Fun game hacks

[fcgamer | 4,753]

As I was playing through SMB2 (USA version) tonight, I began thinking about all the great Famicom games that I love, which have become too simple for me. It then got me to start thinking about game hacks.

Back in the day, I used to always hate game hacks. In my opinion, either the creators went really extreme on the difficulty, or they were just 15 year olds, who threw together a few stages for laughs. I never saw anything that kept the spirit of the source game, yet had decently rearranged it for a new (but fair) challenge.

Does anyone have any NES/Famicom game hack recommendations that are worth a play?

[Mega Tank | 974]

XMAS Mario ones

[ifightdragons | 234]

The Zelda Redux games are fantastic.

All of these are also worth checking out:

https://backloggery.com/games.php?user=ifightdragons&search=romhack&alpha=1

[Tanooki | 4,952]

I'm in the same boat, find most of them just badly done where the difficulty is just unbalanced to downright troll worthy so I just don't bother.

There have been exceptions, but they're usually improvement hacks if not total conversions.  Castlevania II has a MMC1 hack that's fantastic.  You get a true accurate full game script translation, decensorization, and also off the select button you now get an active map copied from the NP spread(hand drawn thing) so you can chart a course and not get lost.

Another, I've shown you it, can't remember where i got it though, Super Mario AllStars for Famicom, using a modern board with an altera chip to FPGA(?) simulate the full function of the MMC5 chip.  All 4 of the SNES games, but their 8bit renditions, MB arcade(PAL close to arcade accurate included), each having their own 4 slot save files with better saving by stage(not world), and a cool opening intro/menu too.  That thing is a piece of art, just fantastic.

I used to have the classic FDS to NES hack of SMB2j too which was nice, worked right, no use of the testy old magnetic disks/drive required.

[phart010 | 1,708]

Rockman 4 Minus infinity is an excellent hack, it’s as good as a legit NES game, and in many ways better. Although it is intended for more experienced players, so it is very difficult.

Legend of Zelda, Legend of Link is very polished and complete. Unfortunately it suffers from slowdown issues

Super Mario 3Mix is a polished and complete Super Mario Hack.

Mario vs Airman is just the Airman stage from Megaman 2 but you play it as Mario. It’s very short but sweet. Although it is only on stage, the controls and accuracy are perfect.

Castlevania 2 and Megaman 3 both have improvement hacks that mostly keep the games the same but made some critical improvements to bugs and annoying shortcomings in the games.

Super Mario Bros Special is basically a levels hack to SMB1. Special was a legit game that Nintendo allowed Hudson to develop for the PC-88 and Sharp X1. Someone basically remade the levels from that game in the NES rom. Although they didn’t program in some special items from the Hudson version such as the hammer..

And of course there’s all the wonderful English translations to Awesome Japan only  games.

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by phart010

[Sumez | 2,994]

Are you thinking of hacks that changes the games completely, replacing stages etc. or just hacks that alter games in ways that might improve them?

Either way, I'd tout my own Power Black hack, because I think it makes an already good game a whole lot better.