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

[NesDraug]

It has been my dream for many years to do a hack of Super Mario Bros. 2 as The Beatles. Complete with Beatles tunes and yellow submarines and whatnot. I just don't have the time or skill.

[SCD]

That would be a neat idea, especially changing Wart into the Blue Meanie.

[ShadowOne333]

It has been my dream for many years to do a hack of Super Mario Bros. 2 as The Beatles. Complete with Beatles tunes and yellow submarines and whatnot. I just don't have the time or skill.

That sounds like a pretty neat project.
However, those Beatle sprites would have to be limited to only 3 colours each (4th is transparency), since the NES can't handle more than 3 colours per tile.
Take Mario as example, he only has beige, red and blue. Luigi, Toad and Peach follow the same pattern.

[NesDraug]

That sounds like a pretty neat project.
However, those Beatle sprites would have to be limited to only 3 colours each (4th is transparency), since the NES can't handle more than 3 colours per tile.
Take Mario as example, he only has beige, red and blue. Luigi, Toad and Peach follow the same pattern.

That is true. That picture was just meant as inspiration. Those colorful Sgt. Pepper costumes are great for this! A schwifty 8-bit graphic designer could do wonders with 'em.

[#]

It would have to look something like this:

[NesDraug]

It would have to look something like this:

OMG i LOVE it! Thank you! I guess Ringo (pink) should be the short one but other than that I couldn't have imagine it better!

And I can totally see Wart as the Big Blue Meanie as well.




Edit: Dude. This idea is out there! Someone had the exact same idea! I guess there's something very Beatlesque with this game
https://www.deviantart.com/neilhammond/art/Super-Beatles-Bros-2-574864822
https://www.deviantart.com/thechrisoffenric/art/Super-Mario-Beatles-202440457
January 11, 2019, 10:42:03 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

It would have to look something like this:

Ok. I did it. Your image got me so exited, I did a small hack. Just the character select screen. The time and effort it would take to change the music into beatles tunes I do not dare to think of.

[julayla]

I say yes to this. I wouldn't mind playing this kind of game.

[SC]

Somebody backport Sword of Mana from the GBA to SNES using SD3 as base!

Not gonna happen, though...

[stevengeilberg]

Hot damn, you registered just to tell me that. Thanks, I suppose I should've checked the Translations section instead of just the Hacks section. It's a little different to what I have planned though: I was more focused on modifying the US version to make it fair like the Japanese version, rather than just translating the Japanese version (though that has merit, too). I still think it'd be worthwhile.

haha yeah. Just wanted to let you know, I was sure it existed because I have it on a cartridge. And sorry for the late reply, too. 

[stevengeilberg]

ActRaiser (SNES) without the simulation mode, just the action scenes.

Rock and Roll Racing (SNES) with more/different classic rock/metal songs, like:

Led Zeppelin-Communication Breakdown
Metallica-The Four Horsemen
Booker T-Green Onions
Black Sabbath-Heaven and Hell
Dio-Holy Diver

...you get the idea. Or if it's too hard to make new tracks, take some rocking tunes from other SNES games like Doom, Battletoads/Double Dragon, Maximum Carnage, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hqZ6Gb-J-s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-o1_i6KKvs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gskDcG7WLNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCxSAihXVME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3K5kHqAkDI

Perhaps this for the final races: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4z82byt5mA

[TheArbiter]

I noticed there's one mod of Super Hang-On that changes some graphics: without knowing such things, it'd be so great if someone could make a hack of Rev 00 which removes the AI riders in Arcade Mode, you wouldn't believe how often those gits ruin speedruns and it'd be nifty to have a TT version!

[mamertos]

ActRaiser (SNES) without the simulation mode, just the action scenes.

Actually you can do that in the pal version since you can choose "adventure mode" or "action mode". Even you can set the difficulty level. Beside, an user made a pal to ntsc patch for this game.

[KingMike]

ActRaiser (SNES) without the simulation mode, just the action scenes.

Rock and Roll Racing (SNES) with more/different classic rock/metal songs, like:

Led Zeppelin-Communication Breakdown
Metallica-The Four Horsemen
Booker T-Green Onions
Black Sabbath-Heaven and Hell
Dio-Holy Diver

Already doable with the MSU-1 hack which allowed users to insert the original music (obtained by their own means for copyright reasons)?

[radorn]

I was casually listening to the music from the GameBoy Turok games and remembered an interview with the composer that I read somewhere a long time ago, where he mentioned how, for at least one of the games(I think  Turok 2), he did program in stereo effects into the music, but somehow the person in charge of putting the ROM together slipped and turned off the stereo flag on the player routine or something like that, and, now, they play in mono in the finished game. I can't find the interview again and I think the technical details were pretty vague and didn't go much further than this anyway.
I was wondering if this could be restored through hacking, and if anyone would be interested in trying their hand at it.
These games have great music and I certainly see how some parts were probably meant to have stereo panning but yet sound in mono. Just before writing this, I loaded the GBSs for the four games (1, 2, 3, Rage Wars) and only Rage Wars seems to show channel differences on a stereo VU meter consistently, although there seems to be some here and there in T3 too and perhaps some in T1, but I'm speaking from memory in T1's case. I think the whole story was specifically about T2, but I guess it could also apply to T1? no idea.

Anyway, that's the story. Lost stereo panning in one or more Turok games for the GB, which have some pretty sweet tracks, maybe still buried in the code waiting for a brave soul to dig them up... ¿Anyone up for it?

[Q]

ActRaiser (SNES) without the simulation mode, just the action scenes.

Look up the Nintendo Super System (NSS) version of ActRaiser. It's literally what you're describing, and it's an official version of the game! The Nintendo Super System was an arcade cabinet that used SNES hardware and ran modified versions of commercial SNES games. Most of the games are basically the same as commercial versions, but ActRaiser was reworked into a pure action game to be more arcade friendly. Because of how the cabinets were designed, you can actually boot the ROM up in an emulator or even on a regular SNES using a flash cart and play it without any issues (you don't have to worry about the game demanding quarters or anything like that). I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think it's based on the harder Japanese difficulty.

[KingMike]

The PAL version of ActRaiser has that mode as well (or a close variation of it).

Although like other Quintet games, the PAL version suffers from 50hz sound with 60hz gameplay.
So it will play slowly was correct music on PAL consoles, or full speed with sped up music on NTSC consoles.

[Psyklax]

the PAL version suffers from 50hz sound with 60hz gameplay.
So it will play slowly was correct music on PAL consoles, or full speed with sped up music on NTSC consoles.

I thought the PAL sound thing was because the SNES sound is a totally independent chip which doesn't care if it's 50 or 60hz, unlike the CPU. I actually have a PAL SNES which I added a 50/60 switch to, and you can flick between the two without any change in sound, even while the game is running. 60hz stretches the image and makes it run faster, but again, no change in sound.

This is NOT the case with the NES as the sound is CPU controlled (Mega Drive has the same issue). So, again, sound shouldn't be a problem.

[stevengeilberg]

Already doable with the MSU-1 hack which allowed users to insert the original music (obtained by their own means for copyright reasons)?

I see, thanks. 

Look up the Nintendo Super System (NSS) version of ActRaiser. It's literally what you're describing, and it's an official version of the game! The Nintendo Super System was an arcade cabinet that used SNES hardware and ran modified versions of commercial SNES games. Most of the games are basically the same as commercial versions, but ActRaiser was reworked into a pure action game to be more arcade friendly. Because of how the cabinets were designed, you can actually boot the ROM up in an emulator or even on a regular SNES using a flash cart and play it without any issues (you don't have to worry about the game demanding quarters or anything like that). I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think it's based on the harder Japanese difficulty.

Very interesting, never heard of that. I'll check it out, thanks! 

[Aceearly1993]

Castlevania Dracula X SNES walk speed restoration + balance fix : Restore Richter's regular walk speed to be similar to his Rondo/Dracula X Chronicles counterpart. Also rebalance the damage output of sub weapons/Item Crashes (especially the Key sub weapon and the Flame Whip Item Crash) to be similar to the latter.

[Q]

Just to clarify something that I didn't realize before: Apparently every version of ActRaiser has a pure-action mode, although they're all a bit different in terms of difficulty. In the Japanese and US versions of the game, you have to unlock this mode by beating the game. Quick breakdown of the differences:

Japanese version: This is the original version. I haven't beaten this version of the game yet, so I wasn't able to test it (does anyone have a PAR code?), but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be much harder than the US version. This version is available in English thanks to Aeon Genesis, so it's still accessible to non-Japanese speakers.

European version: This appears to be the best version of the game. The action mode doesn't need to be unlocked, and both the story and action modes now have three difficulty settings. The difficulty has been totally rebalanced, with certain things being done to make the game harder and other things being done to make it easier. This post on GameFAQs goes over some of the differences. I also noticed that enemies that took two hits to kill in the US version now only take one hit in Beginner and Normal difficulty, your lives are capped at five, and you can find scroll power-ups that allow you to cast magic spells. Overall, I'd say the European version feels like the most balanced, polished version of the game, which makes sense since it was the final home console version.

NSS/Arcade version: I'm not sure which version came first, but this appears to be very similar to playing the European version's Action Mode on Beginner or Normal difficulty (didn't test it extensively enough to be sure which). There are a few differences that I noticed: The Mode 7 stage intros (where the map rotates and zooms in) from the story mode have been retained, you have less time to complete stages, and you have infinite continues instead of none (I'm pretty sure if you were playing the game on an actual NSS cabinet, it would ask for more money when you got a game over—but when you play on a normal SNES, it just kicks you back to the beginning of the stage with a fresh set of lives). Also, it's an NTSC ROM, so if you're worried about timing issues with the European version, you might want to try this instead.

Edit: I'm going to throw together a quick de-censoring hack for the US and European versions of ActRaiser. The US and European versions have improved monster sprites, rebalanced difficulty, and other improvements, but some religious iconography was censored from the simulation part of the game (see here for more info). These graphics aren't compressed, so it should be an easy change.

I might also make some small changes to the script. It kind of bugs me how certain names are in ALL CAPS, plus I'd like to fix any typos I can find, if there are any.

Edit 2: If anyone who knows ASM wants to take a crack at ActRaiser, I have a neat gameplay tweak idea that might spice the game up. In the original Japanese version of the game, more powerful spells cost more MP, but it was changed in the US and European versions so that all spells only cost one MP. It would be pretty cool to add different MP costs to the different spells again (although not necessarily the exact same costs as the Japanese version) but also make it possible to use L and R to toggle through your different spells on the fly during the action sequences in Story Mode.

In the European version's Action Mode, you find magic scroll power-ups that allow you to cast spells. You can only use each one once and only in reverse of the order you collected them in (i.e., you must use the last one you collected first). It would be really helpful to be able to toggle between the different scrolls you collect so that you could be more strategic about saving certain spells for certain situations.