[chickenhen34]

As you may know, the platformers during the 16-bit era are "insanely hard" compared to even the "hard" difficulty on today's games. Not talking about SMW/DKC/whatever.
I'm talking about Super Star Wars, EWJ, Toy Story, Mickey Mania, Lion King, all that stuff.
So, as it's impossible to get modern gamers to not get so stressed out with these games (I cannot complete Super Star Wars even on the "Easy" setting), someone
should make difficulty hacks to add an extra "Beginner" difficulty so they CAN enjoy those games and say they're the average level of difficulty, giving more positive reviews.

Here's examples of what could be done:
*Removing enemies.
*Only have 50% damage, have enemies be killed in less hits, and more lives.
*Infinite continues.
*Adding safety platforms.
*Making items more common in levels.
*Adding hints (?)
*Disabling autoscrolling.
*With Contra III: The Alien Wars, I think it would be great to remove some sub-bosses, add a meter system for damage (big change), and add extra lives as an item (show player's head) that is fairly common.
*With Toy Story and Mickey Mania, add more hit points. I know MM uses a five-finger hand, but come on, there should be more hit points.
Is anyone interested in that kind of project of Romhacking? Thank you.

[Drakon]

I was just thinking of something like this these last couple of days.  I was playing journey to silius yesterday, what a great game, but man does that game ever need an "easy" mode.  If I ever look into a romhack like that journey to silius is the perfect game for this sort of work.  Nes / famicom platformers suffer heavily from over-difficulty.  I much prefer the japanese version of tmnt 3: the manhatten project since they added an options menu with all sorts of ways to make the game more fair.

[KingMike]

I thought the NES version of TMNT3 had an option menu, but you needed to enter a code to access it. Unsure of the FC version.

Toy Story had a password feature included in (added to?) the Japanese version that wasn't in the US version. Unsure about PAL.

[Q]

I definitely agree that a lot of old action and platformer games could use this kind of treatment. There are so many old games that I enjoyed but was never able to finish because they were both hard and typically had no way to save your progress.

I think there are a ton of JRPGS that could use easy difficulty hacks too. There are a lot of otherwise entertaining RPGs on the NES and SNES that are ruined by excessively frequent random battles and excessive amounts of grinding. You could make quite a few of these games more enjoyable by lowering the random battle rate and significantly increasing the amount of experience and money given in battles.

[Jeville]

And what about some retro games that are great to play, but is faulted for its easy difficulty even by a modern gamer?

[Lilinda]

Toy Story really isn't THAT hard, aside from those fucking top down RC car levels(The one level that has you ON the RC Car isn't so bad).

Implement a hack that literally cuts them out of the game and it'll be much better.

[chickenhen34]

[

And what about some retro games that are great to play, but is faulted for its easy difficulty even by a modern gamer?

Like, what?
April 27, 2013, 01:01:55 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

Toy Story really isn't THAT hard, aside from those f@&%ing top down RC car levels(The one level that has you ON the RC Car isn't so bad).

Implement a hack that literally cuts them out of the game and it'll be much better.

The one on the RC car - are you talking about Day Toy Na?

[Bregalad]

Actually I think that DKC is insanely hard. Right at the start it is easy but as soon as you reach the snowy mountains it gets hard, and when you reach the industrial area it gets insanely tough.

[Jeville]

If you think DKC is hard, see DKC Returns.

Like, what?

Yeah, never mind. It's not much, I was thinking Toadstool's healing in SMRPG is overpowered and that's an easy fix with the available utility tool. We can just not use her or the ability, but we shouldn't have to.

[KingMike]

It's been said Nintendo made Rare turn down the difficulty on DKC before release. Believable, Rare has proven they can be real sadistic in level design.

[caninis]

It seems it would be convoluted & involved to have a bunch of patches just to alter a few variables in roms; to make it easier/harder

I think the best solution would be to create small trainers/intros that could be tacked onto the front of a rom, to give the user options at the beginning of a game

Emulators that can instantly patch .ips files could make this easier (associate a folder that can be turned on/off)

A whole project could be established, kind of like the No-intro project; but in reverse

[MathOnNapkins]

It seems it would be convoluted & involved to have a bunch of patches just to alter a few variables in roms; to make it easier/harder

I think the best solution would be to create small trainers/intros that could be tacked onto the front of a rom, to give the user options at the beginning of a game

Emulators that can instantly patch .ips files could make this easier (associate a folder that can be turned on/off)

A whole project could be established, kind of like the No-intro project; but in reverse

While it might be more difficult to do, I would personally prefer to have those kinds options embedded into the game. I find the trainer intro types of screens rather off putting in that they don't look like a natural part of the game.

[Klarth]

There are so many old games that I enjoyed but was never able to finish because they were both hard and typically had no way to save your progress.

Game genie solved the first problem. The second only in modern times with emulator savestates.

[Drakon]

I thought the NES version of TMNT3 had an option menu, but you needed to enter a code to access it. Unsure of the FC version.

Toy Story had a password feature included in (added to?) the Japanese version that wasn't in the US version. Unsure about PAL.

Famicom tmnt 3 no code is needed the options menu is right there.