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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy Tactics Complete V2

« on: January 16, 2021, 11:26:28 am »

Romhacking drama is always hilarious to me, like did the original hacker get Squares permission first hand to do his hack? Of course not, yet he/she thinks he owns "his work" and can do "take-downs" on others when they use it.

As someone who made a complete patch for the PSP version of the game (FFT: Emergence), you have NO IDEA how much drama there is in the FFTactics romhacking community. Once my patch was in the place where I wanted it, I signed out of their forums and deleted the bookmark from my browser. Nobody needs that level of toxicity in their life.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Any “what it should/could/would have been” hacks out there?

« on: January 15, 2021, 10:31:44 am »

Hey guys do you know about any rom hacks out there that are what something should/could/would have been? I’d like to see a Dracula X SNES “what it should have been” hack. Why Konami made it different than the PC Engine original we will never know. This hacked version would feature all the same designed levels as the PC Engine CD original right down to the enemy placements and bosses (but it’ll be alright if the backgrounds were different), add in songs not found in the SNES version (though most of them are the same, there’s just some missing) like when a Boss is nearby and Poison Mind (NES Castlevania 1 boss theme) which plays throughout the mini boss rush before facing Shaft, adding Maria as a playable character, having still shots of the cinemas (which I’m fine with) with text and of course making the final boss much easier meaning that those stupid death pits are gone and changing Dracula’s second form to that of the PC Engine original/SOTN (some sprites retain though) prologue. It would be all-round much easier (or should I say manageable) than the original version it is based upon (I mean the original SNES version this hack is based upon in order to prevent confusion).

With emulation in the state that it's currently in, why not just play the PCEngine rom? That's an awful lot of work for a game that is so easily playable.

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Personal Projects / Re: PoPoLoCrois Monogatari (PS1) Translation

« on: January 09, 2021, 10:09:49 pm »

A JRPG Youtuber, Davidinc, lists PoPoLoCrois Monogatari as the most underrated RPG of all time. And he was talking about the PSP version, which seems like an abridgement. I'm excited to see this.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Xenogears: Starting Perfect Works & Gameplay Improvement ROM

« on: December 28, 2020, 04:57:59 pm »

As I recall, there's a lot in "Perfect Works" which doesn't pertain to Xenogears, but to the background mythology. How are you planning to incorporate all of it? What has been done so far?

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: DS Editing Resources for Lunar: Dragon Song

« on: December 16, 2020, 09:12:59 am »

Seems to me the best way to go would be to extract all the assets and write a mostly-new engine.

I honestly think that this is a better path. Use something like RPGMaker to completely redo the game.

Fun story: this was my very first DS game. I had finally bought a DS post-college, when I was taking public transportation for about an hour per day. Bad as this game was, I really TRIED to play it, but it had the boneheadedly stupid design decision to make yelling into the DS's microphone the trigger for running from battle. I learned that to a cheap DS mic, the bus accelerating sounded remarkably like "rrrruuuunnnn, rrrrruuuuuuuunnnnnn". So I literally couldn't play it.

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Help Wanted Ads / Re: [Graphical] Final Fantasy V Advance - Galuf's Hypothetical Job Sprites Provided

« on: December 15, 2020, 04:23:35 pm »

I've seen a lot of fanmade sprites in my life, and these are a cut above the rest. Good job. 

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News Submissions / Re: Homebrew: From Below, A Brand New Homebrew for the NES

« on: December 06, 2020, 08:41:19 pm »

This one's a lot of fun. The music is a bit too upbeat for a Tetris clone block puzzle game, but the Kraken attack is an EXCELLENT new addition.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Best improvement hacks for snes rpg’s

« on: November 19, 2020, 08:58:06 am »

For FF6, it's hard to go wrong with C.V.Reynolds' Bugfix and Uncensoring Patch. Pretty much every hacker of FF6 uses it as a base, because it fixes over 100 bugs. The re-implementation of the Evade stat (unused in the original game) totally changes the battle system, and makes you really think about giving characters the Gauntlet or the Genji Gloves.

(On a related note, if you ever do PSX RPGs, get the Spirit Bug Fix for FFVII, so that M.Def is added back into the game.)

I've heard good things about "Breath of Fire Improved" for the GBA version of the game, but haven't tried it myself.

Chrono Trigger+ adds a lot of cut content back into Chrono Trigger.

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News Submissions / Re: ROM Hacks: Pokemon Gold and Silver 97: Reforged - Now released!

« on: November 11, 2020, 03:46:49 pm »

Whenever I try to go downstairs upon starting a new game, I end up in the aquarium in Teknos City. Ya'll might wanna fix that then reupload the patches...

No problem on my side. Went downstairs, got my first Pokemon, and I'm off on my journey! Skyrunner14, use the Rom Hasher utility to make sure you're patching to the correct version of Crystal.

Camerupt, this is an amazing hack! Thank you.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: [PSX] Final Fantasy 8 HACK - International GF Job System

« on: November 01, 2020, 05:09:26 pm »

I just wanted to state that I find this hack fascinating. I'm not planning to play FF8 in the next year, but when I DO replay it, I'm replaying with this patch.

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Personal Projects / Re: Super Mario Bros 2j NES Restoration

« on: October 26, 2020, 03:13:54 pm »

Thanks for letting me know about Loopy's patch. It looks like my job is done. I haven't found a working link to Loopy's MMC3 patch, but I did find one on the last link of this reddit thread that has the game fixed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/dd20xq/question_about_smb_lost_levels_nes_rom/

EDIT: I found the Loopy rom, and it has the same hash as the one in that thread. Here is a link to the source code for it.
http://3dscapture.com/NES/

As a bonus, the 8th post in this thread gives you hex values to edit to have Worlds A-D always unlocked:
https://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=11006.0

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Personal Projects / Re: Super Mario Bros 2j NES Restoration

« on: October 26, 2020, 09:55:43 am »

Interesting. It seems there are multiple versions out there. The one that I use is named "Super Mario Bros 2 (J) [p1]", which I believe is the same as "Super Mario Bros 2 (Lost Levels) (Unl)". It is 73kb. I will update the original post. And yes, Peach's graphics are glitched. You only ever get the doorway because there is something that happens when switching from the doorway to Peach's screen. That's the part I haven't tackled yet.

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Personal Projects / Super Mario Bros 2j NES Restoration

« on: October 25, 2020, 04:38:01 pm »

Super Mario Bros 2j (aka The Lost Levels) was originally released on the Famicom Disk System (FDS), and was never given an official cartridge conversion. Even the Virtual Console re-releases are running off of a modified FDS BIOS. This can cause some issues when trying to load the game on some emulators, Everdrives, or the NES/SNES Classic Minis. So, a while ago, an NES conversion was made titled "Super Mario Bros 2 (Unl)" or "Super Mario Bros 2 (J) [p1]". This converted the FDS game to NES, but with a few catches.
1. Most evident, the title screen graphics are missing.
2. The final room where you rescue Peach is corrupt, so the player cannot progress to World 9.
3. There is no save data, so turning the system off prevents your progress from unlocking worlds A-D.
3.5. The combination of issues 2 & 3 make Worlds A-D completely inaccessible.

The patch below corrects the first of the 3 issues, restoring the title screen graphics to the rom. With this patch, you can freely play Worlds 1-8. If you die, your high score will show up on the title screen.


If anyone wants to tackle debugging the final room, it should make the cartridge fully playable.

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SlsJpxbt-Rd2HHMZPxpgz8fS7V894cqH/view?usp=sharing

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Games that are good for people learning Japanese?

« on: October 19, 2020, 06:30:07 pm »

I actually found the first 2 gens of Pokemon to be good for this. All of the characters speak in short, simple sentences, and because the games are on the GB/GBC, and memory was at a premium, everything is in hiragana/katakana, with not a kanji in sight. I was also familiar with the plot, so the context helped me learn a bunch of new words.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: Japanese Super Mario 2 title screen

« on: October 15, 2020, 10:28:15 am »

So, for the record: if not the title screen, was there anything cut from the FDS release to make it fit on an NES ROM?

It's a good question. I need to play all the way through this version to make sure. I'm assuming it's all there though, since examining the FDS version in a hex editor shows that there's a huge amount of blank space on the disk image. Starting at $CC20, there's a string of hex code that reads "2SAVE", and then 00s until $FFDB. Maybe this was space set aside on the disk for saving your game? Either way, no such block of blank code is present in the NES converted file.
October 18, 2020, 02:13:03 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Okay, I have played through the whole game now, and unfortunately there's another misplaced pointer at the end of 8-4. If you took warp zones, it should send you back to the title screen. If you didn't warp, it should send you onto World 9. Right now, the rom crashes and you have to exit the emulator and go back in. Worlds 9/A/B/C/D are present in the rom, but there appears to be no way to access them. I'll see if I can fix it.

In other news, my patch was rejected because RHDN no longer accepts new game entries for unlicensed ports of official games.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: Japanese Super Mario 2 title screen

« on: October 14, 2020, 08:57:20 pm »

I'm resurrecting this 3-year-old topic to say Thank You, Sarujo. For whatever reason, your pointing out that the cloud was mis-colored was the key for me. It made me realize that the game was applying the correct palette, but not the correct graphics. I checked the rom in YYCHR, and the graphics were still present in the code. So, I was able to compare the code of the NES conversion with the original FDS, and I restored the original tilemap. Worked like a charm. I've submitted the hack to the site, and it should be posted in a few days.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: R.I.P. to the Nintendo 3DS...

« on: September 17, 2020, 02:50:28 pm »

It's not dead till they stop repairing it!

But it's been a good run. I remember how absolutely mindblowing the glasses-free 3D was when it came out. I hopped a train to Ikebukuro to try a floor model so I could see it with my own eyes.

So many good games. I still have 4 on my to-play list. But mostly, the New 3DS XL is my emulation beast.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Games which had better text localization than original?

« on: September 17, 2020, 10:14:27 am »

Too bad their actual writing was so bad it kind of cancelled out any of the perks the localization offered.

While KH:CoM and KH2 were a bit weak in the Disney worlds, the writing for the series didn't jump off a cliff until Dream Drop Distance on the 3DS. Prior to that, the worst game story-wise was Re:Coded, but that was so superfluous to the series you could just ignore it.

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Personal Projects / Re: Lynna Lab - Oracle of Ages editor + disassembly

« on: September 17, 2020, 10:08:06 am »

The one that I am interested to do is a 2D remake of Zelda II. By my current list of projects I want to pursue, I should have a free moment sometime around 2025.  (ie- never gonna get around to it).

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Games which had better text localization than original?

« on: September 13, 2020, 04:39:42 pm »

Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II had such good localizations that they re-released them in Japan with the English voices (the Final Mix versions).

Also, not a game, but relevant to the conversation. There is a Japanese novel called "Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit" by Nahoko Uehashi that was translated to English by Cathy Hirono. Hirono rewrote a few chapters in the book from a straight exposition dump to a character in the story relating the same information, and the author liked it so much that she put out a second edition in Japanese that incorporated the changes.