King of 94 - 5 (SNES - Dec 5-6, 2020, SEGA Dec 12-13, 2020)
(As remembered by Halifax - Dec 2022)
While covid kept us from having a live tournament, our first online King of 94 tournament presented some new opportunities. We saw excellent players compete that haven't been able to attend any of our previous live tournaments.
It was exciting to have our first competitors outside of North America. Limpan and Erre, both from Sweden, competed on the Sega Genesis side.
For this tournament, Round Robin groups were set to 8 games and you played a home and away against each person in your group. Win 4 games and you go into the King of 94 Bracket, 3 wins or less and you drop down to the Duke of 94 Bracket
Sega Genesis
The Duke playoff tournament had some big upsets early on, Segathon (14) over tvotaw (3), Szpakman (15) beat Bvish (2). In the best-of-3 championship series, Thatdrizzle took down Slapshotsean 6-3, 2-1.
Not surprisingly, Angryjay93 and Kingraph blasted their way through the round robin going 8-0 and locking up the top two seeds in the King bracket. corbettKb and Scribe99 would also join them at 8-0.
There were some exciting first-round series upsets in the King of 94 bracket, with seven series going the distance, including three upsets. Limpan (19) defeated Big_Valboski (14), Mr. T (18) over Charlesworth (15) and DPS (21) over thrillhouse (12).
Mostly, things went as scripted through the rest of the winner's bracket. Angryjay93 and Kingraph would meet in the winner's bracket final with Angryjay93 winning 2-3, 7-6, 8-5. Kingraph would make quick work of Tennesee Williams in the loser Bracket final 7-4 and 9-3 and we would get to see another amazing final.
Kingraph would win his second title in a row in a best of 7 with scores of (0-1, 10-7, 5-4, 0-2, 7-3, 4-6, 3-2)
Super Nintendo
45 players would have an extremely strong SNES field, with the last four King of 94 champions competing Mikail (kingof94), who won the 1st and 4th ones, Jammer who won the 2nd and Fed who won the 3rd tournament.
TheProfessor, Tokentoma, Bobkudelski26 and Jammer would all go 8-0 in their respective groups. Mikail surprisingly would drop two of his round robin games but he would aim to redeem himself during the playoffs.
In the Duke Playoffs, Dantml (12th seed) would pull off upsets all the way through the tournament vs Mooney (5), MacAttack (4), Big Valboski (8) and on to victory in the championship against birdman8686 with scores of 3-7, 4-3, 4-2.
There were some first round upsets in the King of 94 bracket, Tecmo Jon (22) over The Rexershow (11) and Millwertime_Van (19) over CorbettKB (14).
A heavyweight tilt occurred in round two where Mikail (12) met Kingraph (5) with mikail prevailing 8-6 and 7-5 in high-scoring affairs.
Perhaps the craziest game of the entire bracket was the 14-9 game between Dangler defeating the90jacket.
With the bracket moving along, former champs Jammer and Fed would end up facing each other on the loser side bracket and Fed eliminating his good friend Jammer 5-4.
Mikail would earn his way into the final after beating Theprofessor 3-2 and 6-4.
A rematch between Mikail and Annatar as they had met in the first SNES King of 94 final. Annatar was looking for revenge however the unstoppable force of Makail took the final (0-1, 6-4, 7-1, 7-5, 8-2) to win his third world title in three tries and cement himself as the best SNES NHL'94 player in the world.
SEGA Round Robin Standings
SNES Round Robin Standings
King of 94 ©2022