[Poppler]

Those are great ideas you have there, though I would like the blood to be change back to red in Super Castlevania IV.

I thought the blood drippin' intro looked pretty cheesy and mostly put there for cheap shock value. it reminds me of the japanese bloody Golden Axe arcade:
https://tcrf.net/Golden_Axe_(Arcade)
To me those are cases where censrship was good, but I understand why people would like the original thing 

[Bahamut ZERO]

Those are great ideas you have there, though I would like the blood to be change back to red in Super Castlevania IV.

I never knew they censored Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts until I checked out the article on TCRF: https://tcrf.net/Super_Ghouls%27n_Ghosts#Version_Differences

If someone can decensor the cross on all the coffins and change Sardius back to Samael, that would be awesome.

The censored SGnG too?????

Hell, I've got some free time today. I'll poke around in the rom today, and if the graphics aren't compressed I'll try doing it.

Why not just get rid of the voice since it is a completely unnecessary addition?

Actually, I'm pretty sure this is a like that already.



Speaking of Zelda hacks, I'm surprised no one's ever taken a crack at making a "Playable Sheik Edition" of Ocarina of Time after remembering about the rumors that used to swirl around gaming mags back in the day.

[RealGaea]

Hi, I played Final Fight One and Megaman & Bass for the GBA.
Here's my ideas.

FFO:
Color Restoration(like the SNES palette).
Sprite Editing(Restore Poison & Roxy, and get rid of Billy & Sid; Black Dug, Black Slash...).
Color Editing(Restore the default color of A-Cody to his original SFA3 A-ISM color, instead of the X-ISM one).
Sprite Size Editing(You saw Rolento's Sprite? He was HUGE, ripped from the Arcade graphics, instead of ripping him from SNES' Final Fight 2...).
Relocate the 2nd Bonus Stage to its original place(after Industrial Area, instead of after Bay Area).

MM&B:
Color Restoration.
Make Bass' dash command easier(Down+Jump, instead of Forwardx2).

[Bahamut ZERO]

Well took a quick lookthrough of Super Ghouls and Ghosts. Outside of finding Arthur's sprites/weapons/some animation frames I can't find jack squat. Must be compressed in some way (or I'm an idiot and missed something while looking).

Anyway, if anyone's interested in messing with Arthur's sprites, they begin at offset 06FDC0 (unheadered rom).

Also, I noticed there were crosses on literally every coffin I saw on level 1. Was it just the styling of the cross they messed with or something?

Were there any major censorings in that game? I'm curious now.

[SCD]

They changed the crosses to look like ankhs and they also changed the final boss's name from Samael to Sardius as well. His original name is based on a religious character. You can see the differences here: https://tcrf.net/Super_Ghouls%27n_Ghosts#Version_Differences

I think there is a decompressor tool for this game, but I'm not sure.

Another thing that should be done to both the American and the Japanese versions of Final Fight One is give stage 4 its correct music track.

[Poppler]

Now tha we are with Super Ghouls'n Ghosts I have an idea for the Game Boy Advance version:

- Add the Snes palette
- Make it possible to choose any path whatever you have golden armour after the boss or not.
- Fix the slowdown?
- Add the boss music of Ghost'n Goblins for the new bosses instead of the Barnacle Kraken theme.

[RealGaea]

They changed the crosses to look like ankhs and they also changed the final boss's name from Samael to Sardius as well. His original name is based on a religious character. You can see the differences here: https://tcrf.net/Super_Ghouls%27n_Ghosts#Version_Differences

I think there is a decompressor tool for this game, but I'm not sure.

Another thing that should be done to both the American and the Japanese versions of Final Fight One is give stage 4 its correct music track.

YES! YES! YES!

I almost forgot that one! Thank you!

Ok, let's patch all the 3 regions. The very first version I played was the EUR version.

[TRIFORCE89]

- A definitive version of Sonic 1 with spindash and smooth rotating bonus levels.

Closest thing that I'm aware of for this, not that it's on the site here mind you, is a hack called ReadySonic. It's effectively a base hack for people to branch off. It incorporates more-or-less every community bugfix thus far, as well as some other niceties like the Spin Dash, Peel-Out, and some palette corrections.

- Super Mario All Stars + World: Add the Game Boy Advance graphical improvements (and game intros) to the snes games.

I made my own graphical hack of SMAS+W a few years back. Although, I never shared it on the site properly (instead used some now expired SendSpace links on the forum). Basically, I incorporated all the minor revisions from the GBA games (the Mario Bros. now having gloves, for instance), Toad's spot pattern on his cap, SMB3's Bowser Castle sprite, Yoshi's arms, SMW Bowser's skin, etc. I also included other revisions in that vain from other games (like Yoshi's Cookie's Bowser being a refined SMB3 Bowser), more YI-looking Shy Guys in SMB2, some Mario Bros. Classic sprites pulled from GBA and WarioWare. I also made SMB and LL more NES-like or classic feeling (cloud bush, no giant face backgrounds, LL has its strange trees, square ? blocs, etc.). I can try digging that back up if you're interested. You can see a handful of screenshots at http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,16142.msg239228.html.

No GBA-style intros though, unfortunately

[Poppler]

I made my own graphical hack of SMAS+W a few years back. Although, I never shared it on the site properly (instead used some now expired SendSpace links on the forum). Basically, I incorporated all the minor revisions from the GBA games (the Mario Bros. now having gloves, for instance), Toad's spot pattern on his cap, SMB3's Bowser Castle sprite, Yoshi's arms, SMW Bowser's skin, etc. I also included other revisions in that vain from other games (like Yoshi's Cookie's Bowser being a refined SMB3 Bowser), more YI-looking Shy Guys in SMB2, some Mario Bros. Classic sprites pulled from GBA and WarioWare. I also made SMB and LL more NES-like or classic feeling (cloud bush, no giant face backgrounds, LL has its strange trees, square ? blocs, etc.). I can try digging that back up if you're interested. You can see a handful of screenshots at http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,16142.msg239228.html.

No GBA-style intros though, unfortunately

That's very interesting if there are not important bugs it might be a hack worth publishing. 

[AitsuRules404]

Here's something no one's thought of: Mario Bros. 2. Now what this would be is a combination of two rare games, Mario Bros. Special (not Super Mario Bros. Special) and Punch Ball Mario Bros. You may know this, but in the mid 80s Hudson Soft released Nintendo games on Japanese PCs. One of these was the now not-at-all-lost Super Mario Bros. Special, however there were other interesting games, such as these two. If you haven't heard of them, look them up, they're quite interesting.

Anyway, MB2 would combine the levels of MBS with the Punch Ball feature of PBMB. This would be very difficult, and I don't know if there's someone who has the skill to do this and cares enough about it.

[magictrufflez]

I'm really surprised that I haven't found something like this out there, but after re-playing Symphony of the Night with Gemini's translation, I would really love to see a difficulty hack for it.

I might not be speaking for everyone when I say this, but I found the game to be pretty easy.  I think making some enemies hit harder would be helpful, especially in parts of the first half of the game.  Enemies in the 2nd half seemed to die way too quickly, especially after you got access to certain pieces of equipment (while we're on that subject, the Crissengrim[sp?] ought to be banned).  Overhauling the resistance system as well would be great--elemental resistances are super effective, to the point that the elemental absorption equips aren't really necessary.  The Holy-resist armor literally cancelled out most every attack from the mid-game boss, who should have been much more of a challenge (for logical and canon reasons).

IMO, I think trimming the item list a bit (and making the equipment list more noteworthy/useful) would make things so much more interesting---The Holy Rod literally tore everything up from the beginning until roughly endgame.  I was still using it basically into the final battle, and ~80% of the weapons I picked up/bought were well outclassed for the second I picked them up.  Maybe cutting down the effectiveness (or cutting it out completely) of the elemental resistance/damage functions could make certain items more valuable too.  And seriously, the food items generally need to just go--most of them heal less than potions, and they take up an inordinate amount of inventory space all the time.

Also, unless I missed something, some kind of auto-sort function would be amazing for the items.

As far as the bosses go, I think the 1st half's bosses were actually pretty decent, but most of the 2nd half's were really weak, possibly keeping in theme with the laziness of the 2nd half's setting concept.  If we can't have a redo of the entire 2nd dungeon, I would definitely take a redo of the traditional monster movie bosses, which were all super easy anyways.  Beelzebub and the "King of Hell" were really the only bosses that posed much of a problem (and required somewhat skillful strategies to win), but even on them I never died.  Doing something about the final boss would be lovely too, because I took him down pretty quickly with relative ease.

/endrant

And if this type of hack exists already, please, point me to it!

[Maeson]

Too much stuff here.

Maybe this?
http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/topic/5587-castlevania-symphony-of-the-night-hardtype-v31/

 I remember being interested by this some time ago, but I haven't tried it yet.

[shoopdahoop]

The Ratchet and Clank games. Just imagine the ability to make custom weapons, planets, gadgets, ETC... it would be my dream come true.

Sadly, PS2 games are pretty much unmoddable. Extracting the files with 7zip, repacking the files into a new ISO, and loading the ISO into PCSX2 gives an error saying the ISO cannot be read.

However, there is a new PS2 emulator in development called "Play!", and unlike PCSX2, the game files do NOT need to be packed into an ISO, meaning we could bypass a major roadblock in modding PS2 games.


Anyways, even if PS2 ISOs could be modded, Going Commando would be the only one that could be edited in any sort of way. Unlike all of the other PS2 games, the files for GC are NOT hidden:



These WAD files are the EXACT same format as the ones used in the Spyro games. I've used tools intended for editing/extracting Spyro WADs on the Going Commando WAD files, and it actually spits out extracted files! (Sadly, the files have no name/extension.)

Or we could simply wait 5+ years for PS3 emulation to become perfect and mod the HD Collection.

[magictrufflez]

Maybe this?
http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/topic/5587-castlevania-symphony-of-the-night-hardtype-v31/

 I remember being interested by this some time ago, but I haven't tried it yet.

Looks like that one didn't have it's own forum there, no wonder I missed it!  I'll probably give it a shot at some point--looks like LR went through a lot of work on that.

[MathUser2929]

Thanks for pointing out the SOTN hard type hack. I submitted it to the site. Here it is: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2896/

[FAST6191]

The Ratchet and Clank games. Just imagine the ability to make custom weapons, planets, gadgets, ETC... it would be my dream come true.

Sadly, PS2 games are pretty much unmoddable. Extracting the files with 7zip, repacking the files into a new ISO, and loading the ISO into PCSX2 gives an error saying the ISO cannot be read.

However, there is a new PS2 emulator in development called "Play!", and unlike PCSX2, the game files do NOT need to be packed into an ISO, meaning we could bypass a major roadblock in modding PS2 games.


Anyways, even if PS2 ISOs could be modded, Going Commando would be the only one that could be edited in any sort of way. Unlike all of the other PS2 games, the files for GC are NOT hidden:
[In the D directory of the iso there be wad files]

These WAD files are the EXACT same format as the ones used in the Spyro games. I've used tools intended for editing/extracting Spyro WADs on the Going Commando WAD files, and it actually spits out extracted files! (Sadly, the files have no name/extension.)

Or we could simply wait 5+ years for PS3 emulation to become perfect and mod the HD Collection.

PS2 games are plenty moddable, just not with the approach you are using.
The isos are fairly standard isos, though not the 9960 variety that your bog standard iso maker makes (the PS1 does use it so you can use such things in modding them if you want, assuming you are not lumped with one of the legacy formats). Some games also do a raw LBA read, square enix music being the first thing most would encounter here but let us not go there right now. Most would instead use a iso altering tool, sadly I don't have a free one* but have a look at things like magiciso and ultraiso, than rebuild fully.

*I vaguely recall being linked something, it was not as nice as said *iso tools but it should get it done, sadly I can't remember the name of it.

When you say hidden files I assume it is not a case of the raw LBA read stuff I mentioned above and just that there are no nice tools like if you were editing mario kart or something. Fortunately figuring out custom formats is what we do most of the time around here, it is often tedious and at end nobody wants to make one of those nice tools (instead you will end up with info so you can either go manual or someone else can build a tool).

Thanks for the tip on the archive reuse.

[shoopdahoop]

PS2 games are plenty moddable, just not with the approach you are using.
The isos are fairly standard isos, though not the 9960 variety that your bog standard iso maker makes (the PS1 does use it so you can use such things in modding them if you want, assuming you are not lumped with one of the legacy formats). Some games also do a raw LBA read, square enix music being the first thing most would encounter here but let us not go there right now. Most would instead use a iso altering tool, sadly I don't have a free one* but have a look at things like magiciso and ultraiso, than rebuild fully.

*I vaguely recall being linked something, it was not as nice as said *iso tools but it should get it done, sadly I can't remember the name of it.

When you say hidden files I assume it is not a case of the raw LBA read stuff I mentioned above and just that there are no nice tools like if you were editing mario kart or something. Fortunately figuring out custom formats is what we do most of the time around here, it is often tedious and at end nobody wants to make one of those nice tools (instead you will end up with info so you can either go manual or someone else can build a tool).

Thanks for the tip on the archive reuse.

Someone over at tcrf.net said this regarding the hidden files:
"The game data is not actually stored inside a file, it's just there on the disc right after the I/O driver (.IMG) file. You need to use a hex editor to rip the content out of the disc into a usable form. Also, there is no filename"

Sadly, he never went into greater detail on how ro rip the data.

The first game also has a debug menu that can be activated by "changing the mode value". Again, nobody has specified how to change the mode value. Someone who knows how to access it refuses to go into detail, saying he wont make a tutorial until he completes a texture impoter he is working on.

Honestly, we should start to document the shit out of the Ratchet and Clank games. I think one of the first things that needs to happen is documenting the engine, which is a slightly modified Kinetica engine, and it was the same engine used in Jak and Daxter and God of War.

EDIT: I found more information about the files: http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12935&view=previous

[FAST6191]

CDs/DVDs themselves don't have a set higher level format -- they are just a disc upon which a lot of 0s and 1s can be written and read back. Many find it useful to have a set format, iso9660 being the common one for CDs and UDF being one popular in DVDs. Unlike many other systems the Sony consoles have been seen to use those, however they can also store data outside those formats but still on the disc and thus still accessible to the game. If you open it up in some kind of iso reader (be it an archive program, ultraiso or something else entirely) then you will get the stuff in the known format but not that which outside it.
I am not sure why some games go outside these (it does make programming it harder in some ways), and some clearly use it as a kind of anti piracy (rip the game using standard iso9660 reads and you miss the stuff outside it, the game then knows and locks you out or does demo mode or something).
Either way then the person dumping the game has to do sector by sector reads rather than copying directly and that which is not covered by UDF/iso9660 is not seen by programs that only look for and read those formats. As it is there though you can open the whole sector by sector dump in a hex editor and pull out the data that way, as file names are not really necessary in those situations you probably don't have the luxury of them for this endeavour and it is closer to classical ROM hacking like most around here are familiar with (on carts it was pretty much the DS before file systems came into play for most consoles).

I don't know what the mode value is for this game (never really played the games) and it is not a programming or system term per se, at least outside of some very old systems. If I had to guess it is probably the same way many people can brute force their way into debug menus/modes. That being when you select new game, multiplayer, options, save game... it will have a value for that so the game knows what it is doing, in programming the debug mode might be one of those but removed for the final release. If you can then force it to another value that happens to be the debug mode's old value (it is easy to remove things from a list, more annoying to strip out debug code entirely) you win a debug mode.
Alternatively there is a similar story for easy, medium, hard... difficulties and debug mode might have been an option there at one point. Figure out where the value for said difficulty mode is kept and try other ones (if it is 1,2 or 3 normally then try 0 and 4 sort of thing).
I don't know why it would need a full tutorial -- you say the value for the 1.0 NTSC version is located at memory location ????????, and to launch debug mode you put value XX in there is how most of those go. The slightly harder version that I would not be overly surprised to see (the PS2 is new enough that some things could use dynamic memory allocation) is "there is a pointer to the mode value at ********, load that to get the location of the mode value and then at that location it is value XX to get debug". Finding that all in the first place, whether you sift through code or try to find it like you find cheats, can be tedious and would require a proper tutorial but once you know it then it is simple enough.

[CM30]

Probably impossible, but I want to see a SMB 1 hack with some of the enemies from this sprite sheet:

http://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=1&id=32863

Super Mario Bros 1 style Koopalings, Boom Boom, Reznor, Wart, etc would be really interesting too.

[Vanya]

Not impossible, but it would require a lot of work and would probably be better as an SMB3 hack. The bigger enemies would have to be background tiles instead of sprites so they would be much more restricted like the dragon boss in MM2.