Any rom hacks that make games ridiculously easy?

[Mechatiger891]

I've heard of hacks that make certain games harder, sometimes extremely difficult, but what I want to know what hacks exist that makes a game stupidly easy? (Don't give me any cheat codes, I want actual rom hacks, please) I'm looking for RPGs in particular that have hacks that make them easy. Like increased player stats, being given more money than vanilla and be given even more experience points for the player. Just imagine a hack of Final Fantasy VII where the all the enemies including bosses, even the superweapon (or whatever it's called) is a joke! Cloud in that hack would be way too powerful for his own good. How about Phantasy Zone II, a notoriously brutal RPG being made ridiculously easy? Enemies that essentially take one hit to kill! You are basically god while the enemies stand absolutely no chance against you.

[DragonAtma]

That's not easy mode, that's far beyond easy mode.

That said, there are certainly some easy mode (or extremely easy mode) games on RHN; in particular, JCE3000GT made several extremely easy mods.

[Jorpho]

I know there are a whole bunch of hacks made for the Atari 2600. I remember a page somewhere cataloging them all specifically, but all I can find right now are big lists of homebrew. "Boring Freeway", "Boring Donkey Kong", "Boring Journey Escape", and so on.

[Malias]

Definitely take a look at what we have:

Easy rpgs

EasyType rpgs

Easy Action rpgs

[FAST6191]

Most easy modes/game journalist modes are distributed as cheats or as premade saves as there is usually not much interest in them compared to difficulty increasing or balancing hacks. Equally if you are interested in making them then most of them start off as a cheat finding session https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial , though some will go further and use that as a basis to understand the underlying game logic (which can also be a perk if boss HP set to 1 triggers some kind of alternate behaviour and stats boosts are not cutting it).

You can hardpatch cheats depending upon code type and system.

Game genie stuff being ROM altering instructions being trivial for anything in the 8-16 bit era for that. CCCGP and game genie guy being tools of choice for that one.

For the GBA, DS and possibly N64 then you have options to hardpatch even RAM cheats into the ROM, later things still can do it from firmware level if you have a hacked machine (though you can also do cheats on stock cartridges on the DS if you have a flash cart, see nitrohax, not sure what goes for the DSi/3ds takes there right now but it was a possibility at one point). GBAATM and DSATM for those consoles respectively, can't find the link for the N64 attempt offhand but should be easy enough to track down.

Depending upon the cheat for later consoles then as the binary tends to be in memory (CD read speeds is not good for things measured in megahertz) then if the cheat tickles that memory area you can in turn hardpatch that into the binary on the disc.

Patching cheats in general is a fairly nice intro to assembly type hack. Two approaches being you find some routine that is frequently run (so vblanks usually, 50-60 times a second depending upon region) and add a quick write this area such that you have basically infinite lives/stats/mana... maybe after a control check if you get fancy, or you attack the thing that is doing the writing to the relevant area from the cheat by setting a breakpoint on it, taking whatever wrote the lower number to it and changing a subtract to an add or do nothing (can be harder when multiple things might drain a counter but also can be more subtle).

Usually seen more on the PC but if the game has truly custom weapons/pickups/enchantments you can abuse that to make an easy mode for most things by altering them in some manner. Depending upon the game then speedrun types, challenge play types or glitch/exploit play types might have found means of doing it in game (Skyrim crafting exploits being a good example), though 30 seconds and a level editor* might also do to make something that might not naturally spawn or work via things, maybe combine with a save game if something equipped is fine but won't pass equip checks normally.

*can also work for console games if you are thinking more PC stuff -- the things people do with level editors to make setups for boss rush modes (some of the metroid ones being a good example) would also work for this.

[JP32]

This is what game genie is made for, you can hard patch them to rom if you want an patch.

[nesrocks]

My TMNT2 options hack has an easy mode that's very very easy https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5855/

[KingMike]

One person I know made a bunch of SNES RPG ROM hacks that basically make the player max stats from the start.
(even some like Mystic Quest which I suspect are making the player higher level than is even legitimately possible )