World-ranked NHL '94 gamers ready for another shot at 16-bit glory

The man who organizes the annual world championships for the classic hockey video game NHL '94 says the tournament continues to grow — and this year, for the first time ever, it will include gamers from outside North America.

The King of 94 tournament, which first started in 2015, takes place this weekend in Toronto.

It's played on Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo consoles and controllers — just like when the game was first released in 1993.

Tournament organizer Darrell Sampson of Saskatoon said this year's event will also feature players from Sweden.

"Which is really cool," he said. "They knew about the tournament for a long time. Just timing, finances — those things didn't line up. But this year, they're making a big trip out of it."

Sampson said they will compete against gamers from across Canada and the United States — from B.C. to Nova Scotia, and from California and Texas to the U.S. Midwest and northeast.

WATCH | The King of '94 is set to be crowned later this month:

Sampson is one of two participants from Saskatchewan, which has eight players in the top 60 of the NHL '94 world rankings for the Super Nintendo, including six from Saskatoon. Sampson, who is ranked 30th, recently noticed only Toronto has more gamers in the top 30 than Saskatoon.

"It's interesting about the rankings. Why that is, I don't know," he laughed. "Maybe longer winters, a lot more time to practice."

Sampson said that before they knew about each other and played in local tournaments together, he remembers once playing online against a gamer now in the top 30, Cory Hill, and asking him where he was from.

"He said, 'Oh, Saskatoon.' I was like, 'Oh, I'm from Saskatoon,'" Sampson said. "And I said, 'Where do you work?' And then I found out we work a block away from each other."

Sampson said that, over the years, they've found the best players in the Super Nintendo version of NHL '94 are typically from Canada, while the top players in the Sega Genesis version are usually from the United States. (The games had the same title, but different developers.)

"We don't know why that is," he said. "Maybe Sega was more heavily marketed in the United States, I'm not sure."

Sampson said that while NHL '94 is a simple game, the level of play has advanced to where it feels like playing chess, because the gamers are trying to make each other guess what they're going to do.