#Romhacks

[wario-land]

Some great Pokemon Hacks and Fangames

Have you played these? Which ones do you like most and why?

[game-boy-pocket]

I’ve been waiting for this for so long.

Nintendo 64 fans are in for a god damned TREAT.

I don’t forsee much Zelda in this since Kurko has made a full length Zelda x Banjo mod ( that if you haven’t checked it out wtf are you doing still here? Go play it! ) but there’s so much incredibly stuff here that looks like it goes above and beyond other Banjo mods.

I’m very sick, but this was an instant mood lift for me.

[smbhax]

Super Mario Bros. (NES) romhack color palettes generated by the Level-Headed utility

[nesdraug]

I've curated a list of NES games similar to the newly released UFO 50

I call it NES 50

(All games can be played in browser - There's also 50 more alternatives and links to romhacks)

[veal-exe]

Given recent news of one of the bigger pokemon romhack sites going down (Romhacking.net) I've begun compiling a 'romhack preservation' file for pokemon romhacks.

It includes: NEW: Emulators for the GB, GBA, DS, and 3DS Base ROMs for vanilla pokemon games, for patching 99% of the romhacks on Romhacking.net Two patching programs to inject the romhacks into the roms Instructions on how to patch roms for newbies NEW: A folder of pre-patched ready to play ROMs

Find It Here.

Current Version: 8/3/24

Over time I will add more romhacks from other sites, I am incredibly passionate about preserving Pokemon Romhacks, and hopefully anyone else who loves them will find some value in this project

[fe-romhack-propaganda]

Finished Dream of Five. I expected it to be good, and gameplay wise it certainly delivered (even if the difficulty curve could be smother). And it's just such a gorgeous game. There like a dozen portrait that would blow everyone mind if they were official.

And man, the story. It's just so good. That part in 23x destroyed me. Play it folks

I must agree with Anon, play that game. The week I played it I literally couldn't put it down.

[parapsychologicalvulpes]

gonna figure out how to add more roms to my wife's hacked 3ds bc I crave

the pokemons

[hindbodes]

[clatterbane]

Pokemon Crystal Clear: An Open World Pokemon Game

What I'm currently messing around with, in an emulator on my phone. Good push to find new game diversions, with my laptop still out of commission. And, though I never actually owned any of the Game Boy devices? It is still somehow gratifying, having these now-ubiquitous handheld computers standing in for multiple decades-old devices that I couldn't afford at the time. The form factor is also pretty damned close to a Game Boy.

I never actually played the original Crystal before this either, for that matter.

(Decided to try Lemuroid right now, which will handle multiple systems from Sega Genesis to PSP. It's been great so far for GBC, at least. And I pretty much feel obligated to shill for what seem to be good FOSS projects, due to the person I am.)

At any rate, Crystal Clear has had years' worth of more updates since this video.

One source for the most recent pre-patched ROM:

The "color filter" version tries to simulate how it would look on original hardware, while the other shows the actual colors the devs were working with. I haven't compared them side by side to say much more.

[nintendroid]

I finally (sort of) beat Batman Forever for Sega Genesis thanks to this mod!

The first bad video game I can remember owning is Batman Forever. Thirteen years ago on this very blog I aired my frustrations with it and when anyone asks me what my least favorite games are, Batman Forever is always in the conversation.

I love the movie and I'm glad that thanks to the "Schumacher Cut" hype its finally getting it's roses. I have great memories of it as the first Batman movie I saw in theaters, and equally great memories of that following Christmas and getting some of the toys that I loved as much as the movie. While I love Batman '89 and Batman Returns, Batman Forever was MY Batman.

The combination of the cyberpunk setting, amazing soundtrack, Jim Carrey as The Riddler, the McDonalds French-made glasses that remained a staple in my household for years, and a competent on-screen Robin, my memories of Batman Forever as a film and franchise entry got everything right! The only blemish on an otherwise blockbuster experience was the game.

I've tried to play it over the years and never can stick it out. It has a good soundtrack, good graphics and from a distance looks like it could be a good game. What makes it dreadful to play is the unforgiving difficulty, no continues, laggy Mortal Kombat controls that don't belong nowhere near a platformer, timed levels where the terribleness of the controls are made super-apparent and I cant stress enough THE CONTROLS. The wacky button combinations for basic functions are mind-boggling and just plain poor. Batman Forever: The Video Game is the black sheep of the Batman Forever marketing blitz.

Fast forward to 2023. Thanks to the efforts of video game preservation, advance technology and people fed up with the modern state of gaming, retro gaming truly belongs to the players. Apart of that freedom of "ownership" is to right the sins of the past and create the experiences that we wanted as kids but didn't get for one reason or another.

Enter video game modder BillyTime! Games.

William Timington (his proper name) modded the Sega Genesis port of Batman Forever and gave us "Batman Eternity". A version of Batman Forever that scraps the stupid platforming elements and puzzles and gives us what we truly wanted: A BRAWLER.

Batman Eternity is a gameplay overhaul of Batman forever. Its main goal is to remove all platform and puzzle elements from the game and focuses strictly on combat.

Changes Made: -------------------- Both Versions: *Level 3 and 5 have been removed entirely *Several layout changed have been made across all levels *Batman and Robin start with 10 lives in Singleplayer, Co-op and competitive modes. *Batman and Robin have all moves available and can be used at any time. *The Riddler is unlocked in training mode by default. Original Difficulty: -------------------- No health values have been modified and remain the same as the original game. Scaling Difficulty: -------------------- All health values have been changed for all enemies in this version to be universal. After each level or at a Boss portion of each level, the health cap for enemies is gradually raised. Enemy health caps at Level 7.

These changes make for a much more basic and enjoyable experience. It's still not a perfect experience by any stretch but it's so much better than the original. The simplicity makes you appreciate the atmosphere of the game, and the graphics, the music. The controls still aren't ideal but you'll spend so much time just clobbering enemies, you won't notice.

When I finally beat the Giga Riddler at the end of the game, I felt...complete. Like another insignificant, small book in my childhood library finally got the ending it deserved. Dramatic? Yes, but you need that exaggeration to keep things interesting.

If you want to check out the romhack for yourself, check it out here and while you're at it, check out BillyTime! Games Twitter and shoot him a thanks for his efforts.

Thanks William Timington. You belonged in that dev room way back in 1995.

[tswanyirl]

welcome to boundary break where we take the camera

*runs off with your camcorder*

[theonelcl]

Just a heads up for fan-game/mod fans!

Everyone's favourite SM64 hacker, Kaze Emanuar is holding a showcase of a bunch of upcoming mods and fangames on the 13th of this month! He doesn't have a Tumblr, so I'm just promoting it!

A bunch of mods, fangames, and romhacks are gonna be shown there that are releasing within the next 12 months, or have already released!

The presentation will be happening on the 13th of August, at 5PM ADT / or 1PM PDT! Be sure to be there to check it out! I hear there might be some Hat in Time Mods there perhaps! I'm super excited to see what everyone has cooking!

[game-boy-pocket]

Today I played "The Legend of Super Mario" a hack of the original Legend of Zelda by NesDraug, who is quickly becoming one of my fave NES hackers, he also made that wonderful Ninja Turtles themed Mario hack I posted about a few weeks back.

Unlike that game though, this is a full length Zelda adventure, but it's themed after Super Mario Bros, mostly the NES Trilogy, the only thing I can recall that didn't appear on the NES, was the super feather, which acts as Mario's defense upgrades in this game. Even the music in this game is Mario themed, but with a bit of a Zelda flow to it. And this really goes a long way with rom hacks, it's selling the illusion that you're playing something resembling an official NES game.

I am not sure if this says more about my Zelda skills or more about this games balance, but I didn't die once when playing, I have been known to successfully complete no death runs in Zelda 1 multple times, but I feel like health drops were plentiful, I didn't even use the one potion I found. There's also more heart containers than you actually need in the game.

Knoweldge of Zelda 1 did help me quite a bit, but I did need to look up how to get to one dungeon. I don't know if the game clued me in to it's location, or if I was meant to intuit it, I don't know that I would have found it myself without looking it up, as it's a very "trial and error" kind of thing.

I've played several Zelda romhacks, but rarely do I finish the full conversions. Just Outlands, Legend of Banjo, and one or two randomizers, the rest have been QOL hacks. So, the fact that I could finish this in one single day and didn't feel like I needed to take a break after a bit of progress really speaks highly of this hack. I would recommend old school Zelda fans who also love Mario to check this out. It's very much worth your time.

[smbhax]

Tetris the Grandmaster 4 (Steam), Tetris (NES, w/ Excel & Hard Drop romhacks), Tetris (GB, w/ Rosy Retrospection romhack)

[the-book-in-the-mirror]

Mary Plays Pokemon Gaia - Part V: A bit more of earthquake plot, Ranger town, fourth gym and big city gangs

More Twitter archiving. I'll be honest, I'm not too satisfied with this later-half of Gaia twitter liveblogging and there's not much I can do to improve it considering the lack of screenshots, but I think it still has its value.

Just to give a clearer timeframe of how much I dragged my feet with this game: the stuff in this part was originally posted June 2022, while the update before this was October 2021.

[Previous Post]

[Original Twitter Thread]

Alright. this update might be a little shallow cause I played this stuff and screenshotted it but since I wasn't feeling too well I didn't comment at the time and took a break from the game. But I think I can still do a satisfactory short rundown:

Before I get back, a short summary of Pokemon Gaia: it's a FRLG romhack which aims to reproduce the feeling of official games rather than trying to do something "darker"/"maturer". Difficulty is slightly harder than an official game at some points.

It's a straightforward pokemon adventure to beat gyms, the league and some ecofascist villains. It features a whole new region, a pokedex up to gen 6 mons, XY mechanics (fairy type + mega evos) and some QoL updates (ex. skipping backtracking at certain plot points).

Last time I posted I had finished the third gym and did a short training session since gyms started getting a little rough. After that, I arrived on Valoon Town and immediately a tremor was felt, which prompts the local Rangers to investigate it.

You go to the area north, to a place called Nemesis Cave, and find another of those big painted ancient walls. The plot is still moving pretty slowly at this point.

The best part of this area gameplay-wise though is that it got a ton of Durants and is really fucking good to train. There is my Excadrill (...still crying over that calm nature) and a good level bump to Charmeleon.

Back to Valoon Town, some of the things the place offers:

- a blue shard move tutor; - a ranger base; - a bug catching contest where you can win even mega stones!!

And then there's the bug type gym. I'll be honest with y'all, I don't remember much how this fight went but I'm guessing Mega Beedrill as rough enough I had to resort to paralyzing. 😬 Mega evos should probably be expected in every gym too.

To get to the next town you need to cross a marsh and OOOOHHH LOOK AT THIS LUCKY EGG

There was a rival fight which I also don't remember well lol sorry. But maybe the lack of screenshots indicates this wasn't too hard. Feel sorry for the guy though. (The building above is a Battle Marsh - more on it later.)

Past the marsh, you get into Telmurk City where you have to deal with a small subplot involving a gang which threatens warehouse employees and whatnot. After beating them you get the Fly HM.

And this is where I'm at. This is the current team. Now that I have Fly I'll probably do some backtracking before exploring Telmurk and moving with the plot.

[paulthebukkit]

Fellas, you miiiight want to check out Kaze’s F3 livestream tomorrow at 2:00 PM EST. I may or may not have been working on a Majora’s Mask romhack for the past 1 and a half years that will finally get a trailer and release after the presentation 👀