to hide or show the
score overlay (this means that you can see the team logos,
scores, on fire meters, period number, and time left). The
shot speed lets you turn shot speed on or off (if you take a
shot, the game occasionally lets you know how fast it was in
MPH). The turbo meters let you show or hide the turbo meters.
Indicators lets you decide how the players are identified
(either by name, number, user, or no way at all). The hot
spot shows or hides a team's hot spot (if you take a shot
from the hot spot, you have a greater likelihood of scoring).
The Sound Options section lets you mess around with the
music volume (how loud the game is), the sound fx (sound
effects, sounds like skates hitting the ice, the sound heard
when a player takes a slap shot, the sound you hear when a
player is checked, etc.), the crowd volume (how loud the
crowd is), broadcast volume (how loud the announcers are),
broadcast setting, music setting and speaker setting.
Broadcast setting is play by play, color, play by play and
color, or none. This simply deals with how the announcers
announce. The music setting lets you hear game sound or
the soundtrack while playing. The speaker settings are
automatically set in the optimal choice.
Press Y to see the jukebox. Songs from the jukebox play when
the game is paused, and you can play them during normal
game play (choose soundtrack for music setting). You can turn
certain songs on or off depending on your tastes. You can
sample a song by pressing X.
The Coaching Strategy section isn't tough, but if you don't
know what it means, then you wouldn't be able to figure it
out. You can mess around with display, offensive, and defense
styles.
If you push the right analog stick during play, the coaching
strategy box pops up. You can mess around with it while
playing (that's called multitasking). That's kind of hard,
so you can turn your ability to do that off.
There are three offensive strategies: passive, aggressive,
and normal. Passive offense means that when you're in the
other team's zone, you will have two players at the blue line
throughout the duration. Aggressive defense means you will
have the normal triangle strategy (this is a standard strategy.
Two guys play offense and the third guy sticks on defense
at the blue line. One of the two offensive people should
easily be able to get back on defense if he is needed). Normal
defense means that the defense is back, the wing is ahead,
and the center is in between them. Choose whichever one
works best for you in the current situation.
There are three defensive strategies: cherrypick, zone,
and man to man. Cherrypick is a hockey term; a cherrypicker
is someone who actively tries to get a breakaway. If you
select this form of defense, you will have two men cherrypickers.
If you choose zone, each person will control their own zone,
which means they will defend only a certain part of the ice.
With all three players working, all of the ice gets covered.
Man on man defense means that each player will defend against
a certain player on the opposing team. Choose whichever one
you want.
Now onto the hard part: advanced options. There are five
slots you can have (Custom 1, Custom 2, Custom 3, Custom 4,
and Custom 5 (you can rename these)). If you make your own
custom setup, don't forget to enable it under game options
under options. Also, you'll want to save it (see the options
section of this guide, section 002f).
Once you choose a custom slot, you get 6 big things you can
customize (Gameplay, AI, Goalies, Player Attributes, Fighting,
and Visuals).
Gameplay lets you mess with the on fire effect (you get a
meter to change how powerful it is (note that the more powerful
it is, the more likely it is that the CPU will use it)),
puck out of play (if it is off, the puck is in play at all
times. If it is on, the puck can get out of play and land
in the stands), lose fight penalty (lets you decide if there
should be penalties after a fight or not), bulldozer puck
(if you enable this, the puck will plow through players,
knocking them over), pass interception (you can change the
likelihood of passes being intercepted, if you need to for
some reason, of which I know one), and post whistle time
(just how much time you can do things after a whistle
blows. Hitting someone after the whistle blows is a good
way of starting a fight).
AI controls the game's Artifical Intelligence. You can turn
catch up logic on or off (if it is on, it is easier for the
losing team to score goals. This just makes the game a bit
more interesting). You also have frequency meters so you
can mess around with how often the non-human controlled
players stick check, body check, deke, and do guard pucks.
Goalie options lets you mess around with the goalie to make
it easier or harder to score. Say you're in an important
game and you're ahead. You can make it almost impossible
for anyone to score so the other team won't ruin your lead
(the only downside is that you can't score). There are meters
for goalie fatigue (how fast the goalie can move), possession
bonus (this means that the longer you have the puck, the
slower the other team's goalie becomes), shot bonus (means you
can score more if you're taking "more shots on goal"),
attribute bonus (how effective a player's shooting attributes
are), one-timer bonus (how often one-timers end up in goals),
open shot bonus (your chances of scoring if you shoot at an
empty net (which are pretty good in the first place)), hot
spot bonus (how effective a shot from the hot spot is), and
breakaway bonus (how effective breakaway shots are).
Player attributes can be changed to make players better or
worse. You can increase or decrease the effectiveness of
their shooting, checking, passing, and speed abilities.
Fighting lets you mess around with fights to make them easier
or harder. You can increase or decrease fight difficulty (how
hard it is to win a fight), fight health (how large the
health meters are during fights), punch damage (how much
damage a punch does), block punch damage (the amount of
damage inflicted when a punch is blocked), and max fights
game (messes around with the maximum number of fights you
can have in a game).
Visuals deals with the puck and the players. Player head
mode will make the controlled players' heads normal, big
or huge. It looks somewhat funny when you see a small player
with a huge head. The team head mode is the same as player
head, except it affects both teams, not just the controlled
players. Puck size lets you mess around with how big the
puck is. Puck shadow lets you see the puck shadow or not
(this can help if the puck is high up in the air and you can
tell where it will land accordingly). Puck effect lets you
mess around with puck effects; you can choose streak (the
puck streaks), trail (the puck leaves a trail), blur (the
puck gets blurry), or off (none at all). Puck glow lets you
choose the puck color: green, yellow, red, blue, or off
(which is black). Show crowd lets you decide if you want
the crowd to be shown or not.
Whew! That was a lot! Don't forget to activate those
advance options, or else you might waste a lot of effort.
Hope you enjoy playing NHL Hitz!
002c-Mini Games
-----------------------------------------------------------
Maybe you've mastered the game, and want some mini-games to
play. Maybe you want to play with your friend, but not have
him or her waste time learning how to play. Maybe you're
lazy and don't want to learn how to play. Whatever the
case is, you can play mini-games.
Several mini-games have non-human characters. They look
cool.
So, anyway, you can play three in a row, own the ice, king
of the rink, keep away, shootout, and shooting gallery.
Three in a row is basically tic-tac-toe. Two people take
turns taking shots at the board. You want to get three
of your symbols (X or O) in a row. If you hit a spot, it
will change to have your symbol on it. While your opponent
shoots, you can choose one square that he cannot hit (keep
in mind he can do the same to you. Use this option wisely).
Easy mini-game to understand.
Own the Ice is a bit more complicated. You see, there are
five big circles in a hockey rink (the center circle, and two
in each zone). You want to obtain the puck, and skate over
all five of these circles. The circle is colored depending
on who skated over it last. You win if all five are colored
your color. If time runs out, the person who has skated over
more circles wins.
King of the Rink is a free-for-all. Four players play. The
rink is circular (it's a small rink). You get points for
checking other players with X (if you knock someone out of
the rink, you get bonus points), and points from tripping
other players with B. Whoever has the most points at the end
wins. Remember it's a free-for-all (every player for himself).
Keep Away is an inventive concept. There are teams of two.
Each team gets points for passing the puck from teammate to
teammate and points for having possession of the puck. The
team with more points at the end wins. Simple concept, just
keep the puck away from the other team.
Shootout is just like the shootouts at the end of a tied game.
Players take turns being the shooter and the goalie. There
are five chances to score for both players. As the goalie,
you can poke check (B) and body check (X). You don't have
to do anything to save the puck as the game automatically
lets that happen. If there is a tie, the game turns into
sudden death.
Shooting Gallery is another inventive concept. There are 21
windows. If a player gets close enough to a window, he
can shoot the puck and break it. The team with the most
broken windows wins. Sounds easy, but isn't.
That's all for mini-games. Try to beat the records set by
Midway for cool new stuff!
002d-Franchise
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ah, one of the best parts of the game. You get to create
your own team, and play as them. If you beat all eight
rounds, something special happens (I'm not going to tell you
what, but you can guess). This is really cool.
Once you start a franchise, you need a name. Choose a name
for your franchise (this should be a city, as all the NHL
franchises have cities for their names). Next choose your
team level, rookie, pro, or all-star.
You can make your team manually, or have the computer automatically
make one for you. Doing it manually results in a better team.
There are five things you can mess around with before moving
on. You can mess with your team name (the one you chose
earlier). You have to choose one of the nicknames they have
available (as it would be near-impossible for the announcers
to announce every team-name possibility). This seems complicated,
but isn't. If you choose Detroit Red Wings, Detroit is the
team name, and the Red Wings is how the announcers refers to
them. Choose one you like (I'm the Saratoga Sledgehammers).
The team logo is simple enough. Choose a logo for your team.
The team jersey colors depend upon the logo you choose. Choose
wisely, there are a lot of logos to choose from.
The Hot Spot is also easy. Move it to a place you shoot
from often. If you shoot from the hot spot, there is a greater
chance of it going in.
Last is the coaching style, which I explained about earlier
(search this document for coaching strategy to find it).
When you like all of these (you can always change them later,
go ahead. You now get to mess around with the players for
your team (you get more players as you progress through the
rounds. I don't think you can trade a player, but you can
change him completely).
You get to choose a player's first and last names. (Some of
my more interesting player names are Adam Corolla, Jimmy Kimmel,
Abe Lincoln, George Bush, and Mortimer Gibralter). You have
to choose a nickname for him or her also (the announcers
refer to the players by this name. There are many of these).
You can choose the player's number. Next you can mess with
preferences, which concerns the player's stickhand (right
or left), preferred position (center, wing, or defense),
and favorite shot (they score more if they take their favorite
shots, which are wrist, slap, backhand and one-timer).
You can also deal with a player's playstyle. You can mess
around with their height and weight (the bigger they are,
the slower they move). You can also choose a style of play
for your player (there are quite a few of these, like all-
around, enforcer, grinder, defender, powerforward, and
playmaker). You can see the effects of what you choose on
the player's statistics, which are shown.
What's really cool is messing around with a player's appearance.
You can go as crazy as you want with this, you can make an
alien, a demon, or even a guy who looks like Jesus.
The same things apply for the goalie. Once you've finished
with all your players, you get sent to the locker room.
You don't need to know this, but I'm giving you an idea of
my team's line-up so you can know how it works. I have three
defenders who are as big as possible (they all are green
aliens). They check a lot, and are really useful for me.
I always use them in tough games, as they literally beat
the competition.
I have a tall center (Abe Lincoln) who is also good at kicking
butt. With him and a defender on the ice, that's a pretty
good defense. My other center is a black guy named Steve
Sikes who is an all-around playmaker and is also very useful.
My wingers are mere clones of each other. They are all pirates.
I usually start off a game with Sikes, a winger, and a
defenseman. Depending on how the game goes, I change the
line-up.
Do whatever the hell you want. You can copy my team exactly,
or do your own thing. Whatever.
On to talking about the locker room. In the locker room,
you can choose world map (more about that later), team,
players, equipment, captain, and experience.
If you choose team, you go back to the screen where you got
to edit your team name and other stuff. If you choose players,
you go back to messing around with players.
If you choose captain, you get to choose a team captain.
Whoever is captain, all of their skills are increased by five
points. Make sure the captain is somebody you use a lot, or
you could be wasting those five points. A good strategy is
to make the goalie the captain.
If you choose equipment, you can mess around with the players'
equipment. Depending on the equipment a player wears, their
stats change a bit. You start out with standard equipment,
but you get more equipment if you beat world teams (more on
that later).
If you choose experience, you get to mess around with your
team's experience. You get experience points by completing
tasks (more later). You can use these points to boost your
players' skills.
Now onto world map. The world map is a globe. On the globe
are four teams you can play, and five you can't. Each of the
four teams has its own tasks. You want to try to complete all
the tasks in a game and win. The tasks are things like get
10 shots on goal and deke twice. Do as many tasks as you
can.
If you beat all four teams, you get to play the fifth team
(which is a world team). World teams are better than all
of the four teams. Beat a world team to move onto the next
round.
Each round has its own five teams. After the second round,
you start playing real NHL teams.
If you press start, you get a screen. One of the options
allows you to save the franchise. If you do, remember to
save over old franchise data. The screen also allows you
to exit back to the main screen.
This screen also allows you to check out a task list (it
lists every task that you can do, with a check next to all
the ones you have done). Also there is the team stats, and
the team report (which shows each player's roster, the team's
overall report, and the game star rankings (which just shows
how many times each player has been a game star)). For more
information, do a search for those things in this document,
as I talk about them in greater detail below.
002e-Season
-----------------------------------------------------------
The season mode is also cool. You can choose several things
when starting a season.
First off is mode. You can play the normal season, or the
playoff season. Choose whichever one you want.
Next is the difficulty level. You can choose rookie, pro,
or all-star, depending on what you want.
Next is the number of games. You can play 14, 29, 58, or
the standard 82 games in your season.
Next is the playoff length. This controls how long teams
play each other in the playoffs. You can choose one game
(this means that the teams play only one game and the victor
moves ahead), or best of three, five, or seven games.
Next is fantasy draft. If this is off, you can control
normal NHL teams. If it is on, you can choose your own
roster for your team.
Next is trade deadline. You can establish a date for the
deadline. After this date, there can be no trades.
Next is the trade logic. If this is on, no unfair trades
can be made (like trading Roy, Foote, and Foresburg for
a bad player).
Next up is all-star game. You get to choose the type of
all-star game there will be.
Once you're done with that, you get a screen with all the
teams that'll play that season. Press X to control a certain
team. Control as many teams as you'd like to.
Okay, you're done! Just like in franchise mode, that's not
it, though. Now you're at the screen you'll see most in
season mode, the Season Central screen.
The right hand side of the screen will show information about
the last game you played (the score you got, the score your
opponent got, and the star of the game). It also shows your
team's record (# of wins, then number of losses).
Underneath that informative box is another box. It shows
your next match-up. More specifically, it shows your team's
logo, the opponent's logo, and the date.
If you have more than one team you're controlling, press L and
R to move among them. You can't have one team play too many
games more than another team; they need to have about an
equal number of games played. The game prevents you from
doing this, so if you get a message to play as another team,
that's what the message means.
On the left-hand part of the screen is a menu. You can choose
play game, rosters, team report, stats, calendar, standings,
options, save season and exit season.
If you choose play game, you play the game shown in the box
with the two logos (if you can). If you choose save season,
you save the season. If you choose exit season, you go
back to the main menu.
If you choose rosters, you can do a number of things. The
first is team roster, like I said earlier. It shows each
player's roster. The next thing you can do is actually
create a player of your own (using the same player-creating
techniques you used in franchise mode).
The next thing you can do is trade a player. You can trade
players, but if they are vastly different, you might not get
the trade. Also, you can't trade goalies for non-goalies.
If trading a player doesn't seem to work, you can get a free
agent (which, coincidentally, is the next thing you can do).
Sign any free player you like. If there's no room for him,
you may have to dump a current player.
The last thing you can do is jersey numbers. You can change
the jersey numbers of the players on your team. Yes, not
too useful, but still a necessary part of the game.
Back to the Season Central screen. The team report shows
a report for whichever team you're using at the moment. Easy.
Also easy is the stats, which shows the statistics for the
team you're playing.
If you select calendar, a calendar is shown. It shows the
lineup for your team for the rest of the year. If you choose
standings, you can see the standings for the conferences
(east and west), divisions (Atlantic, Northeast, Southeast,
Central, Northwest and Pacific), and the entire NHL. I'm
not talking about options again, that already took a good
deal of time.
Good luck with the season! And here's a helpful cheat: when
you play a game, you decide which team you play (unlike franchise
mode where you are always your team). If you are playing a
tough team like the Avalanche, you can always choose to control
your opponent's team. When you control your opponent's team,
play poorly (have the goalie leave the net and such). You
should lose, which means that the team your team won. Cool
cheat, huh?
002f-Tourney
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On the final run here. If you've done the earlier sections,
than this is a breeze.
Basically, you create a tournament. You get to select any
of the available teams to play in the tournament (NHL teams,
franchise teams, teams like the Demon team).
First, you need to select your level, rookie, pro, or all-
star (that sounds familiar somehow...). Then you need to
select the number of games to play among teams. Basically,
two teams will play each other for that amount of games,
and the one with the most wins moves on. It can be 1, 3, 5,
or 7 games.
Now you need to select a team (from the available teams).
The setup from here is just like in season mode. Keep on
playing games until you get thrown out of the tournement or
you win the elusive Midway cup! Good luck!
002f-Options
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Okay, last part here. It's the end of this guide, so much
has been covered before. That and the fact that I tend to
get sloppy near the end of my guides may make this section
lame. I hope not.
If you choose options from the main menu, you get several
things you can choose: Game options, sound options, display
options, roster management, controllers, unlockables, advanced
options, user record, user stats, save options, credits, and
movies.
I talked about advanced options, game options, sound options,
controllers, and display options earlier in the guide (the
002b section). I'm not going to repeat myself.
Roster management allows you to control the rosters across
all game modes. You can trade players, sign free agents, and
the like. Trades are never rejected in this mode.
Unlockables is extremely cool. You see, if you do certain
things, then certain things get unlocked. For example,
normally you would never be able to play in the Jungle Stadium.
However, if you finish Hockey School, it becomes unlocked
and you can now use it. There are exactly 127 things you
can unlock (stadiums, teams, jerseys, player heads, player
models). You get to see what you need to do to unlock something,
and a description of it. This is incredibly deep, and I
plan to write a guide on how to unlock everything in this game
sometime in the future.
User Records show the different records set in the game
(most checks in a game, fastest times for beating mini-games,
and other stuff). Midway has set all the records. Try to
beat them (things get unlocked if you break certain records).
User stats show your user records. You need to have chosen
a name for yourself before this happens (as you're choosing
a team to play as in a game, press X to do this). There can
be more than one user saved in the game.
Save options allows you to save all the stuff here in this
section. I highly recommend that you do this for the first
few times as you get used to the game, and when you're used
to it, you won't have to save your options that much. It
actually does save some time for you. (Poor me, my memory
card is full so I have to reset the options every time I
play the game, which gets very annoying).
The credits gives credit to all the people who helped make
the game. As the credits roll, you get to see a behind the
scenes look at various events that took place in the making
of the game.
The Movies section has about three different movies. It contains
some cool stuff they made while making the game (there's
the cool opening promo that has real NHL footage and the
cool song in the background, a thing that deals with Pronger,
and something else I forget right now).
Well, that's it. Have fun!
003-Creditz
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This FAQ is copyright of The Lost Gamer, 2002. If you want
to use any part of this FAQ, ask me first (instructions under
general information)
This game is copyright Midway, 2002.
