Respawn hacks or no death from ceilings/walls in STGs?

[Mechatiger891]

Has there ever been a respawn hack for an older shoot 'em up that has checkpoints like Gradius, R-Type, Tatsujin/Truxton or Gaiares? Eliminating checkpoints or start from the beginning completely would be greatly appreciated because it would keep the pace up and make it feel modern! Love for Gleylancer to have that for the time being until an HD remake happens.
I like Gradius and/or R-Type but I hate that touching a wall or ceiling kills you! Me personally, I hate it when walls in shmups result in death or life lost or loss of HP. Only touching bullets or enemy ships should result in death, not walls, unless if you're trapped behind corridors with no way out but to die.
Any hacks like that?
I'd also like to see a free play (unlimited continues) hack for some that don't give you that option.
I've heard of speed hacks (like Gradius III, I wonder if one exists for Super R-Type), but what about removing deaths caused by hitting a floor or wall or ceiling or instant respawn instead of checkpoints?

[FAST6191]

You could probably do something like this with Lua. Have it take savestates every half second or something and if it detects a death (could be as simple as seeing the life counter go down by one) then restore savestate, drop life counter (possibly upgrades/powerups as well if that is a thing) and continue on. Might need another line of code in case you have 0 lives and need a game over.
If I were to hack a game in a manner more commonly seen around here then I would probably do something similar, maybe shoving the player back so they can't use it as a kind of skip.

Walls and ceiling hazards work for me but would likely not be the worst hack. If your game of choice has a life bar then easy enough to make a cheat for infinite life, same general principle if it is instadeath but instead the lives counter is what you want to aim for. Set the breakpoint to that address and then go touch a wall, and then another for bullets/enemies. Hopefully they are different triggers (would usually expect it) and thus you can NOP one out. Careful you don't make a walk through walls cheat in doing this though.

Unlimited continues is usually basic cheat making ( https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial is for the GBA but the principle applies to everything).
If the game does not provide enough for the basic search then look to see if there is another way to gain continues (score, pickup location) and use cheats to get you some more things to play with. Likewise you can fiddle with savestates (lose some, search, restore save, look for change/increase, lose some....) and probably throw in a few rounds of doing nothing that troubles life/lives to try to knock out the background changes from animations, music, locations and what have you).