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

[BlazeHeatnix]

It's nice to see the community, after 30 years of basically nothing, fix up FF2 on NES. There have been essentially zero romhacks that are not a complete overhaul of balance, text etc. Now, in the era of "quality of life" romhacks, it's refreshing to see old games be polished to a mirror sheen.

The only one left after FF2 is FF3. I want Final Fantasy III Restored. Like the two games before it, there are several bugs involving how spells work (though not quite as many) and a large number of elemental equipment doesn't work at all. And like the other Restored hacks, the Prelude theme could have the extra section that later editions have, and a fancy title screen could be added where previously there was none. Optional balance changes could be applied that reflect how FFV and FF3DS handle the job system (the FF3 Redux hack already does this to some degree, but it might've gone too far in a few places).

[niuus]

@WeebeeGeebee

So, I stumbled upon a post you made last year about Dracula X for the SNES.

I actually reinstated the cross and Richter's original death palette around the time I was working on my Megaman VII translation. It's been sitting on an USB device since then. I didn't think much about it because I also wanted to restore the Warlock's tombstones and Death's blood and, uh, death from the japanese version, but could never do it. The tombstones I can somewhat find with the Konami decompressor but the compressor never seems to work with the game; and Death would require programming knowledge.

If you were serious, I can upload it as is to RHDN.

@4lorn

What's funny is I was working on a restoration hack for both international versions of Dracula X as well, the only things I was able to restore is the red blood for both Richter & Death and the original sprite for the cross weapon.

Just like you, I'm having problems restoring the tombstones, Death's original defeated animation and the cross weapon sprite icon that appears in Richter's life bar, I have no idea where they are in all three ROMs.

@Nightshift Nurse

I did some improvements to the Japanese version of Final Fight 2, I changed the numbers of lives you start with up to 8, changed Rolent's name to Rolento, changed the colors of his uniform to his FF1 colors, fixed up the text for some of the items and the format of the time shown on the names of the stages.

The only things I can't do is change the cut-scene text to English and change "YOU ARE SUPER PLAYER!" to "YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER!".

I want to see a small hack for the Japanese version of Final Fight CD that adds the animated backgrounds for stage 3 & 4 from the American version to this version.

But I have a feeling that they are in this version, the coding for them may have got messed up during the development.

If they are in there, is there a way to fix the coding and get them to work?

Nice, some love for the SNES Dracula X game would be a welcome change. Also, Final Fight CD and Final Fight 2 changes? Great!

Your wish has been granted. Check the Personal Projects section.

Thanks again. I'll be following your projects as they pop-out, the Super Bomberman 5 preview was great.

[4lorn]

@4lorn

What's funny is I was working on a restoration hack for both international versions of Dracula X as well, the only things I was able to restore is the red blood for both Richter & Death and the original sprite for the cross weapon.

Just like you, I'm having problems restoring the tombstones, Death's original defeated animation and the cross weapon sprite icon that appears in Richter's life bar, I have no idea where they are in all three ROMs.

I don't think I managed to find Death's blood. I remember updating the palette but it had no effect. I also don't think I found the HUD cross.

As for the tombstones they're somewhere after offset 118500 in both games (offset 118000 is the Warlock himself and his effects, 2000 bytes compressed). If you use the SNES Konami decompressor you can check them, but at the time couldn't find the exact offset). I remember at the time I tried something like copying the entire data field into the US version. Sure enough, the tombstones were restored but... If you password into level 4', it will be fine but if you start from the beginning, the game locks at the end of level 1.

And for some reason the compressor doesn't seem to be able to compress data back for the game.

[BlazeHeatnix]

Removing the annoying "twang" effect from Zelda 2's music. The FDS version didn't have the twang (or at least, it wasn't as harsh) and is much easier on the ears. Porting over FDS's battle theme wouldn't be bad either.

[PirateMan]

Removing the annoying "twang" effect from Zelda 2's music. The FDS version didn't have the twang (or at least, it wasn't as harsh) and is much easier on the ears. Porting over FDS's battle theme wouldn't be bad either.

Why not a proper fan translation of the FDS ROM?

[Bjankins]

What about a hack that aims to restore the lost presentation of calibur 50 for sega genesis, anyway to bring sound effects back and voices? Or the missing helicopter introduction?

[Pezito]

How about hacking The Misadventures of Flink (Sega Megadrive/Genesis) so that the main character's walk isn't sluggish anymore? (Hi by the way. ^^/ )

I've always liked this game, one of the most beautifully done on that console (I mean look at those graphics, for once they weren't put to shame by the SNES larger color palette)... Problem is, the hero walks very slowly for a few steps when he starts walking, then after a distance he jogs to a more enjoyable speed. I've been wanting to "fix" that by making him jog all the time, bypassing the first two seconds of sluggish walk... But so far my attempts at generating a cheat code for this have failed. I would love to succeed and, why not, directly hack the rom for his walking speed to be permanently faster.

Any idea?

[4lorn]

How about hacking The Misadventures of Flink (Sega Megadrive/Genesis) so that the main character's walk isn't sluggish anymore? (Hi by the way. ^^/ )

I've always liked this game, one of the most beautifully done on that console (I mean look at those graphics, for once they weren't put to shame by the SNES larger color palette)... Problem is, the hero walks very slowly for a few steps when he starts walking, then after a distance he jogs to a more enjoyable speed. I've been wanting to "fix" that by making him jog all the time, bypassing the first two seconds of sluggish walk... But so far my attempts at generating a cheat code for this have failed. I would love to succeed and, why not, directly hack the rom for his walking speed to be permanently faster.

Any idea?

Open the ROM with a hex editor, then change the following bytes:
Go to offset 7EAF, and change FF to FE.
Go to offset 7EB7, and change 01 to 02.
At offset 7EBC, change 24 to 20.
And at offset 7EBF, change FF to FE.

This does not increase speed like the Game Genie codes you can find online. But it does bypass the small build up to gain speed, so that Flink will start jogging as soon as you press left or right.

Edit: I released a small hack for this.

[SCD]

I would like to see a hack for Golden Axe 1 that adds these improvements from Golden Axe 2 to it:

The ability not to use all your magic.
The ability to throw your enemy any direction and if you throw them at another enemy, they can get hurt as well.
Your animal companion goes through a enemy when it does its running attack.

[Foffy]

Consider this a very stupid idea, but it's one that always bugged me and if I had the knowhow, I would have done something about it myself. Maybe someone here also found this stuff to be a bother but has the knowhow to do something about it.

In games like Hyper Street Fighter II in the PS2 version of the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (that's a mouthful!!), the default colors of the character are actually not something you can select when playing the Super Turbo versions of the characters, which are the most recent versions you can select in the game. You couldn't do this in the original version of the game, either. Is there a way to force the default colors via a hack? What makes Hyper Street Fighter II so interesting is you can select any version of SFII at the character select screen. This means that the colors are actually available in the game, but you can only select the characters default colors if you select a non-Super Turbo version of them. This also means that version is from an older edition of the game. For example, if you want Ken to wear his red attire properly, you cannot pick the Super Turbo version, but have to pick the Super version if you want the most recent version of him that allows this, but this also means you lose balance changes and the super meter, including some of the balances Hyper SFII adds to Super Turbo. How difficult would it be to alter in the default colors for Light Punch from Super Turbo so it picks the Light Punch colors from the other versions, seeing as they consist of the same roster? The AI defaults to picking Light Punch attires so this would fix their color discrepancies as well.

Something similar happens with Street Fighter Alpha 3 (I'm using Alpha 3 Max for PSP for reference, but this is true for all versions IIRC). The default character colors are available, but that is dependant upon if they select a specific ism in regards to the AI. If it's not A/Z-ism, the opponent AI will be a non-default color. Default colors are Medium Punch, which the AI only selects via the A/Z-ism. If picking X-ism, they pick the Light Punch color, and if the V-ism, they choose the Heavy Punch color. I would prefer if it always defaulted to the Medium Punch color for the AI, though I'm not sure if this would be easier or harder work to do compared to the Hyper SFII example I shared.

I know this is incredibly dumb to be bothered about, but it always stood out to me as odd. We've seen color restorations for the GBA version of Super Turbo, but we've never seen such a restoration for the arcade perfect ports. I don't even think the 30th Anniversary Collection fixes this.

[SCD]

I want something similar like this to be made for both the Dreamcast & PSP ports of Darkstalkers Chronicle, where the AI always chooses the default colors for the fighters and the colors of the background stages are reverted back to their default ones instead of always using the alternate ones.

The default colors for the background stages are in those ports, but they're hidden.

[tc]

Ah, the fascinating evil that is Hyper SFII. I wish I knew to make the AI easier.

[SCD]

Same here, that was the thing I did not like about HSF2, the AI is way too cheap.

I wish there's a way to give the AI the same behavior the other console ports of SSF2T have, where you can actually beat the game without any problems.

Because I remember in the Saturn & GBA ports, the AI was a lot easier than its arcade counterpart.

[Foffy]

Same here, that was the thing I did not like about HSF2, the AI is way too cheap.

I wish there's a way to give the AI the same behavior the other console ports of SSF2T have, where you can actually beat the game without any problems.

Because I remember in the Saturn & GBA ports, the AI was a lot easier than its arcade counterpart.

I think the difficulty in HSFII is based on the arcade version of Super Turbo, which is infamous for being one of the hardest Street Fighter games even on the easiest setting. "Arcade perfect" games of that era usually kept the infamous button reading AI, as the games were designed to get money from you. If you were compromised in the home experience in terms of visuals, sounds, loading times and the like, they likely also altered the AI to compensate the downgrade.

[WeebeeGeebee]

Ya wanna know a good idea for a hack? How about someone remove that annoying and time consuming "Buster falling into a Dumpster" death animation from Buster Busts Loose for Super Nintendo. That death animation is entirely pointless and obnoxious when you consider that Buster flies partway up the screen after already falling from losing his last heart (Seriously, go dash up the sides of the book cases in the first level and tell me that death animation isn't irritating). It could easily be replaced with a "White Washout" screen like in Mega Man X or Rockman and Forte.

[Stifu]

I want to see a small hack for the Japanese version of Final Fight CD that adds the animated backgrounds for stage 3 & 4 from the American version to this version.

But I have a feeling that they are in this version, the coding for them may have got messed up during the development.

If they are in there, is there a way to fix the coding and get them to work?

Also, Final Fight CD needs yellow hit marks when hitting the bonus stage car. This used to bother me so much.

Original: https://youtu.be/KL22s0MPiA4?t=619
CD version: https://youtu.be/NeWkue8axG8?t=1631

[WebSlinger]

Level Editor for Wizards & Warriors!

[RealGaea]

Consider this a very stupid idea... 30th Anniversary Collection fixes this.

The ISMs colors for CPU were made to distinguish easier which ISM uses without to look at the bar, only present on Arcade version. To avoid further confusion, that method stayed even on SFA3MAX.

Here's a bigger problem: reassign the buttons for the GBA port of SFA3U, I find straight irritating to press L+B to select the default color... Why not making this way?

A button: default color (A-ISM)
B button: kick color (A-ISM)
L button: X-ISM (punch)
R button: V-ISM (punch)
L+B button: X-ISM (kick)
R+A button: V-ISM (kick)

Ah, and make the safe fall command with one button.

[Valkyrie]

Playing HeartGold now and I suddenly wondered about a possible "restoration" for GB Sounds' tunes to make them sound exactly like the GB-counterparts instead of being more recreated from scratch in means of sound?

Not bad on their own, but I kinda wonder how it'd be like to get the sounds as they were composed in the originals more faithfully, like the GB Sounds were in Pokemon Throwback Red.

[sil3nt_j]

Made some Karate Kid bonus stage sprites if anyone is interested in making a hack.