ROM Hacks that genuinely improve the base game?

[Your_Homie_Gale]

Pokemon Crystal Clear and Yellow 151 for a complete pokemon experience that doesn't change the pokemon stats or movepools making them compatible with other games. Thanks to PKHex I was able to transfer my pokemon to later gens without much issue. There are other pokemon hacks that change a few things, like Red ++, but they're too different from vanilla. Crystal Clear changes Crystal so much from vanilla, but the pokemon themselves are kept the same. Only difference is how to obtain them. Too many improvement hacks add new pokemon, change their stats, or make them more difficult; which aren't bad, in fact they're usually 9/10s, but I just prefer vanilla.

 

[Bakuma1997]

7th Saga: The New Class

Recently started it after reading the Review of the vanilla game, i tried both the Redux and plus ones, but they felt...kindaa meh

Then i tried the patch, i can only say... satisfied

Rather than a bunch of role-less blobs , the game aims to make the playable classes a single class focused moveset based on Final Fantasy 1 (The elf is a black mage, the devil is a thief, the knight is a red mage, ETC), with the black and white mages being nukes or inmortality inducers at the cost of being tissues, while the rest can hit like trucks, but their magic is lacking

Is made with Redux as a base, so if you liked it, you can get all the goods of that one, only flaw is that since headering differences made them incompatible, you can't use the name patch, so i have to guess what item does what with a crummy contraction

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I've tried quickly Super Mario Kart with a full screen hack, it doesn't strictly improve the game but it's a nice hack.

The only down sides are that you'd forfeit the mini map and back view.

 

[Moreno909]

MegaMan 7 Refit
All FastROM hacks for the SNES
6 button hack for the Megadrive
2x damage for Rockman and Bass

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

All FastROM hacks for the SNES.

FastROM seems good but can BSNES make it work? Or is it only for a specific emulator? I don't feel like I could use the fast rom capabilities.

6 button hack for the Megadrive.

I love the one for Alien Soldiers but do you have other examples in mind please?

 

[Moreno909]

FastROM seems good but can BSNES make it work? Or is it only for a specific emulator? I don't feel like I could use the fast rom capabilities.


I love the one for Alien Soldiers but do you have other examples in mind please?

I use them for the Snes9x emulator. You can alternatively overclock it.
contra hard corps, desert strike, urban strike have 6 button patches available

 

[Segadude113]

Too many Pokemon hacks to name here. A lot of them for gens 1 and 2. Not to mention all the color hacks of Game Boy games that also fix bugs, graphical errors, and slowdown.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Every single romhack of the Johto Pokemon games

 

[DrunkGecko]

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 4 and Pokemon Red++ come to mind

I’ve a good hack for you, Maya Fey.

Dragon Ball Budokai AF might be my preferred way of playing budokai 3 now. I like the B3 soundtrack, but it can be hard to recommend considering it’s plagiarized. And I’m also not against licensed music so I’ve loved basically all the new tracks in budokai AF. I do believe they add atmosphere and helped me uncover new bands I never would’ve heard about otherwise.

I'm surprised I've never heard of this
I gotta check that out

 

[Yousef Yousef]

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 4 and Pokemon Red++ come to mind

I'm surprised I've never heard of this
I gotta check that out

That hack defined my entire dbz gaming life. It’s so good.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Shoutout to Mother 25 Anniversary, without it, i won't be able to finally finish the MOTHER trilogy

Reasonable Random Encounters
Allies joins at your own levels
Money and EXP are doubled
Graphical updates
Maps are streamlined

But the plot beats are still the same

 

[Den MDM Den MDM]

FF6 Brave New World is my favourite Romhack ever. Most people criticized it due to the major change that was limiting every character to using 3 or 4 of all the available espers, but I appreciate that it allows players to exploit the individual strength of the characters. The changes are many, and there are so many new things to discover that it's simply a must-play for any person that finished the base game.

I don't wanna spoil anything, but the final boss fight in that mod is just BEEEEEEEEEEAAAAUTIFUUULLLLL

 

[Antilocal123]

There’s a My Melody Rom-Hack that improves Super Mario World because no way in hell I’d play that shit without it.

 

[Konkaluu]

Pokemon games, like moemon.

 

[rootCompute]

I feel like double-XP hacks for old school JRPGs are a must in this era of gaming abundance, like on Phantasy Star 1, Dragon Quest 1 & 2 GBC for example. I love those games, but also appreciate when I don't have to spend as much of my adult life grinding away on one single game while not really missing out on anything of importance.

Same for JRPG hacks that decrease random encounters if they are particularly excessive. Any type of time-saving or frustration mitigating hack is welcome if it doesn't ruin the spirit of the game

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I feel like double-XP hacks for old school JRPGs are a must in this era of gaming abundance, like on Phantasy Star 1, Dragon Quest 1 & 2 GBC for example. I love those games, but also appreciate when I don't have to spend as much of my adult life grinding away on one single game while not really missing out on anything of importance.

I agree, this is much more convenient for grinding.

Even if there are speed-up options on emulators it has less risks of doing mistake.

Same for JRPG hacks that decrease random encounters if they are particularly excessive. Any type of time-saving or frustration mitigating hack is welcome if it doesn't ruin the spirit of the game.

Now the question is "what is the spirit of the game"? Some purists would say that decreasing random encounters would go against the dev's intent.

 

[rootCompute]

Now the question is "what is the spirit of the game"? Some purists would say that decreasing random encounters would go against the dev's intent.

Generally it's any amount of gameplay where the player is supposed to "earn" something as dictated by the story or flow of progression. Making a hard dungeon a walk in the park is twisting the spirit of the game. Making the journey between nondescript towns less mind-numbingly slow is not. Tweaking encounter rates by area would be ideal, but blanket decreases on some of the more notorious games shouldn't be out of the question.

That's just my idea of what would be fair, anybody's obviously welcome to disagree. I'm guessing most purists aren't even interested in these types of hacks to begin with. Improvement hacks inherently go against the dev's original intent in order to make a game more palatable for a modern audience, the question is just to what degree do we all accept (and that almost always comes down to personal preference)

 

[HigashikataToki]

There's one rom hack that just recently released and it's mostly called "Dragon Ball Z Budokai 4" by Budokai 4 Project Team. The Mod is an overall improvement on the whole Budokai formula for the games and it feels like they've did a lot of balancing stuff as well as QoL improvements to the gameplay of the game.
Here's the link to the ISO as well as the Video of one of the creators going over the features:

https://www.moddb.com/games/dragon-ball-z-budokai-4

Post automatically merged: Sunday at 2:24 PM

There's one rom hack that just recently released and it's mostly called "Dragon Ball Z Budokai 4" by Budokai 4 Project Team. The Mod is an overall improvement on the whole Budokai formula for the games and it feels like they've did a lot of balancing stuff as well as QoL improvements to the gameplay of the game.
Here's the link to the ISO as well as the Video of one of the creators going over the features:

https://www.moddb.com/games/dragon-ball-z-budokai-4

Sadly the project is now on somewhat of an hiatus, but who knows when it will come back. One of the creators/collaborators ended up releasing what they last worked on since the project was somewhat abandoned. This is impressive in terms of what Budokai modding comes to.

 

[aquova]

There are a few romhacks that I like, but there's honestly very few that I would recommend over the base game, or that have even replaced the base game for me. I'm pretty sure all of these have been mentioned before, but I figured I'd list them again

- Sonic 3 Complete
- Any Game Boy DX colorization hack
- SNES FastROM hacks (most aren't needed, but there's a few games like Gradius and Star Fox that I wholeheartedly recommend)
- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: Definitive Edition

 

[miles]

Sonic 3 Complete is probably the best one, as it has all the options you could want!

 

[Winter Wonderland Winter Wonderland Winter Wonderland's icon]

Virtual Bart Redux.

It turns a completely nightmarish, unplayable mess into a game.

 

[Spyrone]

I feel mr. f01's Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly Definitive Edition massively improves upon the experience of the original version, which was so undercooked as to be fucking raw as Gordon Ramsey or Civvie 11 would put it. The ROM Hack actually finishes the game and makes it playable, fixing everything from glitched dialogue and missing animations and restoring the BS hitscanner enemies that were intended to sweep the lazers in an arc in front themselves and not instantly quickdraw and fry your ass with an unavoidable attack as soon as you come within range as well as adding higher quality textures and pink gems.

 

[Nelson2001]

For Me:

Mega Man X6 Tweaks (PS1) - It's not perfect but it tries to correct what is level design, the difficulty curve (even in easy and extreme mode) that makes it balanced and fair, Add non-GFX armor like the Blade Armor, no longer lose the 16 Reploid Hunters after being affected or destroyed in each level, Various Bug fixes, etc.

Sonic 3D Blast: Director's Cut (MD~GEN) - This improves the gameplay by making it more precise and less slippery, restores the password system, add new game modes such as Challenge Time, Level Editor, Bug fixes, etc. that makes it the semi-definitive version of the game.

Mortal Kombat: Arcade Edition (MD~GEN) - Improves attack timings and eliminates delay in gameplay making it more playable, restores various sound effects such as digitized voices, new animations for some characters, graphics slightly Improved that Try to look like the arcade version.

Any SFC~SNES FastROM Patches - which increases the CPU clock frequency to 100% (3.58 MHz) that gets the most out of the SFC~SNES CPU No limits and/or slowdowns that make for a smooth gaming experience of a Different from 75% CPU usage of the SlowROM (2.68 MHz) that naturally the games were limited and with slowdowns that limited the gaming experience.

 

[Moreno909]

Robocop vs Terminator Improvement

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8957/

OutRun Cannonball Decompilation
Real Return to the Castle Wolfenstein mod

 

[SpcDaicon]

Mega Man Starforce DX complete modernizes the game to make it more in line with the sequels.

Unfortunetly the original release suffers from "first game sindrime" but DX corrects many of the originals mistakes.

I would even say the DX version if the definitive version to play MMSF1