Super Nintendo Hacks

[Rita Seliba]

Whilethe homebrew scene is still pretty nascent, with the SNES's strong library of classic titles, there have been a lot of hacks and patches made to alter and improve some of the old favourites and inject some life into the machine.

I've heard of these Randomizers and have always been curious, but never pulled the trigger. Are they "truly random" or is there some intelligence involved in where items can end up? If everything's just strewn about as if swept by a tornado, that sounds rather tedious... but I suppose there's only one way to truly find out. Mega Man X would be the perfect game for me to bite into, since I got it for my birthday way back in 1994. I know it inside & out. I'll give it a shot when I get a chance!

- Thought you were a boss at the original Mega Man X? Think again, chump! Mega Man X - Hard Type will knock you over, kick you while you're down, then throw a barrage of in..er, I mean, exceptional SNES hypotheticals and numberwang often seen in AtariAge threads, bringing you to the brink of insanity... It's truly terrifying stuff.

Although this appears to be yet another horrible licensed platformer, it's actually kind of unique and worth a play. Anyway, as released the game's graphics are way too dark and lack contrast, so this palette hack improves things a lot.

Crucial patch for this somewhat underrated game (great graphics and excellent soundtrack)! It's an action/adventure game with a large area to explore and stuff to figure out... and yet, the game has no way to save your progress (not even passwords). If you know what you're doing, the game can be completed in a couple of hours, but that would require many many attempts to figure it out, starting over from the beginning each time. Anyway, this hack adds a save feature.

This completely overhauls the game. It removes the stamina bar system, adds a day/night cycle, and incorporates a bunch of other fixes and stuff. A fun way to revisit a fondly remembered but janky game.

I've attempted a few runs and it can get pretty wild depending on the options you select. As a for instance of how much it can change if you let it, I once had a run where my X-Buster was about as effective as colourful language and slower than molasses in January when I faced right, but was absolutely brokenly powerful while facing left. It can get very, very granular with the changes, but it's also configurable if you want to manage the chaos.

Good call, wonder if Inceptional will be able to resist seeing what's going on here, narcissist and all. That Yoshi fix alone makes that game dramatically more tolerable not hearing that crying alone, and yikes that's utterly huge what Star Fox got added.

I know the rom is pinched for space, but it has been done, yet why not released I have no idea, but DOOM did get that fix someone did that Randy approved of which changed a tiny piece of code which really raised the FPS meter on the title, largely plays at 50FPS so PAL players get a smooth experience and a nice steep increase on the NTSC side too, also applicable to the JP release where you can pick whatever episode you want too without screwing with the difficulty.

Personally I've always wanted someone to do a proper Act Raiser hack or series. The game is fantastic, the sequel removed what made that one fun and found ways to make it worse at the same time. The junk game a few years back to honor it sol serpah is terrible, and the official one has some terrible flaws of adding where it shouldn't which makes the game drag. I'd just love to see another chapter of the series, OG game engine, new levels, new towns, something fresh.

I like all the hacks the add FastROM support, such as the Gradius one that removes almost all the slowdown from the games other than in the most intense sections where the whole screen is full of enemies and bullets and loads of large poppable bubbles in the most extreme example, which almost turns it into a completely different game to play. Same with the ones for Contra III (also restores cheats), Super Castlevania IV (also adds the red blood and crosses back in), Super Ghouls n Ghosts (also allows storing of weapons and quick weapon selection with L and R), and even Super R-Type (makes a big difference to how it feels just like the Gradius one). There's also the SA1 hacks for most of these same games that take that to the next level and removes all slowdown entirely and really does make them all play sublimely. The one for Super Mario All-Stars that fixes the jumping when you hit blocks in Super Mario Bros. is pretty good too. And I think the ones that add more enemies into games like Turtles in Time and Final Fight 1 and 2 are pretty interesting as well, although they're not polished to basically finished game quality. Some of the ones that have added in MSU1 support are very impressive to see as well, like the recent DuckTales port on SNES for example, which is both awesome to see as a port in and of itself but then twice as cool with the MSU1 cutscenes and audio added in too. All things that have got me interested in the hacking scene around SNES in modern times. The Star Fox EX one is extremely impressive to see how far they've went with that, to the point it almost feels like a full sequel. Next I would like one for Doom that doubles the frame rate using HDMA as the original programmer has talked about, as well as including the one that already lets you properly move-strafe. And, similarly, I would love a full hack of Wolfenstein that restores all the enemies and gore and stuff to how they are in the original game.

I'll have to try that Super Mario All-Stars hack, because my one complaint about that otherwise excellent game is how weird it feels to jump and hit blocks. I haven't played any of hacks that remove slowdown, because I firmly believe that the difficulty for those games was tuned with slowdown in mind. It's still very cool that they're out there, though.

Surprisingly, I actually find playing Gradius III easier with the FastROM patch, and it's more fun overall for me now for me too. It went from being a shmup that I know most people thought was great on the system, although I was always mostly just warm on compared to a few others I put at the top of the list, to one I actually think ranks right up there with the best of the generation. And that reminds me that U.N. Squadron has a nice FastROM patch too, which takes what was already possibly my top shump on SNES and polishes it to a shine. There's FastROM patches for so many games now. Even Parodius Da!, which honestly has no meaningful slowdown anyway, has had it added too, and although I've not patched it as I don't actually find it necessary there at all, presumably that just makes it run perfectly for the most part (as a side note, I'm slowly starting to think this might even be my top 16-bit shump). It's great to have the option though, and it seems the list of titles with FastROM patches is ever growing, so that's great. Wouldn't mind it in Pocky & Rocky, which is a brilliant game that suffers from a wee bit of slowdown here and there (not game breaking in the slightest, but it is there), and a little FastROM would sort it right out.

One hack I want that doesn't exist yet is one that adds the balloons and little negotiation scenes from the Genesis version into the SNES version of Theme Park. With that, and I think a couple of other minor QOL improvements I can't recall just now, it would be my version of choice on any of the home consoles. Such an addictive game!

I don't know. While I utterly hate that eargrating sound, it still brings much needed tension and danger to an otherwise cute and cuddly experience. Without the sound, you don't have the same motivation to go get him and oh god, please make it stop.

The main issue with some hacks like the Turtles in Time hack that adds more enemies is that it clearly wasn't tested on real hardware. If you run it on the real thing you get a flickering mess of sprites dropping out, palette corruption issues, and even a slight performance stutter from time to time. In some cases the sprite drop out is so bad you can't even see the player and half the enemies.

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