Hack Ideas and Requests: We still can't hack it in 2023

[julayla]

You know, replaying Super Back to the Future II, I'm surprised that the same company never made a Super Back to the Future or Super Back to the Future III (though I can probably understand why for the latter as considering that the 3rd movie is in the old west, skateboards/hoverboards wouldn't exist at the time). I mean the second game for the SNES is fine, but it would be quite interesting to see the first and 3rd movie done similarly to what the 2nd movie was done.

[EricMagnefico]

The Mega Man X4 Undub: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6127/

...but with Windii's translations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NiWXDWhWXw

[samsticka]

I fixed the links to the images in my message. So now you should be able to see them with no problem.

Other ideas I have for an SMB3 hack would be the coin heavens.  What if they were similar to the ones in SMB1 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii?  What I mean by that is instead of jumping on pink note blocks to get up to them, you just climb a vine?   They don't automatically scroll and there are lifts that Mario and/or Luigi ride on while collecting coins.  Then at the end, Mario and/or Luigi jump down a large gap to return to the world instead of going down a pipe.

Another idea would be to include springboards.

[Tsukiyomaru0]

I've seen numerous attempts to fix Link's Awakening DX, but here's my take on what should be done:
• Decensor and also rewrite the script to be more accurate to the original.
• Remove all the "helpful" prompts when interacting with items you need the Power Bracelet/Glove and Running Shoes for.
• Shorten some of the very helpful items hint, specially for the Compass (see "footnote" for a proposal of a change).
• Change the theft punishment so it only happens if you steal a second time or more.
• Make it so pressing Select in the inventory brings up the Save screen.
• Remove the music for Guardian Acorn and Piece of Power.
→ As for visual cue of when you have them, if you have the Guardian Acorn, the hearts on the HUD should flash, just like the sword does when you have the Piece of Power.
→ If nothing can be done about the music here, simply make it so the Guardian Acorn and Piece of Power does not spawn at all.
• Remove the power to send enemies flying when they are hit with the sword while under effect of Piece of Power or Red Tunic.

Instead of:
You've got the Compass! Now, you can see where the chests and Nightmares are
hidden! This Compass has a new feature-- a tone will tell you if a key is hidden
in a room when you enter!

have it be:
You've got the Compass! Now you can see where the chests and Nightmares are,
and a tone will alert you of a hidden key in the room when you enter!

[EricMagnefico]

The Mega Man X4 Undub: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6127/

...but with Windii's translations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NiWXDWhWXw

Oh, and I should also mention Mega Man 8's undub with Windii's translations.

[SegaMan89]

I've seen numerous attempts to fix Link's Awakening DX, but here's my take on what should be done:
• Decensor and also rewrite the script to be more accurate to the original.
• Remove all the "helpful" prompts when interacting with items you need the Power Bracelet/Glove and Running Shoes for.
• Shorten some of the very helpful items hint, specially for the Compass (see "footnote" for a proposal of a change).
• Change the theft punishment so it only happens if you steal a second time or more.
• Make it so pressing Select in the inventory brings up the Save screen.
• Remove the music for Guardian Acorn and Piece of Power.
→ As for visual cue of when you have them, if you have the Guardian Acorn, the hearts on the HUD should flash, just like the sword does when you have the Piece of Power.
→ If nothing can be done about the music here, simply make it so the Guardian Acorn and Piece of Power does not spawn at all.
• Remove the power to send enemies flying when they are hit with the sword while under effect of Piece of Power or Red Tunic.

Yeah that used to drive me nuts when the message would repeat in every dungeon.  lol 

[Darth_Anyan]

Recently, Glucoboy has been dumped: https://lostmediawiki.com/Glucoboy_(found_children%27s_glucose_meter_with_built-in_Game_Boy_Advance_game;_2007)

Its glucometer part including GRP accumulation has not been emulated yet, and four out of five game are initially locked behind the GRP "paywall". A romhack to unlock them (or at least start with 13000+ GRP as you need 13000 to unlock all the games) might make it so much easier to use the games on the emulator.

[Ligeia]

That's less in the realm of hacking and more developing entirely new hardware to play the game on tbh.

Really ? I mean, aren't there widescreen hacks of Super Metroid and Super Mario World ? Doesn't seem that much different than zooming out the view a bit, does it ?

[FAST6191]

Really ? I mean, aren't there widescreen hacks of Super Metroid and Super Mario World ? Doesn't seem that much different than zooming out the view a bit, does it ?

You can zoom on 3d games well enough to expand viewport, maybe tweaking the UI overlay/quasi filters and when things vanish from view in the more annoying instances. 2d games are a different matter entilely (could not resist).
If you see it in an emulator what is likely happening (assuming it is not letterboxed anyway, and any heretics that do such a thing without exceptional justification will go on my list) is savestate taken, the emulation is sped up, the character moved in all directions (possibly with wall walk type cheats), screens grabbed and it all stitched together. Better hope no random battles, enemy spawns or such are in this.
Some systems will have BG layers slightly larger (two tiles, one either side in most cases) to help with movement and this can assist some things (though anything layered on top of it might vanish, and you still have enemy spawn issues).
Otherwise yeah you are programming a whole new game, possibly without support of the underlying hardware ifn the original was built to its limits (which in turn was built to work at given resolutions).

[Candra Software]

Mega Man 8 and X4's English dubs are something, they're quite unintentionally funny.

Mind if I share a little ROM Hack wishlist here?:

Slaughter Sport - 1-Player Character Select (so you don't have to enter codes to play as other characters in 1-Player Mode. Basically, make 1-Player Mode go to the Character Select screen)

VR Troopers (Genesis) Boss Hack - Playable Skug and Kamelion. The former would need to have some of his reaction animations tweaked to avoid softlocking the game. Oh, and also, playing as the villains in Story Mode, lifting the Character Select restriction? Due to the char ID checks, Skug winning a round plays the VR Troopers' Victory Theme instead of the Villains' Victory Theme.

Bomberman '94/Mega Bomberman - Revival on Death, instead of the level restarting on each death. I think Super Bomberman R is like that?

Snow Bros. (Mega Drive) - Choose between Snowman and Princess. You can mix and match Snowmen and Princesses. Early stage palettes aren't designed with the Princesses in mind, though.
Here are codes you can use for that game:
3F2E:0000/AA9T-AABR Player 1 is a Princess on every Stage
3ED4:0000/AA9A-AAGY Player 2 is a Princess on every Stage

Puyo Puyo Tsu (Mega Drive) - PCM Driver Fix, in the vein of Stef's PCM Driver fixes for Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition and Super Street Fighter II. I was thinking about this in case one doesn't have access to System C-2 emulation for its arcade counterpart.

Roll-chan 7 (A ROM Hack of the SNES game, not a spritesheet edit of the 8-bit remake) - Seems unlikely, but fingers crossed! (pro-tip: you can mash out of burn! I had to figure that out on my own)

Speaking of which, refill weapon ammo on death for any of the Classic or X Mega Man games that don't have such ROM Hacks yet.

Super Street Fighter II (Genesis) - Extra Character Slots - After I started replacing characters in a ROM Hack of the Genesis port of this game, people have been wanting Akuma to be added. It would most likely fall into bank switching territory, which I believe Mortal Kombat ROM Hacks such as Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy uses. I eventually figured out how to edit sprite tile maps (bragging rights!)

One problem though, is that how would the extra characters be usable in Tournament Mode, considering that the RAM Addresses for the player entries use 1 digit in the same byte for the character colors and character indexes? They might require an extra flag to determine if Akuma is selected, like in Super Turbo.

Appending this message:

I could imagine an Outrun ROM Hack starring Simpsons characters.

[tobiasvl]

I've seen numerous attempts to fix Link's Awakening DX, but here's my take on what should be done:
• Decensor and also rewrite the script to be more accurate to the original.
• Remove all the "helpful" prompts when interacting with items you need the Power Bracelet/Glove and Running Shoes for.
• Shorten some of the very helpful items hint, specially for the Compass (see "footnote" for a proposal of a change).
• Change the theft punishment so it only happens if you steal a second time or more.
• Make it so pressing Select in the inventory brings up the Save screen.
• Remove the music for Guardian Acorn and Piece of Power.
→ As for visual cue of when you have them, if you have the Guardian Acorn, the hearts on the HUD should flash, just like the sword does when you have the Piece of Power.
→ If nothing can be done about the music here, simply make it so the Guardian Acorn and Piece of Power does not spawn at all.
• Remove the power to send enemies flying when they are hit with the sword while under effect of Piece of Power or Red Tunic.

I'm working on a hack that will address some of these, including the script rewrite, skipping text with B, the theft suggestion (you'll be able to steal once without consequences to get the photo, but not more), etc. I probably won't change the Guardian Acorn/Piece of Power behavior (beyond the text) but maybe I'll make some separate patches for that. Feel free to post suggestions in my thread: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=37024.0

[lightbulbsun]

Recently, Glucoboy has been dumped: https://lostmediawiki.com/Glucoboy_(found_children%27s_glucose_meter_with_built-in_Game_Boy_Advance_game;_2007)

Its glucometer part including GRP accumulation has not been emulated yet, and four out of five game are initially locked behind the GRP "paywall". A romhack to unlock them (or at least start with 13000+ GRP as you need 13000 to unlock all the games) might make it so much easier to use the games on the emulator.

Not a hack, but maybe a cheat will be sufficient:
The GRPs live at address 0300:4c34 in RAM, so setting the value to 0xffff = 65535 with a cheat code like
13004C34 0000FFFF
should allow you to unlock everything.

[SegaMan89]

You know, replaying Super Back to the Future II, I'm surprised that the same company never made a Super Back to the Future or Super Back to the Future III (though I can probably understand why for the latter as considering that the 3rd movie is in the old west, skateboards/hoverboards wouldn't exist at the time). I mean the second game for the SNES is fine, but it would be quite interesting to see the first and 3rd movie done similarly to what the 2nd movie was done.

Maybe a rom hack of Sunset Riders?  lol 

[Brutapode89]

Maybe Project RE-Quest III - Mobile Script Port and Relocalization & Project RE-Quest IV - Mobile Script Port and Relocalization for NES versions of Dragon Quest III and IV?

[SuperThunderBlade]

It would be cool to see a mod for Nintendos World Cup for Nes, where both player (Player 1 and Player 2) can give the Com- companions advises to dribble or pass in Coop-mode. In the the original Game its limitated to Player 1 wich is boring for Player 2. Its just an Idea but this would make the best football game ever even better. Thx   

[MD_Prometh]

Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Yuna: Final Edition - Fast text speed hack

One issue that I'm having with this game is the text speed. Compared to the first two PC-E games, it's pretty slow, which for English speaking players is problematic as voiced lines will finish before the subtitle does.

https://youtu.be/zGGFYhYA278?t=500 Here's an example.

If the text speed could be made just a bit faster, closer to how the first two PC-E handled it, then that would really improve the experience.

[FAST6191]

While I am not going to knock the principle if that is a slow speed text then maybe don't explore the 8-16 bit RPG world.
What I am more here to say though is does the game feature any options for it to be possibly slower still, or maybe instant on replaying an area/losing a battle? For the former (and actually some instances of the latter) it is a flag finding cheat (go into menu, select item, search, select item, search for change... you might have to confirm the change and exit back to base menu). Find that and sometimes it is either a speed value that can go beyond what the menu sets, or there are hidden extra options that maybe are used internally for said instant draw.

Doing it "properly" tends to be a more involved effort where you follow things being drawn on screen and tracing it back to the underlying code. In this case though as a curio as this is PS1 it will be texture viewer (rather than more traditional 2d) so does the whole text appear at once or is it constructed? Not sure what PS1 emulator to point at to see such things (don't think no$psx has it, his other emulators do such things though) but should be something you can find.

[Poodlestargenerica]

I was wondering if it would be feasible to add all of the multiplayer levels from Super Bomberman 1-4, to 5.

[SMB64]

A small little idea (well not really "small") for Super Mario All-Stars + World: what if someone could port in the NES poses made by SuperSledgeBro, as well as maybe make a Luigi variant? As well as maybe giving Lost Levels it's own unique graphics like Pocket's redrawn hack? And, what if someone ported in the world select from SMA4, where you could select a world, and then replay levels from it, indicated by the blue triangles becoming yellow? And finally, what if there was a port of this (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3323/) into the game? (Also I know I said SMAS+W, at the beginning, but I mean standard SMAS too. And yes, I know this a lot, and may be way too much work, but I'd really like to see these in game)

[SegaMan89]

Seriously, hear me out.

Burger Time on NES but with Ed from Good Burger.

GOOD BURGER TIME.