Your Dream Game Hackz

[Skykid]

To clarify: Existing games that you would love to see an addition, fix, change, translation or adaptation of the code. This can be anything, from added 2-player modes, new sprites, whatever - but keeping it in the realms of feasible possibility! It's not much fun to imagine stuff that can't be realistically done.


~ Dracula XX / Super Famicom / Wholesale Sprite Replacement ~

After discussing this in the CV miscellanies thread and then playing the opening of Symphony last night, it struck me that Richter in Symphony probably has the greatest handling of all the vampire slayers, but never made it into a classic Akumajo Dracula game.

I'd love to see a SFC hack that replaces the clunky, unwieldy Richter in Dracula XX with the one from Symphony, with all his moves, including that belting run, full screen slide, and various supers.
Even though XX doesn't have great stage design, using that Richter would open the game right up. It might make it easier, but speed running would be great, as the double-tap dash and slide has lots of possibilities. He would also be perfect for fighting the end boss because he can move fast enough to hunt him down on opposite sides of the screen.



~ Illusion City / Complete Translation ~

Really would love a to see a complete translation for this. It's been 70% complete for about five years.



~ Samurai Spirits RPG / Complete Translation ~

As above.



~ Edward Randy: The Cliffhanger / Collision detection & animation fix / Healthbar mod ~

Got a lot of love for Randy, but it's always been a damn shame that it's just that little bit too ropey for its own good. I would kill for a hack that:

- Makes the whipping animation faster. It's too slow, it needs to snap.
- Tightens up the controls to make them more responsive.
- Cleans up the collision detection so everything registers as it should, and perhaps add more obvious hit sparks.
- Give the game proper health bars instead of that HP crap! For both Randy and the bosses, so you can actually see what's going on at a glance.

[DJ Incompetent]

Gradius 3 PS2's Edit Mode.

Add stage packs of all other hori games. Similar to Pinball FX/Pinball Arcade.

[BIL]

SOTN Alucard + a linear series of levels expressly designed to kill him if you don't exploit his massive potential for attack, evasion and counterattack. SOTN is a first-rate sidescroller engine in a second-rate Metroid knockoff (albeit a painfully beautiful one with a mesmerising soundtrack).

edit: It actually exists, but I'll plug BRUTAL DOOM here as it's a DOOM fan's dream come through. Anyone who ever loved the original games needs to play them with this mod right now. Raw power. Had this screaming bloodbath appeared in 1993 Joe Lieberman would've shat his Depends. Violently!

[Mischief Maker]

Cho Ren Sha 68K:

Autofire, natch. My X-Arcade works by emulating keyboard input so joy2key is not an option

Jamestown:

Replace the muddled shield/super-mode item drop chaining system with the Reflect/collect gold system of Giga Wing.

PriZhm:

Make all bullets graze-able to supercharge your shots ala. Twin Seeds DX, not just specific elemental ones. It would make the dangerous overheating system come into play way more often.

Mountain of Faith:

Fix the goddamn scoring system. How could Zun leave this game broken? It's the best-looking shmup he's ever made.

Here's some minor mods I've already made to some of my shmups:

Solid State Survivor

Cleaned up the bullet sprites to make them stand out more. Not as successful as I'd hoped.

Replaced the crappy .ogg soundtrack with tracks from Jets 'n Guns. Playing Stage 5 with Hero blaring in the background is epic.

Patriot Dark

Replaced the crappy .ogg soundtrack with tracks from Total Annihilation. The Intro Theme makes for excellent boss music.

[D]

It has been possible for a while now to play 3D games on emulators ps1/ps2 for instance with special wide screen hacks.
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-PCSX2-Wi ... es?page=59
But it is also possible on real hardware. Here´s the thread for real ps2 hardware:
http://psx-scene.com/forums/f19/ps2-wid ... ndex8.html
I have played some of my ps2 games in 16:9 on my ps2 console:
-Sega Rally Championship 1995
-Battle Gear 3
-Virtua Tennis
-The King of Route 66
-Enthusia
It is great, super easy, recommended.
I think that even arcade hardware can be hacked to display in 16:9 Naomi, etc.

[dunpeal2064]

Metal Black: I would love to re-work the bonus round and make it less random. Maybe in the vein of the 3D stages in the original Contra or something. I like the quirkyness they were going for, so I wouldn't want to remove it completely.

Gun Frontier: The last boss... I would just replace it with a nice, difficult boss. Having only 3 shots to make it in between all these random moving walls... feels more like a redemption game than a shmup.

I love how artsy and different Taito made these games, but those little quirks just break the flow of the game imo.


Great topic!

[Skykid]

SOTN Alucard + a linear series of levels expressly designed to kill him if you don't exploit his massive potential for attack, evasion and counterattack.

Ohgodyesplease. Or the same for SOTN Richter.

~ Earnest Evans / Sprite Replacement / General fixing ~

Only because the character in the cutscenes and art is so damn cool and the MCD music is tops, it would be a shame to waste the vibe completely. Just the following pretty plz:

- Get rid of that monkey sprite and replace him with the Ed Randy sprite. Palette swap to match.
- Make the whip animation 1 or 2 frames max
- Fix the collision detection
- Make the health bars work with proper segmented damage instead of randomly draining
- Weight the character and use a proper knockback animation instead of sending him cartwheeling
- Implement a proper crawl (like Castlevania IV)

[trap15]

Daioh:

• Add Bakraid chaining
• Change colors
• Other cool stuff

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

G-Darius
[*]Campaign/all stages mode

EDIT: newfags cant bulletpoint

[gameoverDude]

Nightmare in the Dark (Neo-Geo)
- Replace the hit points system with individual lives. Instead of losing a hit point and otherwise having the game proceed almost as if nothing happened, have the character die and get sent back to the starting point like Zupapa, Bubble Memories/Symphony, etc. Same can be said for Chaos Field or 1944.

The King of Fighters '95:
- Lower the damage in general. I've always felt this one had the damage a bit too high relative to others in the KOF series.

Viewpoint, Pulstar, Blazing Star
- Cave-style autofire on the C button.

Street Fighter I
- All characters playable, even if it means the brick chop bonus stage would have to go (replacing it with a SFII style barrel stage wouldn't be bad). SF1 could use many tweaks- namely the more forgiving special move timing from SFII, a combo system, etc. Actually, "complete overhaul" would be a fair summary.

Brandish 4
- A full translation. There's a WIP patch out there but it's still got a LONG way to go.

[gabe]

Segagaga in the Queen's English! A translation project is underway, but it's been almost a year since they have posted anything new on their blog. I'm really hoping this project sees the light of day.



This one might be breaking the rules a bit, but I'd really like to see a proper port/hack of Silent Scope that uses a Wii-mote to aim. None of the home ports to date have used a light gun, because the arcade game did not use a light gun... Rather a gun mounted on a giant joystick. The Wii-mote seems perfectly tailored to fix this problem.

[Skykid]

Segagaga in the Queen's English!

Damn yes, good one!

Street Fighter I
- All characters playable

^ Purely for the lulz, this should have been done by now.

Another for the translating pile:

~ Shadowrun Mega CD ~



Plz finish!

[Battlesmurf]

~ Edward Randy: The Cliffhanger / Collision detection & animation fix / Healthbar mod ~

Got a lot of love for Randy, but it's always been a damn shame that it's just that little bit too ropey for its own good. I would kill for a hack that:

- Makes the whipping animation faster. It's too slow, it needs to snap.
- Tightens up the controls to make them more responsive.
- Cleans up the collision detection so everything registers as it should, and perhaps add more obvious hit sparks.
- Give the game proper health bars instead of that HP crap! For both Randy and the bosses, so you can actually see what's going on at a glance.

I have to co-sign this one. The controls, whipping, and collision detection keep the game from being something truly special o.o

[gameoverDude]

Segagaga in the Queen's English! A translation project is underway, but it's been almost a year since they have posted anything new on their blog. I'm really hoping this project sees the light of day.



This one might be breaking the rules a bit, but I'd really like to see a proper port/hack of Silent Scope that uses a Wii-mote to aim. None of the home ports to date have used a light gun, because the arcade game did not use a light gun... Rather a gun mounted on a giant joystick. The Wii-mote seems perfectly tailored to fix this problem.

Actually, the Xbox Silent Scope Complete supports the Mad Catz Blaster or the Konami Silent Scope Light Rifle (which is also great for Xbox HotD 3 and has a pump reloader). I'm surprised Konami hasn't jumped on the Move bandwagon with this.

A few others I thought of:

Quartet (SMS): Since the SMS version is not the arcade game, I wouldn't mind seeing it hacked into an arcade port. The arcade BGM is already in the existing cart and could be reused. Sega should've done this as a 2M cart based on the arcade "Quartet 2". Another story entirely, but Sega missed an opportunity to bring Quartet to the Genesis when they had the 4-way multitap.

Shinobi (SMS): One hit kills, but just touching an enemy would do no damage (like the arcade). One sad omission in the cart is that some of the BGM has been dropped. The home version has a really lame ass ending- yep, just GAME OVER on a black screen. The arcade one has a text epilogue, at least. Sega should have done this in 4M.

Rolling Thunder 2 (arcade): An extended version with the Genesis' extra three stages.

Rolling Thunder 3 (Genesis): Basically what Sega had done to Fantasy Zone II when they had M2 make a System 16 version. In this case the remake could go to Namco System 2 or NB-1. It could be done as a 2-player game, with the unlockable character Ellen being put on the 2P side. The vehicle stages could be ditched and replaced with two new ones.

Final Fight (arcade): A total conversion hack based on SFC Final Fight 2, but with jacked up enemy counts. Shame there wasn't an X68000 version of FF2.

edit- fixed typo

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Thunder Force II: Remove overhead stages and it would actually be playable.
Darius Gaiden: Remove black hole bombs + all regular bomb sub-levels and use the powerup system from the original Darius.

[Gespenst]

Front Mission 2 and Front Mission Alternative in full English; it's still in WIP phase (it's just started for FMA) though; although for now the English patch only supports Greatest Hits/History (re-release) version only: http://frontmission.info/

As well as English patch for Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness (NDS).

[shmuppyLove]

Nightmare in the Dark (Neo-Geo)
- Replace the hit points system with individual lives. Instead of losing a hit point and otherwise having the game proceed almost as if nothing happened, have the character die and get sent back to the starting point like Zupapa, Bubble Memories/Symphony, etc.

I've played the shit out of this game, and let me tell you, getting hit is enough of a penalty. You lose ALL your buffs AND your multiplier. This will seriously fuck up your score potentional, not only because of the multiplier, but without at least the Speed Up (blue potion), it's a lot harder to pick up all the diamonds after one-shot clearing a stage.

And also, if you're playing for score, you generally aren't picking up a lot of items during stages. There is some milking during boss fights that can help, but the random nature of item drops can be a real bitch and cost you millions in the end.

Actually that might be one thing that could be 'fixed' -- make the item drops somehow not random. Like killing a certain number of mobs with a shot drops a specific item.

[Skykid]

~ Crows: The Battle Action ~

Why go to all the trouble of making those nice graphics, when a few simple tweaks would have sorted the whole game out.

- Make all characters selectable from start
- Fix that infuriating paper thin collision detection
- Allow characters to walk while holding objects
- Give the custom combos some proper inputs instead of a single button press
- Give each character a basic tap combo rather than one cheesy punch

[emphatic]

Hacha Mecha Fighter - Add point extends and rank control, Yagawa style. It already has boss milking, medalling and bat shit crazy rank. With point extends and the ability to control rank this would be the best horizontal shmup ever.

[Skykid]

~ Zed Blade / Add Visible Hitbox! ~

Not for the whole ship, just for the lower portion. It would make hugging the floor without crashing so much more straightforward. My stage 1 restartitis on this is painful, I tap just 1 pixel too far and boom.

[Rupert H]

Stunt Race FX/Wild Trax.

Full screen. 60fps.

That is all.

[powersoul]

B wings: increase movement window to fit the entire game field, replace stage 29 boss powerup to JUMP so you don't get stuck there for an eternity

[Skykid]

Stunt Race FX/Wild Trax.

Full screen. 60fps.

That is all.

Lol yes! Actually, I think SR has been successfully overclocked, although squeezing 60fps out of it may require a hardsoldered pentium processor or something.

[Rupert H]

Yeah, I've seen the trickery but I've never looked into obtaining a copy.

[BIL]

R-Gear (unreleased + unfinished 2D Rayforce sequel on F3 hardware): would be awesome to get a dump of this someday, if one exists. Even just the one stage seen in youtube videos looks like loads of fun. I actually like Raystorm, a lot, but god I hate that this game never came out.

[null1024]

Stunt Race FX/Wild Trax.

Full screen. 60fps.

That is all.

Lol yes! Actually, I think SR has been successfully overclocked, although squeezing 60fps out of it may require a hardsoldered pentium processor or something.

It would require some recoding. You could clock the chip high enough, and it won't fry, but the game becomes unstable past a certain point.
60fps on all SuperFX games would be amazing though.

Woah, look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AMFP2Kj ... ure=relmfu
SuperFX clocked at 44MHz, look how smooth that is. Yes, it's not Stunt Race FX, but StarFox had the worst framerate ever, apart from unplayable things like Race Drivin [which had no HW acceleration].

[D]

There´s Drakon´s SF2CE hacks which I recommend
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... rcade+hack

I too would like to see SMS Shinobi altered, made more brutal. I´d say double the enemies. The gameplay is great and very responsive and controlable, so we could do with more enemiez. That and make Shinobi wear a black outfit and some more subtle color swaps.
Hack SNES Castlevania IV to include more Tarzan like sections where you use your whip as a means to tarzan wour way through levels.

you should be able to tarzan from one of these rings, whip an enemy then whip again to cling onto the next ring. That and make his outfit blue.

[Skykid]

~ Ane San / Improved Mechanics ~

I don't think there's anyone that would doubt the instant attraction of a Japanese lesbian beat-em-up, but this one really needs fixing to make it playable.

- More moves
- Rebalancing the damage
- Rebalancing your power to be more effective later on
- Getting an alternative to all that hair pulling
- When you fling enemies across the screen you should be able to juggle them on the rebound



~ Kaze Kiri / Complete Overhaul ~

A game with so much potential, so utterly wasted. It shouldn't be allowed!



- New backgrounds, instead of recycling the same boring one fifty times. Anything to differentiate one section to the next would be amazing.
- Reduce the stages from 19 to 11. 11 would still be boring but 19 is sleep inducing.
- Obstacles. Anything instead of empty walking left and right. A box. A stone. Anything you can jump over. Please.
- Weapon pickups, anything to spice up the action.
- NEW ENEMIES. Even if you have to palette swap bosses and reduce their health right down. The monotony of the adversaries really kills this game, amongst other things.
- When you throw one enemy into another, they should collide. This is basically a flaw.
- Enemy recovery time after taking a hit (invincibility) should be removed entirely (why is this even here?) because it lasts for way too long and slows down an already painfully repetitive game.
- Add a scoring system??
- Better collision detection.
- Make things that fall from above - arrows, stones - actually be able to hit you, so you have to, you know, dodge them n' stuff?
- Let us at least press 'up' on the d-pad during the wall scaling, instead of just spectating. It's the only part of the game that isn't identical to everything else, and we can't even take part.
- Stop showing us open doorways that we can't enter.
- Improved controls and responsiveness, so you don't struggle to get a move out and end up doing the wrong one.
- Scrapping the entire enemy quota system. It's totally dumb because you can exploit it to regenerate health and cherry pick all the weaker enemies until the quota is filled. Worst idea ever, especially as you can stand in one spot and just let them come to you. To remedy this, you would also need to disallow the option of being able to walk backward and forward freely through the stage.
- Make your projectiles stronger (and stop every enemy from blocking them) so it means more when you're forced to use one. It takes off a little of your life, which is a good idea, but they have no purpose because they're weak and superficial.
- Make the alternate character Suzu more than just a tiny sprite adjustment and give the chick some of her own moves!
- Beat the shit out of clueless people like this for writing reviews saying Kaze Kiri "definitely ranks as one of the best PC Engine games ever made."

[Mortificator]

ActRaiser - US version's difficulty for the action sequences and Japanese for the simulations.

Contra III - All stages and bosses faced at all difficulties.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Restore Sonic 3's final boss.

Every Gradius game that lacks it - Selecting speed-up when at maximum drops you down to initial speed.

Gradius III - Extra Edit with stage select, since the PS2 verson only lets you select one or the other.

Final Fight - Three players.

Armored Warriors and maybe other Capcom brawlers - Increase the amount of punishment player characters can withstand. It's OK to lower the number of lives to compensate.

I'd really like to see a proper port/hack of Silent Scope that uses a Wii-mote to aim. None of the home ports to date have used a light gun, because the arcade game did not use a light gun... Rather a gun mounted on a giant joystick. The Wii-mote seems perfectly tailored to fix this problem.

Actually, the Xbox Silent Scope Complete supports the Mad Catz Blaster or the Konami Silent Scope Light Rifle (which is also great for Xbox HotD 3 and has a pump reloader). I'm surprised Konami hasn't jumped on the Move bandwagon with this.

You can also play the PS2 ports of the games with a USB mouse. Not as cool as a positional rifle, but probably at least as good as the Wii remote.

[null1024]

Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Restore Sonic 3's final boss.

Look for Sonic 3 Complete.

All the levels, Big Arm back as Sonic 3's final boss, and a few little tweaks that make it the definitive version of S3&K. I haven't played the original Sonic 3 and Knuckles in ages because of that hack. There's also a customizer for what tweaks you want [IIRC, Big Arm is by default enabled, but I customized my version, so I don't know how much it differs from the stock release.]

Best Sonic romhack ever, except for maybe Sonic 2 Heroes or Sonic 1&2.