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

[E.Signal]

Get rid of the 7 special ring requirement to access special stages in Sonic Advance 2 for the GBA. Instead, make it so the special stages are accessible after you beat a level with at least 50 rings collected like Sonic 1 does on the Genesis.

[Brutapode89]

A color restoration for European versions of Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls, Final Fantasy IV Advance and Final Fantasy V Advance like in the SNES version and WonderSwan versions.

[elranzer]

Final Fantasy Adventure (GameBoy), aka Seiken Densetsu (JP) and Mystic Quest (EU)

I'd like to see a colorization akin to Metroid II: The EJRTQ Colorization (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4388/)

Sure, you can say that FFA has been remade to death (Sword of Mana, Adventures of Mana), but then, so has Metroid II. It's a top 5 game on the original GameBoy along with Metroid II, and like Metroid II, it's a shame it never got a DX official colorization.

I'd do it myself if I knew how to program GameBoy colorizations.

@Quantam

[Vanya]

ideas for projects for the big fans of Zelda in 8-bits

there are 2 games that are practically a new Zelda II and Zelda III with a graphic hack that changes the sprites to Zelda and the texts of the story.

Zelda fans on NES will have a new and better Zelda II / Zelda III with these graphic patches for these 2 RPG games

- Battle Of Olympus ( Zelda II graphic hack )
- Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II ( Zelda III graphic hack )

I seem to recall that there was such a project for Zelda II, but it was based on the GB version of Battle of Olympus.

I wouldn't mind seeing something done with the NES version and Zoda's Revenge.

[Blitzgreek]

How about a N64- WWF No Mercy hack?
I am talking about an Everdrive hack.

There are so many hacks out there, that use HD graphics, so not a single one of them can be used on a N64 hardware.
I would like to have one for the Everdrive.

It hasnt to be a complicated one, it can be kept simple, like an update:

The most important (2 things):
-Whole roster awailable at start, Big Show (accecable only through action replay) included.
-Able to change moves and abilities on ALL wrestlers.

Not necessary, but it could be an improvement:
-Update music and titantrons (mp3 quality), maybe add some aditional songs.
-Maybe take advantage of the additional 4MB Ram as well?



Its almost a shame, that we have TONS of super mario bros/world/kart hacks, and not a single hack for the much beloved WWF no Mercy-for many the best Wrestling game ever made.

[Xander max]

I seem to recall that there was such a project for Zelda II, but it was based on the GB version of Battle of Olympus.

I wouldn't mind seeing something done with the NES version and Zoda's Revenge.

One of the biggest drawbacks is that the NES game has graphics compression.

[SCD]

How about a N64- WWF No Mercy hack?
I am talking about an Everdrive hack.

There are so many hacks out there, that use HD graphics, so not a single one of them can be used on a N64 hardware.
I would like to have one for the Everdrive.

It hasn't to be a complicated one, it can be kept simple, like an update:

The most important (2 things):
-Whole roster available at start, Big Show (accessible only through action replay) included.
-Able to change moves and abilities on ALL wrestlers.

Not necessary, but it could be an improvement:
-Update music and titantrons (mp3 quality), maybe add some additional songs.
-Maybe take advantage of the additional 4MB Ram as well?

Its almost a shame, that we have TONS of Super Mario Bros/World/Kart hacks, and not a single hack for the much beloved WWF No Mercy - for many the best wrestling game ever made.

Those are neat ideas for that game.

One hack idea I would like to see for No Mercy is one that will add Dude Love, Gangrel, Mideon, The Headdbangers and The Mean Street Posse to the main roster as default wrestlers.

They were suppose to be on the main roster, you unlock them by connecting the GBC port with the Transfer Pak, but the game got cancelled.

I don't know why THQ cancelled it, I thought Natsume did a good job on the GBC port of WM2000, especially the music.

I wonder if the data for the unused wrestlers are still in the ROM like the unused Championship Mode was still in it.

That is my problem with all these VPW2 & No Mercy hacks I've been seeing, you can only play them on the Project 64 emulator, which is a nightmare to use in my opinion.

[KingMike]

One of the biggest drawbacks is that the NES game has graphics compression.

I thought there was already something to deal with Zoda's Revenge compression.
Either way the NES is a pretty well understood console these days, so compression should rarely be an issue anymore for it. I suppose the worst I've heard of is Kirby's Adventure which has built-in support for multiple formats.

[Jack_Vincent13]

I just been brewing on this today, but here https://tcrf.net/Wario_Land_II#Fish_Enemy shows, and I've tested and confirmed, this fish does in fact only exist in the original Warioland 2 monochrome release, even going as far as testing in BGB with the original and the color version, in Monochrome mode, separately. The unique "Small Kamukamu" enemy is not in the rerelease, IN GAME, but it is in the graphics bank; Both a monochrome and color version of it. So I'm curious has anyone ever tried restoring its' function back into the color version?

[Xander max]

I thought there was already something to deal with Zoda's Revenge compression.
Either way the NES is a pretty well understood console these days, so compression should rarely be an issue anymore for it. I suppose the worst I've heard of is Kirby's Adventure which has built-in support for multiple formats.

I didn't express myself well, I was referring to the Battle of Olympus, I already tried to hack once and stopped due to compression. By the way, there could be an exclusive topic of decompression, there are a lot of games that haven't had any hacks because of that.

[Ligeia]

Final Fantasy Adventure (GameBoy), aka Seiken Densetsu (JP) and Mystic Quest (EU)

I'd like to see a colorization akin to Metroid II: The EJRTQ Colorization (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4388/)

Sure, you can say that FFA has been remade to death (Sword of Mana, Adventures of Mana), but then, so has Metroid II. It's a top 5 game on the original GameBoy along with Metroid II, and like Metroid II, it's a shame it never got a DX official colorization.

I'd do it myself if I knew how to program GameBoy colorizations.

@Quantam

I second that and I think I already made that request here a few years ago. I hope someone will do that one day. FFA is one of the best GB titles and its remakes are inferior. I would also do that myself if I could but I never found a noob-friendly GB colorizer.

[FAST6191]

I second that and I think I already made that request here a few years ago. I hope someone will do that one day. FFA is one of the best GB titles and its remakes are inferior. I would also do that myself if I could but I never found a noob-friendly GB colorizer.

There are four approaches to GB colorisation.

1) Emulator level.
Here the emulator will substitute shades of grey for whatever your colour of choice is. This naturally becomes emulator limited and is less than ideal in current space year when everybody is not necessarily on Windows PC for such things any more. This will be the easiest of anything you and closest to any kind of "noob friendly" you will get for random games. That said I am not even sure what vaguely current Windows emulators are available for this sort of thing as it was often a fork or lesser used one that had such functionality.
2) GBC backwards compatibility level.
Here you alter the game's tiles like any other graphics edit and rely on the inbuilt colours of the GBC and its descendants -- the GBC basically does a hardware version of 1) but as it is hardware, and some devs even played to it*, and works on basically all emulators that can play to the inbuilt palettes of the GBC. As hard as graphics hacking is for a given game (which means other than pokemon you are probably in normal graphics hacking realms).
2a) Some people have used other things related to this and the more extended palettes that the GBC can kind of do under some circumstances, sometimes even winding back into 1) for easier substitutions or more variety at some level.
3) GBC conversion.
Make the game be detected as a GBC game and alter the game to take advantage of the perks of the GBC (colours, faster CPU, some more of other things). You are not going to get far without knowing assembly on this one which is pretty far from "noob friendly".
4) SuperGameBoy. Much the same as above but you aim for https://blog.loveconquersallgames.com/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction
Naturally this requires a supergameboy (a rare and hard to come by piece of hardware that is not generally portable), an emulator that handles it (rare outside the PC) and is probably less capable than the GBC for the same amount of effort -- other than single device two player (and I do like SGB bombermans, right up there on the list they are) it is weaker in basically every way.


*4 kinds of GB/GBC ROM.
1) GB and made long before the GBC was even a specification. 1a) might be aimed for the GB and had no official GBC extras but knew about the inbuilt palettes to adapt accordingly.
2) GB backwards compatible but had GBC extras.
3) GBC only, would not work on GB (and there was an interesting hacking attempt a while back around here to try to bypass the checks and see what goes... cartridge tilters have nothing on this) and took advantage of the extra grunt the GBC has.
4) Supergameboy compatible.

[nesrocks]

Make a hack to play SNES F-Zero from a top down view (like in the ending sequence).

[teo :)]

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si esto es para sugerir ideas, sugeriero acme animation factory 2 players se puede almenos hagan que las manos al agarrar un objeto las 2 esten forzadas a usar el mismo objeto, (si la mano del jugador 1 agarra un objeto el objeto tendra p1 a la izquierda si el jugador 2 tambien seleciona un objeto tendra "p2" a la derecha, 2 textos que serviran para que vea cada uno que tiene selecionado cada uno,  en el hack pondran creditos porfavor que yo ayudd en decir como hacerlo porfavor
If this is to suggest ideas, I suggest acme animation factory 2 players you can at least make the hands when grabbing an object the 2 are forced to use the same object, (if the hand of player 1 grabs an object the object will have p1 On the left, if player 2 also selects an object, it will have "p2" on the right, 2 texts that will serve to see each one that each one has selected, in the hack they will put credits please that I help in saying how to do it please

[Ligeia]

There are four approaches to GB colorisation.

1) Emulator level.
Here the emulator will substitute shades of grey for whatever your colour of choice is. This naturally becomes emulator limited and is less than ideal in current space year when everybody is not necessarily on Windows PC for such things any more. This will be the easiest of anything you and closest to any kind of "noob friendly" you will get for random games. That said I am not even sure what vaguely current Windows emulators are available for this sort of thing as it was often a fork or lesser used one that had such functionality.
2) GBC backwards compatibility level.
Here you alter the game's tiles like any other graphics edit and rely on the inbuilt colours of the GBC and its descendants -- the GBC basically does a hardware version of 1) but as it is hardware, and some devs even played to it*, and works on basically all emulators that can play to the inbuilt palettes of the GBC. As hard as graphics hacking is for a given game (which means other than pokemon you are probably in normal graphics hacking realms).
2a) Some people have used other things related to this and the more extended palettes that the GBC can kind of do under some circumstances, sometimes even winding back into 1) for easier substitutions or more variety at some level.
3) GBC conversion.
Make the game be detected as a GBC game and alter the game to take advantage of the perks of the GBC (colours, faster CPU, some more of other things). You are not going to get far without knowing assembly on this one which is pretty far from "noob friendly".
4) SuperGameBoy. Much the same as above but you aim for https://blog.loveconquersallgames.com/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction
Naturally this requires a supergameboy (a rare and hard to come by piece of hardware that is not generally portable), an emulator that handles it (rare outside the PC) and is probably less capable than the GBC for the same amount of effort -- other than single device two player (and I do like SGB bombermans, right up there on the list they are) it is weaker in basically every way.


*4 kinds of GB/GBC ROM.
1) GB and made long before the GBC was even a specification. 1a) might be aimed for the GB and had no official GBC extras but knew about the inbuilt palettes to adapt accordingly.
2) GB backwards compatible but had GBC extras.
3) GBC only, would not work on GB (and there was an interesting hacking attempt a while back around here to try to bypass the checks and see what goes... cartridge tilters have nothing on this) and took advantage of the extra grunt the GBC has.
4) Supergameboy compatible.

Thanks for the technical details. I think I already came across some colorization feature on VisualBoyAdvance or some other emulator, but if memory serves I gave up because there was seemingly no way of permanetly saving the color sceheme on the rom. I also tried Gameboy Colorizer a few years ago but gave up as well because I couldn't figure out how it worked. I'm definitely willing to learn and try stuff but I also know where my limits are and clearly, to get an actually interesting and refined result it's gonna take a higher skill than mine, unfortunately.

I surely hope someone does Final Fantasy Adventure justice some day and gives it the polished colorization it deserves.

Since we're on the subject of FFA, a redux-style hack with QOL improvements would be great as well. For instance the inventory management could be fixed in a way that similar objects add up in the same slot instead of taking one slot each (having one 14 mattok instead of two 7 mattocks for instance).

[Blitzgreek]

Those are neat ideas for that game.

One hack idea I would like to see for No Mercy is one that will add Dude Love, Gangrel, Mideon, The Headdbangers and The Mean Street Posse to the main roster as default wrestlers.

They were suppose to be on the main roster, you unlock them by connecting the GBC port with the Transfer Pak, but the game got cancelled.

I don't know why THQ cancelled it, I thought Natsume did a good job on the GBC port of WM2000, especially the music.

I wonder if the data for the unused wrestlers are still in the ROM like the unused Championship Mode was still in it.

That is my problem with all these VPW2 & No Mercy hacks I've been seeing, you can only play them on the Project 64 emulator, which is a nightmare to use in my opinion.

I ve heard recently about the others you mentioned (headbangers and co)and I was wondering all the time, why are pictures of them in the game...
The programming storys are fascinating-not only at No Mercy, but in most gaming history.

Going back to No Mercy: Having 1)all chars and free slots available at start and
2)being able to change moves on normal roster,
isnt really an Idea...Its sort of a "wish" i had for...2 whole decades now.
And I think, I speak for the most No Mercy fans out there.


Those p64 hacks are a pain in the a..., you need to change the whole settings for each one of them and at the end, you cant play normal 64 games anymore.
Playing on everdrive, is still the best solution, in my opinion (plug and play).

[jackmor]

thanks for sharing more info!

[Megatronformayor]

Get rid of the 7 special ring requirement to access special stages in Sonic Advance 2 for the GBA. Instead, make it so the special stages are accessible after you beat a level with at least 50 rings collected like Sonic 1 does on the Genesis.

That's a pretty good idea and stage progression and chaos emeralds should be shared with all characters. 

[julayla]

Hey I noticed that when I looked at the translation of the Sailor Moon Gameboy game, it feels like the translation is unfinished and both EsperKnight & SGS Translations never finished. What do you think happened? Did the translator just up and quit or something? Because it's a shame that it's not finished. I hope someone can finish translating it and do the Sailor Moon R Gameboy game translation too

[PolishedTurd]

Make a hack to play SNES F-Zero from a top down view (like in the ending sequence).

I love this idea! The game has been hacked to be network-compatible, so I would think a POV hack is much easier by comparison, for the folks who know the game well.