2024 Goals

  • Complete at least one baseball replay (1921/1971)
  • Complete the SCRAM 2012 season
  • Complete a hockey/soccer/football replay
  • Complete the Scott Bullerwell Heavyweight Invitational
  • Start a basketball replay

Lofty goals to be sure, but I’ve been putting shit off long enough.

Stay tuned!

Chomp

One of the freebies from this year’s PLAAY Holiday Sale was the 1995-96 NHL Season for Hockey Blast.

I happily downloaded and opened it up on my PC and smiled when I saw the names on the San Jose Sharks squad from that year.

I then went to print it out and again felt happy to see the team roster.

And then I went to hockey-reference.com to review that season.

20-55-7 record.  Dead last in the Pacific Division.  Yikes.

I remember going to more than a few games that season, and the seasons before and after that.

I remember the faces but not the names of some of the regulars who sat around us.

I remember the loudest CLANG off the crossbar when Eric Lindros fired a shot on goal.  Not sure if it was that season, but it was certainly during that time.

And that Sharks team was one of my favorite sports teams during that period as well.

With the new Hockey Blast Express I expect to roll some games from that season, maybe not a full season replay, and not just Sharks games.

The Flyers won their division that season, only to be knocked out of the playoffs by the eventual Eastern Conference Champs, the Florida Panthers.

If I play out a Flyers-Sharks Cup final, I’m afraid San Jose is gonna get swept by the Flyers.

But we’ll see.

Stay tuned!

Seasons: NHL

Replay plans for the various hockey games:

  • Inside the Crease: 1966-67 NHL, from my not-yet-abandoned goal to complete replays in all the major sports for the year I was born.  Team: Toronto Maple Leafs
  • APBA Hockey: 1991-92 NHL, the season I became a hockey fans thanks to the newly formed San Jose Sharks.  Team: San Jose Sharks
  • Hockey Blast: 2013-14 IHL (homebrew league), using the fictional season from PLAAY that year.  Team: entire league
  • Stone Cold Hockey: 2022-23 Central Cities League, another fictional season.  Team: TBD
  • Shootout Hockey: 1993-94 NHL), the greatest turnaround season ever for the Sharks.  Team: San Jose Sharks
  • Strat-O-Matic Hockey: 1945-46 NHL, the season I believe is chronicled in the animated short, “The Sweater”.  Team: Montreal Canadiens, perhaps the entire league

Stay tuned!

Future Plans

I plan on continuing the following ongoing replays:

Baseball
1921 NY Giants (Payoff Pitch Baseball)
1971 SF Giants (Ball Park Baseball)
Soccer
2015-16 Tottenham Hotspur (APBA Soccer)
2020-21 AFC Richmond (Dice United)
Racing
1984 Winston Cup (Red White & Blue Racin’)
2012 SCRAM (Red White & Blue Racin’)
Football
1960 Denver Broncos (Fast Drive Football)
1967 Denver Broncos (Second Season/Second Season Express/Inside Blitz/Grid Iron Wars)

At some point I plan on adding hockey and basketball into the mix, as time permits.  I just have to decide which replays to include:

Hockey
1966-67 NHL (Hockey Blast)
1969-70 Oakland Seals (Hockey Blast)
1991-92 San Jose Sharks (APBA)
2013-14 IHL (Hockey Blast, fictional)
2022-23 Central Cities League (Stone Cold Hockey, fictional)

Basketball
1960-61 Syracuse Nationals (Bank Shot Basketball)
1966-67 San Francisco Warriors (Inside the Paint)
2022-23 Basketball League of America (Highlight Maker Hoops, fictional)

And of course I’ll be tracking all the games right here.

Stay tuned!

APBA Soccer

“Captain’s log, Star date 1312.4. The impossible has happened.”

I’ve found a game that, to me, replicates what I see on TV in a soccer match as much as most tabletop baseball games do for me.

I do still like playing Dice United and Soccer Blast, it’s just that to me APBA Soccer simulates the build up that usually results in a goal more accurately than the other two do.

The other games do one thing better, and that’s give you the amount of stoppage time to add at the end of a half.

With APBA, they have maybe a couple of instances listed on the ‘special play’ chart for injury, but that may not even come into play.

Checking the APBA Delphi Forums, there’s no definite answer either, though there are some suggestions that I may consider adapting.

The fact that I can play a game of this level in a little under 2 hours, even with distractions, is surprising to me.

It takes almost twice as long with or without distractions to play a non-quick play game of American football or basketball or hockey, though like most PLAAY games I can get a game of Hockey Blast finished in maybe an hour.

Golf is it’s own thing and can take as long as it needs to on any given course.

Same with racing, depending on the type of track I’m running on.

Perhaps I should revisit some of the APBA and Strat-O-Matic football and hockey games to see if the time to play has changed for me.

1-2 hours for a sports game seems to be the sweet spot for me nowadays.  It allows me to set up in the morning or when I get home from work, and play before I go to bed, with time to compile a post game report that I can post here.

1969-70: Seals Season, Game 1

It begins!

The one thing I discovered when playing out this first game is that overtime didn’t exist until the 1983-84 season.  Prior to that, tied games after 3 periods ended in a tie.

Like this one.

Final from Civic Arena:

I’m keeping things simple, stat wise, with just the score and who scored the goals.

Next up: the Chicago Black Hawks.

Stay tuned!