LONG WRITE-UP BELOW: IF YOU WANNA JUST SEE THE UNIS, SCROLL DOWN.
I'm gonna let you in on two secrets about myself.
#1: I'm obsessed with hockey.
#2: I'm obsessed with video games. (I know, so unique, right?)
I can still remember the first game I bought for myself. I just got an Xbox on Christmas Day 2002: I was 8. The next day, during the cataclysm of Boxing Day shopping, I smashed my piggy bank and bought the first hockey game I could find.
It was a little thing called NHL Hitz 20-03. Chris Pronger was on the front cover, surrounded in flames. I bought it thinking I had just bought a normal hockey game. I was very wrong.
In NHL Hitz, the action is 3-on-3. It's fast paced, violent, and incredibly unrealistic: think NBA Jam or NFL Blitz on ice.
Games are played for 3 3-minute periods, and there are only two penalties: fighting and goalie interference. If you lose a fight, you're ejected. If you win, you and an opposing player serve concurrent 30-second penalties, and the rest of the players play 2-on-2 for the time. Someone would always score. 2-on-2 tends to work like that.
Anyway, the franchise mode for that game enamored me. In it, you pick a small team of players and play against a series of 40 increasingly-difficult opponents for the right to play in the NHL.
The mode would work like this: you'd play 4 teams, and if you beat them, you'd play a "boss team". You beat them, you advance to the next round. In later rounds, you'd play against actual NHL teams, but in earlier rounds - and in every boss game - you'd play against some weird and wacky imaginary team in an odd location: there were teams on four continents, in sun and snow, in big bustling cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and New York, and others in places like Victoria, Sarnia, and Montego Bay.
Not long ago, I found my copy of the game again, and the obsession continued. But now, I can't help but think the teams, logos, and information is all dated.
So I re-did everything.
This is a 16-part series, where all the "made-up" teams are made up, dressed down, and made over. New unis and logos are used for all teams; there's even a name change for one team.
I used a random name generator to produce new names for players; a random number generator was used to create statistical attributes. Phony histories were made; full 23-man rosters were made out of thin air. A new season will be run to determine who's on top in the newly-established Global Hitz League.
A warning before the first team is unveiled: I've gone into quite some detail about these new players, and the unis will not be what can be considered "conventional".
These aren't real teams: these will never hit the ice. So, let's break some rules, and have some fun.
Without any further babble, here's team one: the #16 ranked Hong Kong Silicon.
Home/away/third:
For reference, here are the original uniforms from the game.
And here is the roster and attributes of the 2016 Hong Kong Silicon.
C&C is welcome about...well, everything.
If you've got a question about the game, the project itself, or anything else, don't hesitate to ask.