Useless "improvement" romhacks thread

[Ikagura]

Yeah i don't mind hacks like that. It's cool playing through a game with a new set of abilities. It's also a lot harder to pull off than a character swap which is probably why they're not as common. Sonic's just a particularly good example for those kinds of character swap hacks because it's popular and hacking it is fairly accessible compared to other games at least enough to swap some graphics. The original version of the playable Zero in Megaman X hack was just a sprite swap too but did eventually become a full on hack.

Sonic A.I.R also has a lot of character sprite swap mods but it should be a lot easier for people to make full new characters with abilities. The extra slot mod doesn't really seem to do that though. The Kirby mod just uses Knuckle's movesets. I just went and looked through the mods I'd downloaded for that and didn't see any characters with new abilities.

There's a few games that have a lot of those. Mario 64 has a ton of them. I think they've shoved just about every character you can imagine into that game.

I do like "Vanilla+" hacks that enhances the base game more than any character implementation mostly because most are breaking the game balance.

AIR having an easier way to mod is also a double edged sword, it can bring things impossible in the actual Genesis game as well as having more lazily made ones...

Mario 64 has great mods but I'm wondering how many work on the actual hardware.

 

[Graw]

I do like "Vanilla+" hacks that enhances the base game more than any character implementation mostly because most are breaking the game balance.

For me it depends on my mood. If I'm trying to seriously play through a game I prefer more balanced hacks. But if I'm just messing around I don't really care about game balance. I also find it heavily depends on the original game. I played both the Legend of Zelda and Zelda 2 redux hacks. Zelda 2 redux is one of the best hacks I've played and makes Zelda 2 into one of the best Zelda games but I didn't really like the Zelda 1 redux hack as much. Some of the QoL features were nice but it changed the feel of the game too much for me because the og Zelda 1 is mostly a well made game without a ton of annoying things and the things that are kind of annoying, like the trees and bomb walls, give the game a bit of added mystery that's lost when everything is marked out for you.

I also don't really like Project Base or Super Metroid Redux very much for similar reasons. They're fine for romhacks that build off them and change the game's physics and stuff but I'd rather just play through the vanilla game because Super Metroid is another well made game with no real problems other than whiners who need to practice more at the controls.

AIR having an easier way to mod is also a double edged sword, it can bring things impossible in the actual Genesis game as well as having more lazily made ones...

That's pretty much the case with most of these source ports except for maybe the n64 Zelda ones. There's a lot of well made mods for those two but a lot of the rest of them just have sloppy graphics mods or character swaps. The Mario64 Coop one has a shit ton of mostly visual character model swaps and generally most of the mods seem pretty janky.

Mario 64 has great mods but I'm wondering how many work on the actual hardware.

I know all the ones made by Kaze are supposed to be hardware compatible. I think modders these days tend to target hardware compatibility a lot more than modders used to. Back in the old days it didn't really matter because playing romhacks on real hardware was expensive and not really accessible for most people. Things like everdrive carts weren't exactly common the way they are now. Most romhackers only ever used emulators and emulators weren't as accurate and well made as they are now. These days romhackers have access to so much that they didn't before and playing retro games on real hardware is a lot more popular than it was even like 10 years ago. From what I've seen, it's almost frowned upon these days if your hack doesn't work on real hardware unless it does something really impressive and amazing.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

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[BigTony]

I think the "improvement" I hate the most is when people add the ability to move while in mid air in Castlevania 1-3 it's not a mechanic that can't work in Castlevania my favorite game in the franchise Super Castlevania let's you do it but that game was designed around it.

 

[Ikagura]

I think the "improvement" I hate the most is when people add the ability to move while in mid air in Castlevania 1-3 it's not a mechanic that can't work in Castlevania my favorite game in the franchise Super Castlevania let's you do it but that game was designed around it.

I get what you mean but the Belmont are really heavy feeling in those games and it's clear that as platformers they aged quite a bit compared to Super Mario and Megaman.

 

[BigTony]

I get what you mean but the Belmont are really heavy feeling in those games and it's clear that as platformers they aged quite a bit compared to Super Mario and Megaman.

For sure and Im not arguing that it doesn't make the game feel better to play but like adding sprint to Halo it fundamentally changes the flow of gameplay

 

[Ikagura]

For sure and Im not arguing that it doesn't make the game feel better to play but like adding sprint to Halo it fundamentally changes the flow of gameplay.

That trivialises some parts I agree.

I wouldn't have minded if MC was slightly faster in CE though, not on Doom's level (because comparing the two games is silly) but it feel sluggish in corridors without enemies.

This would also be like having all weapons on the backpack.