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User gzip has discovered an interesting easter egg in Maniac Mansion for the NES. It can be triggered in the arcade room by opening the coin box of the Tuna Diver arcade game using the small key from Edna’s room and activating the USE verb in combination with an invisible object just to the left of the doorknob. The coin box for the Meteor Mess arcade game must also be closed.
This sequence of events triggers a multi-line dialog by the original re-scripter of Maniac Mansion for the NES, Ron Baldwin. Ron was also a contributer for most of the original SCUMM games.
The easter egg was discovered by inspecting the assembly code and is highly unlikely to be discovered by accident due the combination of object state and the use of a hidden object, hence it’s 35+ years of secrecy.
The full dialog of the easter egg is as follows:
Ron Baldwin has done a killer job in adapting this game for use on the NES. So, please tell all of your friends to run out and buy it!
If you’re a Maniac Mansion fan then don’t forget to check out Maniac Mansion Uncensored!
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Fire Emblem E3 (FEE3) is a yearly event held by the Fire Emblem ROM hacking community, running yearly since 2011. Each year, ROM hackers and fangame developers showcase their work over the past year to the wider community.
The event originated from Nintendo’s failure to localize Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem. Fearing for the Fire Emblem series’s future in the west, the hacking community took matters into their own hands and decided that if Nintendo would not make new Fire Emblem games, they would do it themselves. Though the series was revitalized by Fire Emblem Awakening’s release and localization, the event has continued anyway. This marks the thirteenth year of this event, and it has outlived E3 itself. This year’s event will showcase 58 unique projects over 15 days.
New projects being shown off this year include Hetja’s Quest, a Fire Emblem roguelite with metaprogression, Fire Emblem: Three Legacies, a sequel to a theoretical golden ending of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Emblem Chronicle VII, a demake of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade into Fire Emblem: Thracia 776’s engine.
Returning projects hacks shown off this year include A Vestrian Tale, a recently completed Thracia 776 inspired romhack, Sacred Echoes, a demake of Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia into GBA, and Dream of Five, a recently revived romhack that appeared at the very first FEE3.
Fire Emblem E3 is hosted and supported by Fire Emblem Universe, the central forum of Fire Emblem’s Game Boy Advance hacking community. The schedule can be found here. All videos will be hosted on its YouTube channel, with a new video being uploaded every six hours, starting at 12:00AM EST on October 7.
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Rejoice!
Digivice PSP translation patch The digivice game released for the PSP (also called: Digivice ver. Portable) has been translated to Spanish. Now, you can properly enjoy this piece of history too.
Link: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6880/
ROMhacking PSP basics Besides, all the proccess has been written into a friendly (but informative) guide for any beginner who wants to start doing their PSP projects. [With pdf and github version for the reader's convenience]
Links: https://www.romhacking.net/documents/905/
https://github.com/Bunkai9448/digipet_PSP
[ COMMENTS ] Relevant Link - RHDN Project Page
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After a considerable amount of discussion concerning events over the last few years, RHDN Staff have begun enforcing a new policy.
In the past several years there have been a number of users submitting work they did not create. While many have been well intentioned and some even had direct permission, situations have still taken place which caused severe workload problems for RHDN staff and a lot of bad feelings in the ROM hacking community. This is something staff can not continue to allow.
RHDN staff value and respect everyone who hacks, mods and creates in this community and the following policy is an effort to solve this continuing problem, mend a few fences and help authors better control what they create.
Effective immediately, no user may submit any new(to RHDN) work or project unless they are the author/creator or contributor of said work. Going forward, all authors must also create a forum account before making a submission so users of said works can report bugs, glitches and problems with the work directly thru the RHDN forum.
We staff hope the community can see this change as a positive one that will prevent problems and misunderstandings going forward.
Thank You all for your continued dedication to the community! Happy Hacking!
[ COMMENTS ] Relevant Link - RHDN Project Page
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Fire Emblem E3 (FEE3) is a yearly event held by the Fire Emblem hacking community, running since 2011. Every year, rom hackers and fan game developers showcase their work over the previous year to the wider community.
The event was initially launched in the aftermath of Nintendo’s failure to translate Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem for the Nintendo DS. The community feared that official English translation would cease, ending the series in the West. The romhacker Arch believed that if Nintendo would not make new Fire Emblem games, the fanbase would make them. Though translation for Fire Emblem Awakening was soon confirmed, the event continued anyway. From a seven-hour long video in 2011, this year’s event will last twenty days, showing off a massive eighty unique projects.
Among the hacks being shown off this year include Pandan’s Lengths of Time, sequel to Vision Quest, one of the most popular hacks to come out of the community, Knabepicer’s Storge, which allows the player to construct their party at the very beginning of the game before embarking on a quick adventure, and Permafrost’s Deity Device, featuring three “discs” worth of content along with a revamped magic system.
Returning projects include Snakey1 and 1st_lieutenant_noguchi’s Legends of Avenir, where the player can freely customise their character and decide how they would interact with the world, somewhat like a “choose your adventure” book, HyperGammaSpaces’ Sacred Echoes, a demake of Shadows of Valentia to Fire Emblem 8 with mechanics such as Gaiden’s magic system faithfully implemented, and Vesly’s Pokémblem, which adapts Pokémon Red and Blue into Fire Emblem 8, with mechanics combining the two together.
Fire Emblem E3 is being supported by Fire Emblem Universe, the main location of the Game Boy Advance’s community, and its forum thread can be found here. All videos are showcased on its channel, with a new video being uploaded every six hours. The playlist can be accessed here.
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V2.0 of the Megaman: Super 16-bit Graphics Pack for Mesen has been released! First released a couple years ago and previously known as Megaman 30th Anniversary HD Pack, there’s been a number of substantial changes and additions, fully overhauling the pack with things like multi-parallax backgrounds, animations, a fully remixed soundtrack (optional for those who want the old school chiptunes), customization options like multiple player skins, gameplay hints (similar to Navi Mode, but more useful), and more.
On the technical side of things, it has been completely redesigned from the ground up with logical filenames for all sheets with each sheet being dedicated to particular enemies, stages, bosses, etc. This makes both further updates and end-user modification much easier, and as such, the project is also available on github.
Downloads are available on the linked ROMhacking.net forum thread. Enjoy!
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A Mesen Resource Pack is now available for the NES game, The Legend of Zelda. Upgrades include, but are not limited to, increased resolution, animated backgrounds, upgraded sound, and various gameplay enhancements. This was a group project and many elements had to come together to make the final product possible.
This is the first Mesen pack to utilize a new “background based” approach to graphic replacement on a large scale. Traditional graphic replacement methods for NES Emulators usually involve replacing individual 8×8 graphic tiles that are part of the native game coding. This often becomes an issue for graphic replacement artists because 8×8 tiles are often repeated many times within games due to the size limitations of NES hardware. Because of this, it is often very easy to fall victim to an HD Pack that looks very repetitive or artificial.
To avoid this pitfall, a programmer known as KYA built upon previous work done by Sour with regard to static background image replacement. Instead of replacing small 8×8 tiles, one large .png file is used in various areas as a “background” to fill the entire screen. Since the Overworld in the Legend of Zelda is made of many static screens that are all tied together, it was a perfect candidate for this type of approach on a large scale. Several memory checks are used to facilitate screen transitions, and the 8×8 tiles are still utilized for interactable blocks. This allowed for maximum creative expression and it allowed for much more interesting graphic upgrades.
Many “quality of life” features are also included courtesy of ShadowOne333. These are implemented via a bundled .ips file which is included in the pack.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhp0ySFnB5g
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSIHuZKFhQM&t=6s
Install Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_Z206pryw&t=10s
[ COMMENTS ] Relevant Link - RHDN Project Page
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An update is now available for the Metroid: HD Custom Edition mod for the Mesen emulator (version 1.3).
The first version of this pack was released in August 2018. While the initial release improved upon many aspects, limitations of an NES era game were still very apparent. Most notably, the running and jumping graphics of the pack were considered by some to be choppy and awkward. Thanks to contributions from kya and mkwong98, substantial improvements have now been made in these areas.
For jumping, the graphic problem was rooted in the behavior of the original NES gameplay. The original game shared running graphics with jumping graphics. This proved to be problematic as the HD pack changed the proportions of the player sprite substantially. As a result, creative freedom was limited and finding a pose that was acceptable for both scenarios proved to be very challenging. Fortunately, mkwong98 proposed a solution that separated the linked graphics by using an advanced feature of Mesen called the “spriteNearby” condition. This strategy was very promising. However, the solution did involve writing manual lines of code for every relevant tile address used by the game for jumping. During development, there were fears that this approach may overwhelm Mesen. This was understandable as the proposal did involve over 16,000 lines of additional coding just for jumping.
After the revised package was finished, initial boot time was impacted. However, once the game started, the emulator accommodated the new additions without crashing and at full speed. This is a testament to Mesen’s ability to handle substantial amounts of incoming information coming from custom HD packs.
For running, the pack was initially limited by the small number of movement frames used by the original Metroid. Low frame counts are commonplace with retro games. In fact, some players would even say this characteristic fits well with the low-resolution nature of an 8-bit game. However, once the resolution was increased via the first release of Metroid: HD, players naturally expected enhancements to other areas as well (such as frame count). Improving one aspect without the other resulted in a gameplay experience that some may describe as jarring. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to customize frame counts with the standard HD Pack creation method.
Kya initially proposed a method to overcome this shortcoming using additional advanced features of Mesen called “frameRange” and “memoryCheckConstant” conditions. However, one problem in implementing the proposal from kya related to the fact that artwork could not extend beyond existing tiles. For an artist, this constraint could be thought of as a canvas that is not only small, but constantly changing shape.
After experimenting with various approaches, an unusual solution to this issue was discovered. Kya froze the running animation entirely by hacking the ROM. Some may consider this strategy to be counterintuitive as the final goal was to add running frames rather than subtract. However, the new hack solved the issue of a constantly changing canvas size. In addition, the frame with the largest number of tiles available to edit was used in the solution. This allowed for maximum creative freedom and all running frames are now inserted and controlled entirely through the HD pack in the updated version using the “frameRange” and “memoryCheckConstant” conditions.
New features of the latest pack include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Enhanced running and jumping graphics
- The download now includes pre-assembled zip files for alternate graphics (Megatroid, Fusiontroid, and 8BitTroid)
- The minimap is now an automap
- A new and secret area is now available in Brinstar
Download the latest version here: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=26811.0
[ COMMENTS ] Relevant Link - RHDN Project Page
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An HD pack is now available for the NES game, Metroid. This pack replaces graphics, sound effects, and music. It is a hack that builds upon many prior hacks and it uses Metroid mOTHER as a base (available at: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1988/). Credit should go to the original authors for work done on prior hacks.
The pack includes, but it not limited to, some of the features detailed below. Many of these features are carryover from prior hacks that have previously been developed for Metroid. Items denoted with an asterisk are brand new features that have been created exclusively for the Mesen pack.
- Increased resolution**
- Scrolling backgrounds**
- Updated sound effects and music**
- File resources for alternate sound and graphics**
- New title and ending screen**
- Minimap
- Animated environments
- Beam stacking
- Saving
- Full health on startup
Players must use a new version of the Mesen emulator that was released on August 5, 2018 (version 0.9.6 is available at: https://www.mesen.ca/#Downloads). Older versions of the Mesen emulator will not work properly.
The README contains details the work performed by each author below that helped make the HD pack possible: Kya, Sour, dACE, snarfblam, Infinity’s End, DemickXII, Psyklax, Maximum Potion, VariaZim, WIP, Exaelart, Riklaionel, elgwen, strugglepoo, Luminist, Jorge Fuentes, and Patricio Herrera.
Forum Discussion: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=26811.0
HD Pack Download: https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1NrE7KPXMelKW2JzLn2SC34VA8mvvIg6C
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Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos has been graphically enhanced! This graphics pack ports the graphics from Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for use with the NES version of the game and its 8-bit audio. It also goes several steps further than that. Graphical effects removed from Trilogy are kept intact (or “restored”), including lightning in Stage 3-1, ice glow in Stage 5-2, and fades in cutscenes. Various graphical anomalies and errors in Trilogy have also been fixed.
This pack is designed for use with the U.S. release of the game. It also requires Mesen v0.9.5 or later. As with other NES graphics packs, this pack needs to be extracted to Mesen’s “HdPacks” folder. All the files - .png files and hires.txt - need to be included in a subfolder in that directory with the same name as the game ROM being loaded. Make sure that “Use HDNES HD packs” is enabled in video options.
Enjoy!
