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

[RealGaea]

a Street Fighter Alpha port of the best fighting game of GameBoyColor in the Nes


it is possible with mapper UNROM / MMC1 to port / adapt it to Nes

Make more easy to choose Akuma/Bison/Dan. The original method is a pain on the ass.
On "?"
Start+A: Dan.
Down+A: Bison.
Left+A: Akuma.

There's a Famicom pirate of SFA, remove the repeated chars. And reassign the BGMs to match their stages.

[Maximus]

Hello.

Would it be possible to insert the scrolling parallax into the battle screens from the Phantasy Star III japanese version or would it be easier to translate the original rom?

[magictrufflez]

Not sure if this is been done, but I'm surprised it hasn't occurred to me before (or maybe it has)--but dear god someone hacking FFX to rebalance the final confrontations a bit so they actually feel like final bosses, especially

Spoiler

Braska's Final Aeon and Yu Yevon

[close]

. Taking off the auto-life from the final sequence of fights I think could make things quite a bit less simple, especially if you've built up Yuna, but I think the other two should be quite a bit meatier and hit harder.

Or, if you really like the current balance, adding a trigger like in FF7 may be helpful. There, if you had Knights of the Round, the final boss had a bunch of HP tacked onto his total--something similar for FFX, but maybe including attack/magic/defense/speed as well as HP. If you hacked the remaster, I think killing just 1 of the Dark Aeons would be a good trigger, but in the original, maybe 1 fully unlocked endgame weapon should be the trigger (or maybe this would be better for both--Auron's probably going to do 50k plus per hit with his weapon, and IIRC his is pretty easy to unlock).

This way, folks who rush through (or LLG it) could still manage as ling as they don't trip the trigger, but those of us who do a bit more exploration would still get a fitting endgame fight.

[Tsukiyomaru0]

So, Randomizer idea: Wario Land 3
How would it work?
1. All stages would be unlocked by default.
2. Chests content would be randomized
3. Enemies would be PARTIALLY randomized (Would require some tinkering to find out what enemies are essential for the progress and what ones are not)
4. Golf minigames are free rather than costing 10 coins or something (and some courses could be redesigned to be a BIT easier.
5. (Optional) mix up bosses. The door leading to them and the door leading outside their rooms should lead to where they would normally in the stage, rather than connecting to the rooms they were originally intended to link to.

[PresidentLeever]

Earthbound/Mother 2 (SNES)
Would love to see a hack that fixes the issues AVGN mentions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ5nX0FTH6Q

[Tsukiyomaru0]

Earthbound/Mother 2 (SNES)
Would love to see a hack that fixes the issues AVGN mentions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ5nX0FTH6Q

I think the same could be done to Dragon Quest 2 (all versions of it).
Namely:
* The way you save the game (Instead could have the king ask "How may I aid the young heroes?" and offer the options: Info and Save. Or perhaps even allow us to save anywhere, instead of only "suspend")
* Increase everyone but hero's level cap (so they can match in power with the hero to a degree)
* Diminish EXP requirement
* Have here start with Antidote and Heal spells, as well as learn Vivify sooner)
* Make it so Zoom allows you to choose where you want to go
* Once you access the final teleporter, allow the player to skip to the final teleporter rather than go through that hellish cave AGAIN.
* Have it so the Prince of Cannock doesn't fall sick OR make the NPCs more useful in telling where EXACTLY the World Tree is.

[PresidentLeever]

I agree with the Zoom/Return suggestion, the final teleporter one, that party members could start a bit stronger and I guess point 3 if by that you mean less grinding.

Based on the SNES version I would like to see these things in a Dragon Quest 2 hack:
-Stackable herbs
-Run move (in towns at least)
-Less dead space and dead ends in dungeons
-Interface improvements (for example it's tedious how the menu closes down after each use of a healing spell, can't use l/r to cycle between members in the menu, etc.)
-Ability to choose which enemy in a group of enemies of the same type to target
-Remove this: Being told to go to the lorasia shrine just to be told there to go to the northwestern lake cave for the silver key instead
-Make NPCs move out of the way faster in narrow spaces
-Allow resting on the overworld
-Add a quest log or journal feature
-Add and update the cool title screen graphics from the english NES version
-Add some way to detect pitfalls and poison traps in chests
-Make it easier/faster to find Rolando in the first place

-Fix these plot/dialogue oddities:
-"open the treasure chest!" said by two Beranoor NPCs in the epilogue - but where is it?
-The king of Lorasia doesn't react to you having found prince Rolando
-The lonely guy outside Pelpoi doesn't react to you opening the door into town
-Some jailed NPCs don't react to you opening the jail door, can't tell Luke where he's from?
-For some reason the Evil Statue is referred to as the Eye of Malroth by the two NPCs that mention it in the game)
-The party/relevant NPC often doesn't say that you've already found items that NPCs give clues about - several about the sunken treasure for example

-Improve clues for these quests (and related to quests, make fortune tellers' clues more useful (they only tells you which cardinal direction to go):
-Water crest clue and location (no clue to finding the monster in Berandor who gives you the hint (go south into the wall after using the teleporter) and then no visual clue in Moonpeta (it's in the NE corner of the jail cell with monsters in it)

-Getting to the swamp below the path to Rhone - you need to find the hidden path to the outside area of the Rondarkia monolith with the friendly monster (which you've teleported to from Berandor without realizing it) without clues and then exit that area through the poisonous swamp ground tiles surrounding it and making it seem like you can't walk through it (the worst thing is that in the NES version you would exit the shrine/monolith just by going up the stairs; either the elder inside the monolith could've told you about its hidden exit besides just saying "the path to Rhone is to the west of this monolith" or the evil statue/eye of malroth could've shown the hidden path to its outside)

-Finding the dew's yarn in the northern dragon's horn tower (no visual clue and no window on the third floor)

-Finding Rogue Fastfinger can be very tricky if you had encountered some of the empty and locked rooms before (meaning you wouldn't be as thorough in searching his cell) - you also don't get any clues from searching every tile of the cell nor any good visual clues about the hidden path in the wall

[eternalsage]

I would like a hack for the NES Dragon Warrior games to simply change the title screens from the terrible US versions to the simple and clean Japanese versions. Since most of the games already have hacks to modernize the spell names, it would be nice to officially modernize the game names, imho. I don't know how hard this would be, but it would be pretty cool to me.

[Tsukiyomaru0]

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen could get a few improvements:
* Lower the Casino Token price from 200 to 100.
* Lower hero EXP requirement between Levels 2 and 5.
* Improve the chances of winning in the Casino.
* Increase the Monster Arena turns limits or remove it altogether.
* Have everyone start with at least a weapon, even if it is ye ole Cypress Stick.

[Gary_Oak]

It always irked me that, for an 80s anime series with so much gaming potential, Dirty Pair only got a single game adaption an it sucked.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/dirty-pair-project-eden/

Ideally, fixing some of that games most egregious issues could make for a more enjoyable experience, though I imagine it would take a lot of effort to hack it:

* Enemies wouldn't re-spawn unless the player transitioned screens.
* Include an in-game map for the maze navigation levels.
* Create cut-scenes that expand upon the game's plot (which it's based off the movie with the same name).
* Make sure that the player can only die after taking a certain amount of hits as opposed to one (maybe six?).
* Ending gets decided not by player shooting accuracy, but by the total number of lives spent (clearing the game with no lives lost shows the best ending).
* In-game graphics could be improved (rocks, enemies, etc.).

In the Dirty Pair inspired game, Layla, all art and player sprites could be modified so that they would resemble Kei and Yuri.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/layla/

Another idea would be to hack the NES Mega Man games to look like Dirty Pair games:

* Artistically, one could take advantage of the Mega Man's graphic style for them to look like a super deformed take on the series. Could be named Dirty Pair SD or SD Dirty Pair
* Mega Man's sprites could be modified to resemble Kei and Yuri. The player could change characters by pressing Select in the boss selection screen.
* Dr. Light's sprites could be the 3WA scientist from the OVA series (forgot his name) the helps the Lovely Angels with his inventions.
* Roll could be chief Golley, Rush could be Mugi and Beat could be Namo.
* Dr. Wily could be an original villain or a return of Dr. Wattsman from Project Eden.
* Bosses could be modified to look more like human/cyborg criminals rather than actual robots.
* Soundtracks, specially the title and credits music, could become 8-bit renditions of the 80s anime series soundtrack.

[Bonkers!]

A hack that turned Super Game Boy games with special colour palettes into GBC games, maybe? I read somewhere that somebody kinda already tried doing this by hacking the GBC bios, but I think that'd mean we'd be reliant on emulators on flashcarts if we wanted to play anything on real hardware.

[Tsukiyomaru0]

On the subject of games based on anime, it would be fun if someone did Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken ("The Great Adventure of Dai" or "Dai's Great Adventure") into an actual thing, whether as a DQ series romhack or even OG game. The whole manga has been translated by fans (a woopin' 349 chapters), so all the story and even some stats are there to be of use.

[KingMike]

I read somewhere that somebody kinda already tried doing this by hacking the GBC bios,

I don't think that's even possible. As I understand what kept the GB/GBC BIOSes from even being dumped except by the most crafty people was that once the cart ROM starts the BIOS completely deactivates itself.
But all the BIOS can really do before it hides itself and runs the game is to initialize the palette? The BIOS could be hacked to tell the game its a SGB but I think would think it would probably just crash when a game tries to execute SGB features without the actual SNES/SGB hardware present.

Localized Pokemon Yellow has SGB palettes when run on GBC but I only imagine because the game was significantly reprogrammed in the localization process.

[Maximus]

Hello.

Would it be possible to insert the scrolling parallax into the battle screens from the Phantasy Star III japanese version or would it be easier to translate the original rom?

Oh my God!!! Prayers were heard ...

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3984/

[acediez]

Mega Man X6, rebalancing the rescuing reploids/equipped parts system, and others:
- Rescued reploids don't give you extra lives. They probably intended this to balance the difficulty, but it makes you max out on 9 lives too easily at the start of the game and then, as they become more scarse, you end up with no benefits.
- Instead of the former, raise the number of lives you always start a continue with from 2 to 4.
- Dead reploids don't stay dead forever (can be found when reentering stage). So no parts are permanently missable.
- Start the game with Rank A, 500 souls collected. It's when you can start equipping 1 part. Basically: be able to equip a part as soon as you find one. Helps balancing the difficulty, and reduces the need of grinding.

[shadowAOD]

I'd like to see a rom hack of the first 3 resident evil games on ps1 with manual reload and skippable door loading scenes

[Chronosplit]

Oh my God!!! Prayers were heard ...

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3984/

It looks like from advanced conflict finder that this is compatible with PSIII Bugfix too!  Only a one byte conflict exists early in the ROM, which is probably a checksum thing. 

EDIT: Hmm, I guess not.  I get a red screen.

[Psyklax]

I get a red screen.

Did you try this?
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/342/

[speedy12]

a kingdom hearts snes rom use FF6 AS as start

[Chronosplit]

Did you try this?
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/342/

Oh, thanks for this tip!  I didn't realize this was a bigger issue in the Genesis.  I'm usually doing this kind of patch juggling more on other systems. XD

I didn't use the utility, but I used a similar function in Unipatcher and it's good to go.