Rom hacks that blew you away?

[Bonkers225]

There are thousands out there, but beyond the usual color edits, text edits, difficulty changes, uncensoring, etc, what are some hacks that blew you away?

TMNT Shredder's Re-revenge on the MD. More than just another lazy SoR2 palette switch. The music, and enemies all have been redone as well to fit into the turtle universe. And those pixels are high quality as well.

MD+ Moonwalker. Seeing 16-bit Jackson flip that coin into the jukebox, and the real studio version of Smooth Criminal with vocals starting up was cool as shit.

And the most recent DBZ BT3 hack with Crossover Legends. Crazy work with all those characters.

 

[qw90700]

Pokemon Ash Gray (Hack) GBA ROM - RGT Repository

Pokemon Ash Gray (Hack) GBA ROM Languages: English. For the GameBoy Advance.

retrogametalk.com

Castlevania: Rondo of the Night (Hack) PSX ISO – RGT Repository

Castlevania: Rondo of the Night (Hack) PSX ISO Game ID: SLUS-00067. Languages: English. For Sony PlayStation.

retrogametalk.com

Streets of Rage 2: Syndicate Wars - Historical Survival (Hack) SEGA Genesis ROM – RGT Repository

Streets of Rage 2: Syndicate Wars - Historical Survival (Hack) SEGA Genesis ROM. A Beat 'em up, Hack game released on 1992 by SEGA

retrogametalk.com

Epic Turismo 2 (Hack) PSX ISO – RGT Repository

Epic Turismo 2 (Hack) PSX ISO Game ID: SCUS-94488. Languages: English. For Sony PlayStation.

retrogametalk.com

 

[petran79]

the original GB Tetris hack is probably the best version of Tetris, combining the old with the new

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

 

[Segadude113]

Super Mario Bros. 3-Mix by Southbird. The new powerups, the levels, and the music being from later games like Super Mario Land 2 really blew my mind. There's another one sort of like it called Mario is Missing Done Right for the Super Nintendo that is a rom hack of Super Mario All Stars I think? There was also Zelda Outlands for NES (the original one).

 

[Kaze01]

Literally the best Pokémon ROM hack for the NDS. The quality is insane, just like in all the other hacks made by Dray.

 

[Segadude113]

Zelda Legend of Link for NES has music from the Zelda animated series. The only hack I know of that does that. Then there's Legend of Super Mario: Save The Mushroom Kingdom which has Mario as Link and all the weapons are Mario items and all the enemies are from Mario too. The dungeon theme is a little off, but it's a Zelda version of the Underground theme, and it doesn't sound finished. Other than that the rest of the music is GREAT.

 

[ThatOneLum]

I can't remember the name of mine, but its a Sonic rom hack that took that woodland themed stage that was removed and turned it into a hub level.

You could also play as a bunch of different characters like Vector and shit. It was awesome but any attempts to find it since have come up empty lol

 

[DunkeyKong]

Metroid Desolation for it's huge world and color improvement hacks (especially the DX ones)

 

[mlastes1987]

Chrono Trigger Plus, Final Fantasy IV Ultima, Final Fantasy V Pixel Freemaster, Pokemon Solus R/B, Shin Pokemon R/B, Mother 3 English, Final Fantasy VI A Soldier's Contingency, Hero of Law (Zelda OOT hack), and a lot more than I wanna list lol.

 

[aquova]

Metroid Desolation for it's huge world and color improvement hacks (especially the DX ones)
View attachment 100952

Is that Kirby's Dream Land DX? That looks way better than I remembered

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:29 PM

For me, the most impressive ones I've seen are Sonic 3 Complete, which adds lots of customizability options to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Pokemon Trading Card Game: Neo, which adds the Gen 2 Pokemon cards to the GBC Pokemon TCG game

Main Page - Sonic 3 Complete

https://www.pokeharbor.com/2023/01/pokemon-tcg-neo/

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

There are two that stand head and shoulders among the many that I have tried and effectively elevated already great (but seriously flawed) offerings into Hall Of Fame material: Link's Awakening Redux and Pokemon Crystal Clear.

 

[Scotty]

 

[vergil_heinlein]

super mario world : A Super Mario adventure 3

one of the best smw rom hack ever made with an incredible level aesthetic and good music choices! in this one you can spin and wall jump like in modern mario games but with the timeless vibe of smw

Super Mario World: A Super Mario Adventure 3 - Super Mario World Hacks - SMW Central

 

[Cantarella]

there's a fire emblem romhack called deity device. It's hard to find links to it nowadays. gameplay wise, it's nothing special. in fact, the gameplay is kind of bad. The good thing about it is that the gameplay serves the narrative very well (magic is very powerful in this universe, and so, your mages are also really good.)

What I didn't expect was for the writing to be good. Like, it's really, really good at times. Now, someeeetimeees.... it gets pretty silly. But I think that's the only time I've been engrossed in a romhack because of its story/characters.

 

[Segadude113]

There are two that stand head and shoulders among the many that I have tried and effectively elevated already great (but seriously flawed) offerings into Hall Of Fame material: Link's Awakening Redux and Pokemon Crystal Clear.

Crystal Clear is SO GOOD. The number of options for it alone!

 

[fake-kun]

Mega Man 4: Voyage (Hack) NES ROM – RGT Repository

Mega Man 4: Voyage (Hack) NES ROM Languages: English. For the NES.

retrogametalk.com

 

[Taukyrie]

As simple as it may seem, the Super Robot Wars A Portable Plus hack amazes me for the sole fact they reworked and rebalanced the entire player character roster to make it viable and not brutally punishing.

 

[Segadude113]

Mega Man 4: Voyage (Hack) NES ROM – RGT Repository

Mega Man 4: Voyage (Hack) NES ROM Languages: English. For the NES.

retrogametalk.com

Ever play that rom hack of Mega Man II called Vine Man? It's a Vinesauce hack with original Robot Masters, levels, and music.

https://vimm.net/romhacking/hacks/4101

Post automatically merged: Today at 5:20 PM

Post automatically merged: Today at 5:21 PM

Corrupt Man actually has a glitchy stage where you have to get around a lot of BS. lol You have to glitch through the level. It's insanely clever!

 

[tuesday]

Any overhaul mod of the GBA Fire Emblem games always blow me away.

Here's a few i can recommend that I've played this year!

FE: Dream of Five


FE: Vision Quest


FE: Last Promise


FE: Drums of War

 

[Boog111]

SNES Final Fantasy II Goblez edition. Always wanted to play as him as a kid.

 

[Tortuga]

 

[Pickle surprise]

As someone who dropped Pokemon when it went into the Switch, playing Pokemon Radical Red was a real eye opener. It is a FireRed ROM hack which has nearly all the mechanics from later gens included such as physical/special split, Mega evolutions, Z-Moves and all Pokemon up to Gen 9. It is also crazy customisable as you can change natures and abilities, swap team members out from your PC at any time, relearn moves whenever whenever you want, etc., which is fantastic as this game is way harder than base Pokemon games and the AI of opponents can be really devious with how they can predict certain moves you have. Boss battles in particular are like competitive online matches in how teams are well balanced and their use of certain strategies means that all these options to customise your team gives you a fighting chance. I died on this game a lot but I had a great time with it and it made me appreciate pokemon that I overlooked previously such as Gliscor and Bronzong and made me really love some of the newer monsters such as Meowscarada, Skeledirge and Iron Valiant. If you like Pokemon but are put off by the jankiness of the Switch titles or want more of a challenge, this games comes highly recommended. In fact, I would say this is my favourite Pokemon title of all time. Fantastic reminder of why I loved these games in the first place and honestly think Gamefreak themselves could learn many things from it if they wanted to try and appeal to older fans of the series. A harder difficulty mode with tougher teams alone would make the current games a lot more appealing to me.

 

[TacoMeister]

Both Junkoid and Super Junkoid are masterpieces in my opinion.
Both are hacks of Metroid and Super Metroid, respectively, but the visuals are entirely new and very nice.
I highly recommend them to anyone who likes Metroid or just Metroidvanias in general.

Junkoid (Hack) NES ROM – RGT Repository

Junkoid (Hack) NES ROM Languages: English. For the NES.

retrogametalk.com

Super Junkoid (Hack) SNES ROM – RGT Repository

Super Junkoid (Hack) SNES ROM Languages: English, Japanese. For the Super NES.

retrogametalk.com