Best Rom Hacks?
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Hah! As it stands, I've been goofing off on the internet entirely too much today. These planes don't land themselves you know.
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Check out GameSack on Youtube. They have a lot of Left in the Arcades and Only in Japan episodes that talk about some of the games the didn't make it to North American consoles. A lot of the beter Japanese games have translations at least. Not so much hacks, but at least they are things us NA gamers didn't get back in the day.
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I would say Castlevania, chorus of mysteries for nes is one to play. It's a castlevania 1 hack, but everything has been redone and resembles very little of the original game
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I would say Castlevania, chorus of mysteries for nes is one to play.
That is an amazing hack and has my vote for the best total conversion to 'Castlevania' that anyone has attempted yet. For those interested, more information and the patch file can be found here.
Another quick one is...
Mario Adventure (NES Game Play Hack)
There are a kajillion Mario hacks out there, but if you only ever play one, the most worthwhile by far is this one. Like the Contra hack I mentioned above, this is another example of a polished, well tested hack that is exceedingly challenging without ever being unfairly cheap. There's a great write up on the game here that is worth a read. -
@mediamogul Do you know what this Majora's Mask from GC to N64 Hack is/whether it is superior to playing a direct rip .N64 file?
(Link is to http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2962/)
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In the past, Nintendo has re-released previous titles on newer hardware using emulation. Occasionally, while they're at it, they make a few tweaks here and there. The most notable in my mind is when they added the missing cement factory level to the NES version of 'Donkey Kong' when it was released for the Wii Virtual Console. Another and more recent example is that all the ROMs on the 'NES Classic Edition' have been altered graphically to reduce the risk of seizures.
This hack appears to take the altered Majora's Mask ROM and eliminate some additions, such as graphical references to the Gamecube, while leaving other additions in place such as "cosmetic changes" and addtional bug fixes from Nintendo. As to which one you should use; personally, I'd just use the N64 original in this case. The original ROM may have a few remaining graphical and game play bugs that weren't originally caught by Nintendo back in the day, but millions of people have beaten it successfully with nothing but fond memories, so I personally don't think it's much of an issue.
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@mediamogul Ah ok. Thanks for the quick reply, bud. Good luck landing planes today.
Played the shit out of UMKT3 for genesis this weekend. Can't wait to have my brother over and get in a real fight over fake ones. Your responses are greatly appreciated.
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@hooperre said in Best Rom Hacks?:
Played the shit out of UMKT3 for genesis this weekend.
Nice! It's definitely one of my favorites.
Good luck landing planes today.
Thank you! I'm not actually a pilot, mind you. I'm just the guy who nervously raises his hand when a stewardess rushes into coach and asks if anyone here can land a plane. The hardest part is the waiting... and of course controlling a commercial airliner with nothing more than a Microsoft Flight Sim certification from 1995.
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If anyone's into sports games, this update of NHL '94 for Sega Genesis is pretty great...updated rosters, jerseys, centre ice logos, etc. Love this!
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@mediamogul Hehe... The Mortal Kombat MOD is (deep voice) outstanding
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@cyperghost said in Best Rom Hacks?:
(deep voice) outstanding
(deep voice) Well Done.
It's really amazing, isn't it? I've been systematically learning the characters moves for a while now and directly afterward, memorizing that character's morph with Shang Tsung. My goal is to be able to jump in and out of all the characters at a moments notice during a fight. I did this with 'Ultimate Mortal Kombat' back in the day and it never failed to both impress and frustrate an adversary. Of course there was a lot less to remember then.
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@mediamogul That would be crazy :)
But the whole series got a bit lack... the original Genesis controller got 3 button layout. I think later later (at the near end of this great console) the controller got 6 button layout. So how to play Mortal Kombat with the old controller? (deep voice) FINISH IT -
I've always been partial to the PSX layout for 'Mortal Kombat Trilogy', so I just map my Rumblepad 2 accordingly. To make the extra three buttons mappable, you just enable the six button controller from the core options in the rgui. If you're actually using an old three button genesis controller, I believe the game used hotkey combinations to allow the extra input. I've personally never played it that way, so I'm not sure.
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The Legend Of Link:
works great with the nes core at 2x so there is no slowdown.
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That looks like a great hack. I've played 'Zelda Challenge: Outlands' before, but was unaware of this one.
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Metroid - Rogue Dawn (Game Play/Total Conversion Hack)
OK, this particular hack is only four days old, but it's been in development for almost three years and might very well be the best total conversion I've ever seen for a game outside of 'Mario Adventure'. Rogue Dawn tells the preceding story to the original 'Metroid' that is only briefly referenced in the game's manual, where a dangerous unidentified life form is discovered by scientists and subsequently stolen by pirates to fulfill a hidden agenda. You play as the rogue human agent, tasked by the pirates to retrieve the life form code-named Metroid.
This hack is really quite an achievement. The graphics are almost in the neighborhood SNES territory and although I've only been playing it a short time, I can already say that the level design and basic game play are on par with and even exceed any commercial platformer of it's kind for the NES. Below is a video to help illustrate what I'm raving on about.
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I sat down to play 'Mario Adventure' this evening and discovered that none of the three emulators in RetroPie will currently load it by default. After looking around for a fix, I saw it mentioned that loading an empty save file would allow the game to run, but it still took a bit of experimenting to get this to happen. First, you need to create a blank file that shares the name of the ROM, only with the .srm extension. This can be done from the command line with:touch /path/to/game/rom/exact_rom_name.srmFrom there, the game must be launched from lr-nestopia for the first time at least. It will then format the save file properly and you can launch the game afterwards from whichever emulator you wish. -
@mediamogul Mario Adventure works for me in lr-fceumm without issue.
As I built my collection of rom hacks, I started to check the Read Me file for the version of the rom that would work before I applied the patch. For Mario Adventure patch available from Rom Hacking, there are patches for the
Super Mario Bros. 3 (PRG 0) U.nesandSuper Mario Bros. 3 (PRG 1) U.nesroms.I guess I was lucky as the rom I have in my collection is the first one though I had no way of knowing of being certain. I tried the second patch on my rom and the hack didn't work.
In short, if a patch doesn't work, get a new rom.
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Very good to know. Thank you!
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In short, if a patch doesn't work, get a new rom.
No get the ROM from the description. I think it's a good idea to share always MD5 checksum (or something similar) of the ROM file in this thread. But as you already mentioned it's also a good idea to read file description.
The XDelta Patcher (used to patch the Mortal Kombat ROM) works right because it compares byte data from original file and patch data :)
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