FHR in a nutshell

Finnish Hockey Revolution is an update created for EA Sports' NHL games. Since our update for NHL 2004 we have been called FHR instead of the old name "SM-liiga Pack". Traditionally our goal has been adding SM-liiga (Finnish hockey league) to the game but since NHL 2004 it was already a part of the game. So now FHR's concept is to update SM-liiga to season 2006-2007 and - as a great addition - overwrite the Czech Tipsport Extraliga with Finland's second highest hockey league, Mestis. (No hard feelings Extraliga fans. - You don't have to install Mestis) All of this is naturally totally free of cost! As Mestis has become a part of the project, it felt natural to come up with a new name.

The SM-liiga patch has already been made for eight consecutive NHL games by various people, so this is the 9th time. The team has undergone some member changes again but the basic line-up has held up pretty well. This is quite remarkable considering it's all based on volunteering and giving up your free time to work with these things. All members of the team still have their studies, work and other activities to deal with. 2003's project was a turning point to a more professional way to work and this materialized as the earliest release date in the update's history - Christmas Eve! Unfortunately the quick release took its toll and we weren't able to make the patch work quite the way we wanted to. Version 2 in January made things much better and after that you could say the project was successful after all.

History of SM-liiga Pack

The first SM-liiga Pack - or "SM Pak" as it was called - was made for NHL 98. The group of people behind the Pack was very different from now. SM Pak 98 and its successor, SM Pak 99 were mostly created by Jarze, Mizu and Tommi, assisted by Ospa, who is still part of the current team. In 1999 it looked like the short saga of SM Pak could be ending because the creators ran out of motivation (and time) to continue their work. Here is where our current Project Manager, Kenu, steps into the picture. Kenu started to look for motivated people to create the Pack for NHL 2000 also. In internet he came across S@lo and LzR who had great interest in the project. As the information about a possible project spread around, the team grew to such size that SM Liiga Pak 2000 could be made true.

Next year SM-liiga Pack 2001 had an interesting competitor: EA itself released an official Finnish league add-on. It later proved to be more or less waste of money and resources for EA as it came nowhere near the expertise and attention to detail of SM-liiga Pack: even Finland's biggest video game magazine, Pelit, rated SM-liiga Pack higher than EA's counterpart.

This might have scared EA off of making SM-liiga add-ons because next year we didn't see such an update for NHL 2002 any more. On the other hand, maybe not...

The previous project, SM2003 was already the fourth SM-liiga Pack with basically the same team and the three-year experience had a great effect to the team's graphical capabilities. The result was undeniably outstanding. Every member has shown huge progress when compared to their early work. Even Kenu can't help laughing out loud when looking at the very first "masterpieces" ie. in NHL 2000.

SM2003 was quite a success - not only quality-wise. It managed to reach a considerably wider audience than ever before. The formerly mentioned Pelit magazine published two relatively large articles about SM-liiga Pack 2003. In addition to this, the project was noted also by HIFK Magazine (interview in issue 1/2003) and Keskipohjanmaa newspaper, latter of which reviewed SM2003 with a rating of 5/5 (17.1.2003).

Finnish Hockey Revolution 2004 continued growing even bigger and more accurate. Including Mestis, making arenas more realistic (no more huge NHL-style arenas for every team) and having separate equipment for each goalie are only the beginning of a long list of features. Might be worth to mention that we had like 350 cyber faces done for the teams. (Janne did a hell of a job. Not just Janne, but he did most of them.)

The update for 2004 also included an intro movie & screens, authentic schedules for both SM-liiga and Mestis, all of the National teams and the 2004 World Championships Arena.

FHR04 was by far our most succesful release, and we have had a lot of publicity in several magazines and on many web sites.

FHR05 is still to come. Due to disappointments with the game (NHL 2005) not being our cup of tea (lightly expressed), Esci's (known as EsaK here at the forums) PC power broke down breaking his hard drive, loosing every single SM-liiga uniform he had made +more, me being in the army for 6 months, and so on and so on... we haven't been able to get the whole thing together yet. Basically, people lost interest. However, we are almost done now, and if we can find the time to get the final small parts together, you will see a FHR05 release before NHL06 comes out. (didn't happen)

As mentioned above, the team's foundation has remained pretty solid although a few veterans have again made room for new, upcoming talents.

So, here we are once again, working harder than ever to bring you another mind-blowing update!

PS: The original information text about FHR is written before the release of FHR04, so if it seems it's out of date, that's the reason. I updated some stuff and added some new, hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 8)

If you actually read this far, thanks!