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

[KingMike]

It went the "correct" way in the prototype version, so it shouldn't be much of a change.
(they expected players to play with some cardboard 3D glasses included the box. I still need to at some play with those (had them sitting around since forever), but I'm guessing it's not going to improve the game much.
My guess is they changed the scrolling as a marketing gimmick.)

[Mario Bros.]

A plan of parralax must have a byte for speed of him scrolling ,perhaps just change this byte with a negative value (80 to 255)

[automat1cjack]

As the hack speedrunner who put Rolling Thunder on Speedrun.com I have always wanted to see Rolling Thunder 2 and 3 hacked so that the player movement is as equally speedy as the original (on NES), with no accel/decel cycles whatsoever. The slowed gameplay style of the sequels really takes a lot of the fun out of the game in my opinion, and playing them is like reading a kid a bedtime story as opposed to reading a thrilling novel.

[Josephine Lithius]

a good modif would be of change the f...ckin move of a parallax in Jim power of SNES

It went the "correct" way in the prototype version ["Buck Rogers: The Arcade Game" ~ J], so it shouldn't be much of a change.
(they expected players to play with some cardboard 3D glasses included the box. I still need to at some play with those (had them sitting around since forever), but I'm guessing it's not going to improve the game much.
My guess is they changed the scrolling as a marketing gimmick.)

I haven't had much luck with narrowing down the scrolling code, myself.  The best I've been able to do is make a code that makes the background completely still, but even that is really janky and doesn't work right.

That being said, I heartily encourage someone to look into this!  It should be as easy as comparing ROM data... but, as I said, I haven't had much luck.

Also restore some of the parallax effects, such as stage 2-1 in [Ninja Gaiden] III. And then general bug and performance fixes, decensorship, etc.

And this one is personal preference, maybe replace the password screen SNES controller with the Super Famicom one from the Japanese version.

I wouldn't mind seeing that happen, myself, but I'd happily settle for just getting the lightning working in Ninja Gaiden II's Act 3-1, heh heh.

[Q]

a good modif would be of change the f...ckin move of a parallax in Jim power of SNES

Just play the Buck Rogers: The Arcade Game ROM. It's the beta version of Jim Power. As far as I can tell, it's exactly the same except the title screen is different and the parallax scrolling works correctly.

[Josephine Lithius]

Not quite.

The Buck Rogers prototype seems to be missing some sound effects, almost all the music – aside from this song, which plays on every level – and might even be missing a level or two.  I'm sure there's far more differences, but I'm not really sure what those might be, since I haven't played through any version of Jim Power.

12/22 Edit: Decided to play the thing, for myself.  Yup.  Lotta missing sound effects and all of the music, aside from that one, is gone.  All the levels seem to be there, though... but, the last level seemed like it was missing a platform, so I ended up sacrificing a life to progress.  So, other than that... I suppose that's a way to go.

[Nemesis]

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm a big fan of romhacking.
You store in this site really precious jewels.

Then, I'd like to suggest a simple but significant hack for this title - Biker Mice from Mars - wich I consider to be the best racing game on the Super Nintendo. It has the best elements of both Rock'n'Roll Racing and Mario Kart, so I found it to be the number 1 in matter of racing games.



The suggestion is that you alter the "Main Race" mode, so when you destroy an opponent in a race, he stays destroyed until the end of this race (the same should happen for the players, if they were destroyed).

If we select "Battle Race" this already occurs (if you destroy your opponents, they would stay out until the end of that race). The problem is that, in Battle Race, if you're destroyed in one single race, it's game over. And if you select "continue", you lose all the upgrades you bought for your vehicle.

So, this hack of mixing these element of "Battle Race" with "Main Race" would be highly appreciated. Unfortunately I couldn't make this hack, because I'm not a programmer. I wouldn't either know where to start...

[CM30]

Well, having played Super Smash Bros Ultimate recently, part of me thinks it'd be neat to see a Mario game which uses similar overworld puzzle mechanics there too. I mean, imagine if you could hit switches to open paths on the Super Mario World map, or ride Lapras like the boat in SMB 3 or destroy spirits with cannons or what not.

That sort of thing would be great to see in a hack of Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World.

So yeah, I'd love to see someone add puzzle like mechanics to the overworld for these games, and make a game where the overworld is more than a pretty menu overall.

[NesDraug]

Hack A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES). Do something. Anything. It's a descent 4 player platform NES game and someone could tweak it into something amazing! Perhaps make it into a TMNT game? Or anything else with 4 characters. Seinfeld?! The Beatles? Fantastic 4? GHOSTBUSTERS?

[#]

Hack A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES). Do something. Anything. It's a descent 4 player platform NES game and someone could tweak it into something amazing! Perhaps make it into a TMNT game? Or anything else with 4 characters. Seinfeld?! The Beatles? Fantastic 4? GHOSTBUSTERS?

Or tweak it into the Castlevania game it always wanted to be.

edited to prevent double post:

The suggestion is that you alter the "Main Race" mode, so when you destroy an opponent in a race, he stays destroyed until the end of this race (the same should happen for the players, if they were destroyed).

If we select "Battle Race" this already occurs (if you destroy your opponents, they would stay out until the end of that race). The problem is that, in Battle Race, if you're destroyed in one single race, it's game over. And if you select "continue", you lose all the upgrades you bought for your vehicle.

So, this hack of mixing these element of "Battle Race" with "Main Race" would be highly appreciated. Unfortunately I couldn't make this hack, because I'm not a programmer. I wouldn't either know where to start...

If you alter the Main Race mode like you suggest, it would simply be an alternative Battle Race. Wouldn't it be better to just fix Battle Race by either adding multiple lives or to simply no longer lose the upgrades if you choose to continue?

[Nemesis]

If you alter the Main Race mode like you suggest, it would simply be an alternative Battle Race. Wouldn't it be better to just fix Battle Race by either adding multiple lives or to simply no longer lose the upgrades if you choose to continue?

That would work fine too. But I guess my suggestion could be easier to mod, since you wouldn't have to change the rules of the tournament and etc.
Also, I think that just in the Hard Mode of "Main Race" you'll be able to race in all the stages of this game.

You would just have to see what vallues are different in the races of "Main Race" and of "Battle Race" and copy and paste, I guess.

[svenge]

DELETED

[Psyklax]

Gonna turn the thread on its head because I actually do have "the skill" but I'm just thinking out loud about a possible hack, and figured this is the ideal place to do so.

I just watched Game Sack's playthrough of Mad City, i.e. the Japanese version of The Adventures of Bayou Billy. TCRF makes it clear that there are many differences between the versions, and the US version has many detractors because it's insanely hard. So I figured it's about time I made a patch combining the two together to make a new option. It'd be the Japanese version with the US graphics and text. Or the US version with the difficulty toned down. Bayou Billy in Mad City, if you like.

I'm just thinking what the easiest approach is. Replacing graphics is usually much easier than replacing programming, which means hacking the Japanese version sounds best. But then, the US title screen is quite different, and there's speech samples and so on. Oh, but then the Japanese version has different endings... you see what I mean. It's hard to decide which version to use as a base.

I might have a go at this, or I might not. But I think the US version is clearly the later, superior version, like they cleaned up the graphics, maybe fixed a few bugs and whatnot. But it's so unnecessarily hard. Any thoughts, suggestions etc, always welcome.

[POWCo-op]

The Japanese versions are superior because they're the first. Localizations make one mistake or another, like changing the difficulty or censoring the game.

[KingMike]

Dragon Warrior for NES is one example that significantly improved over the original.
I'm sure there's other examples where "first" does not mean "best".

[POWCo-op]

And Lufia ROTS had a garbled/blacked out screen in the U.S. localization late in the game, which was fixed with the European localization that restored it to the Japanese original. Some games are developed in the U.S. or Europe, but then they're actually original in those cases.

[Psyklax]

I'm sure there's other examples where "first" does not mean "best".

In gaming I'd say it's usually the case that newer versions and remakes improve over the original versions. I mean, that's the point, right? You fix bugs, you add features you hadn't considered, you adjust things after getting real-world feedback. Bayou Billy seems like an example where they did a great job localising it - but didn't want people finishing it in 30 minutes, so they made it crazy hard (c.f. Double Dragon 3). Game Sack suggested it was because of game rentals in the US, which is possible.

Anyway, a little trace logging has revealed one key difference already: in the US version, when you lose health from an enemy attack, there are two extra instructions: one adds $20 to the amount you lose, and the other adds, er, nothing. Not sure why they needed two ADCs in a row when the latter adds zero, but there you have it. A simple way to increase difficulty: add $20 to any health decrease, while keeping your health the same. I'm sure I'll find more complicated changes.

Oh, by the way, anyone who's played through Zelda 2 on both NES and FDS will see that the US version is the better one: they clearly realised their errors and fixed them there.

[POWCo-op]

In gaming I'd say it's usually the case that newer versions and remakes improve over the original versions. I mean, that's the point, right? You fix bugs, you add features you hadn't considered, you adjust things after getting real-world feedback.

No. Not very logical.

[stevengeilberg]

Gonna turn the thread on its head because I actually do have "the skill" but I'm just thinking out loud about a possible hack, and figured this is the ideal place to do so.

I just watched Game Sack's playthrough of Mad City, i.e. the Japanese version of The Adventures of Bayou Billy. TCRF makes it clear that there are many differences between the versions, and the US version has many detractors because it's insanely hard. So I figured it's about time I made a patch combining the two together to make a new option. It'd be the Japanese version with the US graphics and text. Or the US version with the difficulty toned down. Bayou Billy in Mad City, if you like.

I'm just thinking what the easiest approach is. Replacing graphics is usually much easier than replacing programming, which means hacking the Japanese version sounds best. But then, the US title screen is quite different, and there's speech samples and so on. Oh, but then the Japanese version has different endings... you see what I mean. It's hard to decide which version to use as a base.

I might have a go at this, or I might not. But I think the US version is clearly the later, superior version, like they cleaned up the graphics, maybe fixed a few bugs and whatnot. But it's so unnecessarily hard. Any thoughts, suggestions etc, always welcome.

That already exists. https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1554/

[#]

In gaming I'd say it's usually the case that newer versions and remakes improve over the original versions. I mean, that's the point, right? You fix bugs, you add features you hadn't considered, you adjust things after getting real-world feedback.

Assuming we all live in the magical world where all ports, localizations and other newer versions are handled by the original developer on a generous budget and schedule, then that is usually the case.