[Archived] Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas.

[Garoth Moulinoski]

A thorougly bad hack idea:

Spoiler

A F-Zero or (insert 1st Person tunnel shooting game here) hack where you're racing and shooting things in someone's bowels.  The intro could feature a ship entering a goatse.

[close]

Oh God, the horror. The horror! It burns my mind as if my eyes were seeing it!!

[beelzebub06660]

A thorougly bad hack idea:

Spoiler

A F-Zero or (insert 1st Person tunnel shooting game here) hack where you're racing and shooting things in someone's bowels.  The intro could feature a ship entering a goatse.

[close]

Your wish came true more than ten years ago in the form of Sewer Shark for the Sega CD. 

[creeperton]

.

[extra_anchovy]

MY IDEAS - (feel free to steal them)

modification for Shadowrun (SNES):

ability to use knives like some of the enemies, like the first opponent in the arena. still have the crosshair but when you press A on a target Jake will run right up to them and slash em. once he's right next to them each time you press A he will slash just like he shoots everytime you press A.

have it as a skill set (like melee weapons) so you can upgrade using karma and have a couple different knives for sale in the firearm store in the empty display cases. maybe first one = pocket knife, second one = stilleto switchblade, third one = balisong / butterfly knife

modification for The Firemen (SNES):

incorporate 2 player co-op mode so that the second player can control the dude with the axe. this would make the game much more fun

[KiddoCabbusses]

I could theoretically make a load of Satellaview-based proposals, but for now...

I'm thinking "Take the 'Jewel of Live' ROM and figure out how to convert it into a RPG Tsukuru SUPER DANTE save file. A fan translation would be nice, too."

[Vehek]

Hey, Kiddo.
Jewel of Live stores its game data at the same place the regular RPG Tsukuru Super Dante stores its sample RPG data. I found that I could replace the sample RPG with Jewel of Live. From there, the editing tools can be used to copy its data.

[Recca]

Adding a CPU 2-player auto play like the one in Final Fight 3 for the Snes would be interesting for Final Fight 1 and 2 as well as the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe series (Gens). I'm aware that there's been some kind of fan remake of Streets of Rage, but I meant to the actual games (without slowdowns).

[ChronoMoogle]

A Radical dreamers Text- and Eventeditor. The Chrono Compendium did some neat scripts for new storylines...

[zstandig]

The BSX game LoZ Ancient Stone tablets had some nice upgrades for A Link to the Past.

namely,

1: The ability to change direction while dashing with the Pegasus boots

2: A sideways magic meter similar to the one in OoT, MM, and WW

I thought it would be pretty cool to backport? those aspects of AST into ALttP

[Garoth Moulinoski]

The BSX game LoZ Ancient Stone tablets had some nice upgrades for A Link to the Past.

namely,

1: The ability to change direction while dashing with the Pegasus boots

2: A sideways magic meter similar to the one in OoT, MM, and WW

I thought it would be pretty cool to backport? those aspects of AST into ALttP

That may actually be feasible, I think. Would just require some ASM coding...

Edit: Quote failure. Can't believe it took this long for me to notice!

[KiddoCabbusses]

Being able to backport all the maps and events would be great, too. I know one person in a certain community who's said he'd pay money to whoever could get all of the Sekiban data in one fully playable game ROM, although I kinda question that he'd really do it. Still, It'd be neat to see.
(As it currently is, using the current ROMs with their patches would make for a filesize that is unrealistic for accomplishing this.)

[zstandig]

I just remembered that Punch Out NES was censored slightly.

In the Arcade version there is a fighter called "Vodka Drunkenski", while the home version has the same fighter renamed "Soda Popinski".

Not a big deal, I just hate censorship, it would just be a simple text modification.

[Jonesy47]

I plan on trying out all of these ideas at some point or another but here ya go.
If any of you are capable of accomplishing these goals right now, feel free to try!


Port ideas
Game to Port                                   Roms to Hack Port into
Metroid II(GB)                                  Metroid(NES)/Super Metroid(SNES)/Metroid Fusion(GBA)/Metroid Zero Mission(GBA)
Super Mario Land(GB)                        Super Mario Bros.(NES)/Super Mario Bros. 3(NES)
Super Mario Land 2(GB)                     Super Mario Bros. 3(NES)/Super Mario World(SNES)
Metal Gear 2(MSX2)                          Snake's Revenge(NES)/I cant think of a game to port it to,
                                                     but If someone has more knowledge than me,
                                                     this would preferably get ported to SNES or the Genesis in some way.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii(Wii)          New Super Mario Bros.(DS)/Super Mario World(SNES)
Final Fantasy VIII(PSX)                      Final Fantasy VI(SNES)/Chrono Trigger(SNES)
LOZ:Link's Awakening(GB)                 LOZ: A Link to the Past(SNES)
MegaMan 7(SNES)8(PSX)9,10(Wii)       Mega Man 4, 5, or 6(NES)

Hack Ideas
Games to Hack                                What to Change
Super Mario Bros 2 Japan(FDS)           Background, Mario, and enemy graphics be replaced with graphics from Super Mario USA
Earthbound(SNES)                             Add back Mother 2 title screen and all uncensored graphics.
Donkey Kong Country 1-3(SNES)         Change All graphics, background and sprites, into hand-drawn. I'd do this easily If i knew how
                                                     to write graphics compressor/recompressor programs.
Chrono Trigger(SNES)                       Hack one or all paths of Radical Dreamers Paths/Storylines into Chrono Trigger,
                                                     basing the environments and enemies on what info is given in Radical Dreamers.

[psychosis090]

Recently, I've had this idea for a translation hack of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance for the GBA.

Basically, it involves replacing all instances of 'Harmony of Dissonance' with 'Concerto of Midnight Sun' (or 'Concerto of the/a Midnight Sun', if you prefer). Minor mistranslations like 'Cipher's Charm' and 'Bullet Tip' would be changed to 'Sypha's Crystal' and 'Christopher's Soul', in order to tie them more closely to other games in the series (and to be slightly more correct, of course).

Likewise, area names would be replaced by their English equivalents present in the Japanese version. Eg. 'Shrine of the Apostates' would become 'Heretic's Grave', 'The Wailing Way' would become 'The Approach to Deplore', 'Luminous Cavern' would be called 'Moss-Grown Cave', etc. The font used for each of these short messages would ideally be the same one used in the Japanese version.

In the interest of thoroughness, a small handful of mistranslated monster names (from memory, probably less than 6) would most likely be changed to better reflect the intentions of the Japanese developers (or at least conform to established naming conventions in the franchise, if applicable). 'Simon Wraith' would mostly likely remained untouched, as that one's a minefield.

Everything else, including the game script and the majority of items and their descriptions are, at least to my understanding, correct (in essence, at the very least) and are in no need of modification.

You're probably asking why I'd suggest something so cosmetic. Well, like all other rom hacks, it would be purely optional and may serve as a refreshing change for people who've already played and finished the game a number of times. It's always nice to have an alternative, I always say. The real question is whether to edit the US or Japanese rom.

[MontyMole]

I've had this idea for a while, and it wouldn't take much doing.  Bubble Bobble for the NES had a few levels based on the enemies in game instead of the regular arcade levels (9 and 24 spring to mind though theres probably more) and all I really would like is to change those few levels so that they are accurate to the arcade game.  That and nothing else. 
Failing that, change them so they have the much better colours and saving instead of using passwords.

[KingMike]

I think the FDS version allowed you to save to disk. I suppose the only problem with that is that since (I'm guessing) such a small amount of data was needed (does it save just the level number?), how would you verify it was a valid save and not just uninitialized SRAM. (I'd guess that since save files on the FDS had a header, it was easier to verify as valid data.)

[Gil Galad]

Make sure that it's a mapper that has provisions for SRAM. Of course for a iNES ROM image, you must set battery backed in the header. As far as the hardware is concerned, it's pretty simple it's data loaded into cartridge WRAM area $6000 - $7FFF. Software, it's all programmer configured. When you have a save option, to reload the game from the previous point, a variable or set of variables would probably need to be set. Then again, it's all up to the programmer on how to implement it.

For FDS saving, it's about the same way except that you designate a particular file for saving and configure it much the same way. That particular file is loaded based on the boot ID of the file, preferably right when the disk is booted.

[KingMike]

I read that, for FDS, the save file (possibly) needs to be the last file on the disk side.
Some time ago, I read a post from a guy who had some experience playing around with unlicensed graphics hacking disks and said that when saving a hacked graphics file to an original disk, it would only save files up to the one hacked, and not files after, possibly (always?) corrupting an original disk. I don't recall if he said it was fault of the software, or limitations of the FDS hardware or the BIOS.

[MattTheSpratt]

I've had an idea concerning Jaleco's Super EDF.

I played the arcade version first and loved the music, but when shifting to Super Nintendo I feel they messed up on the instrumentation a fair bit, which is a shame because the game is otherwise gold.
That's why I had the idea to expand the ROM size and swap out the crap instrument samples for DPCM samples of the FM synth instruments used in the arcade edition. That, and re-introduce the arcade's Stage 3 music which is freaking beautiful.
Essentially, Super EDF Gold Label editon.

I just don't know where to start, old bean!

[treos]

don't know if its been asked about yet or not but i was looking at some castlevaina 64/legacy of darkness pics here http://www.castlevaniadungeon.net/Games/cv64weird.html  and was wondering, between the 2 games 3 of the 4 planned characters are playable (Schneider, Carrie, and Cornell).

i wonder if it might be possible to make the 4th, Corler (the frankenstein type monster with the chainsaw in the hedge maze whos also seemingly immortal) playable, i mean hes already in the game just not as a playable character. actually hes in both games in the same areas

i just figured that after playing through with all 3 characters it might be interesting to see what a shotgun/chainsaw wielding monster like Corler would be like to play as