ROM Hacks for Retro Games #1 – Restorations, Fan Translations and More! / MY LIFE IN GAMING
Over the past few years we’ve seen some
truly impressive creations come out of the ROM hacking scene. Whether you wish to force feed Sonic the Hedgehog
onion rings til he can no longer move… experience Mega Man 2 through the eyes of the Angry Video
Game Nerd… or simply remix a game that you’ve played a million times, there's surely more
hacks out there than any sane person has time for. To tell you the truth, I really don’t have
much interest in those types of hacks. Sure, they’re novel but in most cases I
get really bored very quickly. On the flipside, I’ve found myself more
invested in hacks that have a more utilitarian purpose. Y’know, hacks that incorporate updated features
or optimize certain aspects to make a game more playable or in some cases, more tolerable.
Oftentimes, these sorts of hacks are pushed
to the wayside because they aren’t exactly flashy, controversial, or ridiculous. So, I thought it would be fun to shine a light
on some of the more useful hacks that I’ve discovered, and I think are well worth checking
out. [ MUSIC: “Principle” by Matt McCheskey
] [ Music: The Granstream Saga ] Game hacks are hugely popular these days. Sites like ROMHACKING.NET add content daily…but
not all of it is what I’d consider “good.” In my quest to find hacks that skew closer
to a game’s original vision, I’m sure that I’ll miss plenty of really good original
efforts, but hopefully I’ll be able to show you something that interests you.
For all intents and purposes, the cartridge
hacks featured in this episode should be playable on original hardware using a flash cart like
an EverDrive, or via jailbroken firmware on the Analogue FPGA consoles. Cartridge based game hacks are designed to
be applied to ROMs using an IPS patcher such as Lunar IPS. CD-based consoles will need to be modified
so that they can play burned backup discs, or with an optical drive emulator. Games on disc media are much bigger and more
complex, so they’re usually more difficult to deal with and use a variety of different
patchers, with the main one I’ve seen being XDelta. I’m not going to be getting into the nitty-gritty
of applying these patches here, so if you see something here that interests you, you
might have to put in some additional legwork of your own to get them up and running. Granted, you might be able to find pre-hacked
versions if you don’t want to get into that stuff, but it's up to you to find ‘em. When a game makes the jump from one region
to another, many times there's a laundry list of changes that come with it.
But, one of the coolest things about a ROM
hack is that we’re able to compile those changes, take notes, and build a perceived
“best” version of a game. From graphics, to sound, to difficulty and
beyond. This was especially true when it came to Nintendo
games, who were famous for removing imagery that they perceived as controversial in the
west. Some of the more obvious examples of this
are the Castlevania games, where crosses and other religious iconography were tweaked or
omitted completely. These kinds of restoration hacks are pretty
common on the NES, where many hacks to exist to solely put these minor tweaks back in. Gargoyle's Quest II had a number of demonic
references removed. But that’s not to say that Nintendo was
the only one to dole out this type of censorship. In Streets of Rage 2 on the Genesis, there
were a few extremely minor graphical changes made to various animations and other details.
Despite being barely noticeable, these alterations
were reinstated in a Decensored Restoration. [ Game Audio ] COLOR RESTORATIONS are kind of an expansion
on this overall idea. These hacks are all about tweaking a game’s
color usage to match closer to the source material. Many times this is completely inconsequential,
but people might prefer them nonetheless. Ghostbusters on the Genesis has a hack that
does nothing more than make the uniform colors tan instead of white in an effort to make
it look closer to the source material. Revenge of Shinobi’s restoration is equally
insignificant, making the Spider-man and Batman bosses the color of their comic book counterparts. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on the
Game Boy Advance has a hack that gets rid of the blue glow around Juste Belmont. This originally served the purpose to make
it easier to track him on a system without a lit screen, but it looks so much better
without it.
Many of the best Color Restorations have been
done by a hacker named Gabriel Pyron, who has produced a number of very cool color hacks
for the Genesis and Sega CD. One of my favorites is the Golden Axe Color
Restoration has a less contrasty, more faded to look to it… Although it unfortunately doesn’t make Gilius
Thunderhead’s axe gold like in the arcade game.
Of course, this is just a mere sampling of
Pyron’s work. A number of other standouts like Final Fight
CD which has skin, clothing and background colors altered to look more natural and accurate
to the coin-op original. While we’re on the subject of graphical
tweaks, PlayStation fans who have the ability to play backups of their games should check
out the De-Dither patcher for games on the system. Dithering is the use of alternating patterns,
such as lines or checkerboards, in an attempt to simulate more colors than a game or console
is capable of displaying at one time, and it is especially common on early 3D consoles. The method for hacking out the dithering in
PlayStation games was discovered by Chris Covell, and Shmups.com forum user Cr4zyManz0r
created an extremely easy to use patcher for it – all you have to do is drop a PS1 disc
image file into the .bat file and it’ll generate a patched version! [ Music: Strider 2 ] Probably the biggest jump in quality comes
from Castlevania Chronicles, which is a port of the X68000 reimagining of the first game.
Normally, the PlayStation 1 absolutely butchers
the artwork of the game by applying heavy dithering across EVERYTHING. Removing the dithering makes a world of difference
and almost makes it feel like a brand new game. Strider 2 selectively adds dithering from
area to area. It's out of control on the iceberg base section,
especially in the background. Some games already have dithering baked into
the graphics, which can give the impression of a game looking virtually unchanged after
being patched. However, the trade-off for removing dither
is that the PlayStation will render shading as strong bands of color instead. As such, de-dithering is at its best when
used on games that make heavy use of 2D elements.
Final Fantasy Tactics’ use of dithering
is fine for the 3D elements, but the checkerboard pattern across all of the characters is pretty
ugly. Removing the dithering here fixes that, and
the 3D elements don’t suffer at all. So, your mileage may vary from game to game. You’ll just have to try the patch and choose
dithering or no dithering to see what you prefer. If you are curious to learn more about dithering
and how it's used on the PlayStation 1, Displaced Gamers on YouTube has an excellent video on
the subject that is well worth checking out. [ Music: Ys ] Fixing up or restoring audio is a whole other
subgenre of ROM hack that doesn’t get a lot of appreciation, perhaps because it can
be difficult to show the difference.
You’ve really gotta have an idea of what
was wrong with the sound in the first place. Although we didn’t get the FM Sound add-on
module for the Master System here in North America, many games had the coding still on
the cart if you have the hardware to be able to take advantage of it, such as a Power Base
Mini FM or a mod. There are a couple of notable instances where
the code for the FM audio was removed – Phantasy Star and Y’s… I mean Ys: The Vanished Omens. I’ve talked at length about the former,
but the FM sound restoration for Ys brings that soundtrack back into the fold. While I don’t always love FM music renditions
on the Master System, this is one of the few where I’d prefer to play with it on.
[ Game Audio ] There were a number of musical alterations
in Zanac on the NES when it was brought to the US. The general consensus seems to be that the
Japanese Famicom version is slightly better. A music restoration hack puts the Famicom
music into the US version of the game. Back in 2014, a ROM hacker named Rainwarrior
noticed some issues with the overworld and ending music in StarTropics on the NES. Certain notes were glitched, throwing off
the timing of different layers of the mix. Through a simple hack, we’re now able to
hear the music as it was originally composed. Music restoration hacks are especially prevalent
on the Game Boy Advance, where ports of SNES games suffered badly. Since the Game Boy Advance doesn’t have
dedicated sound hardware, these restorations still have that signature fuzzy GBA sound
and don’t quite sound perfectly accurate to the originals, but I’d say that it's
still a nice improvement.
I felt as though Breath of Fire’s sound
restoration was much nicer sounding than the original GBA music. [ Game Audio ] Breath of Fire 2 and several of the Final
Fantasy ports received similar treatment, but it’s hard to say if they truly sound
better or not. [ Game Audio ] An UnDub is a practice of reinstating the
original Japanese voiceover into a game when the English dub just isn’t cutting it. While I felt that it was more of an endearing
quality and fit the atmosphere of the game, a lot of people absolutely despise the English
dub in Grandia on the PlayStation 1. The Undub is for those people in particular,
which restores the original Japanese voices – both in and out of battle. [ Game Audio ] Try has spent a lot of time singing the praises
of Ninja Ryukenden 3 on the Famicom – better known as Ninja Gaiden 3 – The Ancient Ship
of Doom here in North America. As we know, the US version famously upped
the difficulty, not only by adding more enemies and making Ryu’s defenses paper thin , but
also removing the infinite continue system that was a mainstay of the series, as well
as the Japanese version’s new password feature.
It's speculated that changes such as this
were implemented in an effort to combat the video game rental market. But it could also turn a great game into an
exercise in frustration. [ Game Audio ] The
Ninja Gaiden 3 Restored hack revives the deleted passwords and continue system, and ups Ryu’s
defense to align with the Japanese version, all while keeping the enemy placement of the
US version. So while it's not a complete restoration of
the Japanese version’s material, it's better to view it as more of an ultimate version
of the American release. Contra Hard Corps on the Genesis was another
game that saw a steep difficulty increase in localization. While the US version might be the toughest
game in the series outside of Shattered Soldier, the Japanese version is a bit more lenient. Instead of the series staple of one-hit deaths,
the Mega Drive version gives you 3 hit points per life, allowing some wiggle room before
you lose your equipped weapon.
The Hit Point Restoration hack imports this
system into the North American version of the game. Thankfully, this doesn’t break the game,
it just evens the odds for those struggling with the difficulty. [ Game Audio ] While not as severe, even Contra 3 on the
Super NES had some difficulty modifiers incorporated into the US version to make it tougher…
although nothing was quite as extreme as Hard Corps. The Contra 3 Restoration not only gives you
back the unlimited continues of the Japanese version, but also the cheat codes – one of
which allows for 30 lives.
When returning to older generations, you’ll
often hear people say that a game “hasn’t aged well” without taking into account the
time period it was made in, and the limitations that came with it. While I generally don’t have a problem adjusting
to some of the more antiquated features of older games, there’s definitely times when
I’ve found myself wishing for certain minor quality of life improvements or optimizations. Alex Kidd in Miracle World mapped the jump
and attack buttons opposite of what we're accustomed to. The reverse controls hack does nothing more
than assign the buttons as they should be, making it feel more natural. The action-platforming of the early Castlevania
games certainly taught some valuable lessons to those who grew up with them… the first
and foremost of which was committing to your jump… because there was no turning back. Well, that is… until now. The Improved Controls hack for Castlevania
1 and 3 give you the freedom to angle or turn back mid-jump, and to have a tiny bit of control
after taking a hit.
[ Game Audio ] This might betray some of the core challenges
of these early games, but some might find them infinitely more playable now. EarthBound has a rudimentary hack that assigns
menial tasks to buttons so you don’t have to click through several layers of your menu. Now, if you want to talk to someone, you just
walk up to them and press A! One of my favorite Quality of Life hacks is
the integration of a save system, so that you can resume your progress later on. I realize that something like this may seem
silly for people who use emulators armed with save states, but for people like myself who
prefer to play on real hardware whenever possible, I think it's pretty great. Call me weak or whatever, but I’ve always
thought Super Mario 3 was too long if you didn’t use warp whistles, so a save feature
is something that I welcome openly. The Battery hack will save your game after
each level, letting you resume whenever you feel like it. There is no real interface for the game saves,
it just works in the background. If you want to start from the beginning, just
select ERASE at the title screen.
The Master System has a number of great games
that benefit from the addition of a Save hack. Spellcaster, an action game with some graphical
adventure segments is fairly lengthy and has a 24 character password that was especially
tough to, uh, REMEVER, when you had to write it down. A save hack lets you load from the last time
you called down a password from the heavens. Compile’s Golvellius has a password style
save system consisting of THIRTY TWO characters you have to input. This Save hack automatically generates a save
every time you visit Winkle, who is placed around the map in various caves.
Finally, for the Wonder Boy 3 fans out there,
the Master System version has a SRAM hack that allows you to continue from the last
time you stopped in to see the eye patch pig. [ Game Audio ] [ Music: Metroid ] Although influential, the original Metroid
doesn’t exactly sit high on my replay list. Sure, it's pretty cool to see the beginnings
of the series, but the quality of life additions to the sequels made them infinitely more replayable. If only we could take the luxuries of Metroid
2 and Super Metroid and retrofit them for the first game. [ Music: Metroid ] The Metroid Plus Saving hack gives you the
ability to save your game instead of writing down a massive password each time you were
ready to call it a day. At the bare minimum, this sounds enticing…
but the way these save files are presented feels incredibly natural and authentic. Whenever you die, you’ll be given the option
to save your game which is nice…but remember that you’ll always be revived with just
30 health and completely drained energy tanks, same as the original.
However, you preserve your current energy
levels by saving manually. To do so, pause your game and press up and
A on a second controller. I just wish there was a slightly different
implementation, because this isn’t exactly convenient. An equally, if not more important addition
to this hack is the mini map that appears when you press start. I’ve always felt that the original Metroid
is much harder to find your way through because of how rooms tend to repeat and how vertical
shafts go on forever. This does a lot to alleviate getting lost
and setting a destination, but don’t expect a Super Metroid level of integration. You’re given the entire map of Planet Zebes
right off the bat, it's pretty small on screen meaning you’ll have to do a lot of scrolling
if you want to plan out specific route to explore.
To top it off, it's not filled in or colored
differently to show where you’ve been already, which might limit it's overall usefulness. That's not to say that all of these hacks
have to have some grand mission statement. Sometimes it's tiny additions and tweaks that
make for a more interesting experience, which might be a good way to replay some old favorites. For instance, myself and a handful of Altered
Beast fans out there might think it's fun to play the Genesis version with the arcade
voices hacked in. [ Game Audio ] Maybe you just want Lightening Force to be
called by it's real name, Thunder Force IV? [ Game Audio ] Chris Covell’s work in progress conversion
of the TG-16 version of R-Type to the more powerful SuperGrafx hardware is pretty cool
to see.
It gets rid of the slowdown, sprite flicker
and increases the vertical resolution. Although it currently only works up until
level 4, I’m excited to see this get completed one day. [ Music: Mega Man VII ] Let’s face it: no discussion about ROM hacking
would be complete without Fan Translations. When the community surrounding a game comes
together, great things happen and many of these localizations are proof of that. Although it received a full English release,
the Mega Man 7’s Restoration has a completely new fan translation while also reincorporating
minor content cut from the US release, such as post-boss conversations with Auto or Roll. Although the translation isn’t exactly wonderful
with several grammar mistakes, Mega Man fans will undoubtedly will see a lot of value here. To a much greater extent, Dynamite Headdy
had its story elements almost completely gutted and a bunch of specific graphical and difficulty
elements adjusted. A Delocalization corrects this, and has all
of the story elements fully translated to English. In the Japanese version you also start you
with two continues – a welcome reprieve in this deceptively difficult game.
[ Game Audio ] Assault Suit Valken, or as we know of it in
the USA, Cybernator, has a complete fan retranslation which restores all kinds of stuff, such as
character portraits and missing story elements. Do-Re-Mi Fantasy was one of the great SNES
platformers that never released in the west. When it was released on the Wii Virtual Console,
it was kind of a big deal. But as was typical of most Imports on the
VC, it was left completely untranslated – which might make the game’s progression confusing
for newcomers who may not know they need to collect certain items in every level.
A fan translation for a game like this is
almost a given, considering the minimal amount of text here. [ Game Audio ] And then theres the RPGs. The RPG fan community has worked tirelessly
since the early days of ROM hacking. Chances are, if a game is pretty decent…
there’s gonna be a Fan Translation for it. [ Music: Trials of Mana ] Although it's probably obvious, the Super
Nintendo has the greatest wealth of fan translated projects – mainly due to the output of quality
titles by Enix and Squaresoft in particular. My first experiences with Final Fantasy 5
and Seiken Densetsu 3 came from these sorts of projects and while these both – finally
– have official translations, there are an absolute ton of great games that still have
never been localized… Chief among these are Bahamut Lagoon and Treasure
of the Rudras.
Both are late gen Super Famicom releases that
we somehow missed out on, with Square choosing to localize Capcom’s Breath of Fire instead. Speaking of which, the Breath of Fire II Re-Translation
project is a must for anyone that suffered through one of the worst official translations
that I can think of it. In fact this is much more than just a “Re-Translation,”
it adds all kinds of new AV elements like an all new opening. Although, I do wish you could turn off the
status screen background though… [ Music: Ys V ] Ys fans should check out the Aeon Genesis’s
translation of Ys V: Kefin, Lost Kingdom of Sand. This Super Famicom exclusive entry is the
only year of Adol’s journeys to still have no western release of any kind, which sorta
makes a must play despite not being all that well regarded in the series as a whole.
On the PC-Engine Super CD ROM, Ys IV: Dawn
of Ys received an absolutely incredible fan translation that went as far as getting voice
actors to dub the cutscenes! [ Game Audio ] Although Ys: Memories of Celceta may have
rendered the story in this release obsolete, the effort here shouldn’t be ignored. It's still well worth checking out for fans
who enjoy the bump style gameplay of Ys 1 and 2. Even the Saturn has been getting in on the
fan translation action lately. Although we were lucky to get Shining Force
III as the Saturn was on its deathbed, the sad fact is that it's a woefully incomplete
story. In Japan, there were two scenarios that followed
up on and fleshed out the story and world. Both of these have since then been fully translated
to English! The newest Saturn fan translation release
is Linkle Liver Story, an action RPG that was Nextech’s follow up to their 16-bit
Zelda-like Crusader of Centy. Unfortunately, there just doesn’t seem to
be nearly as many translations for CD based games in general. On the PlayStation 1, the best effort that
I’ve come across is Phantasian Productions’ translation of the Tales of Phantasia remake.
This is generally considered the definitive
version of the game, with more content, animated cutscenes, and more. There are a decent number of Japanese games
that were fully localized to English and released in PAL territories, but not in North America. Thankfully, many of these official translations
have been patched for 60hz playback on NTSC consoles. [ Music: Terranigma ] Of these the one that I’d most recommend
playing is Terranigma, which along with Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, make up Quintet’s
legendary Gaia trilogy. What a travesty it was that this game was
never brought to North America, but at least it was fully translated to English for a PAL
release.
This is, without a doubt, one of the top 5
Super NES games that we missed out on. The other big one is Treasure’s boss rush
run and gun, Alien Soldier – long considered one of the most impressive games on the Mega
Drive, with huge sprites and tons of action on screen. In the US, Alien Soldier was only released
on the Sega Channel service originally, but has made appearances in various collections
since. But if you wanted to play on original hardware,
you can instead play a 60hz patched version of the PAL release. [ Game Audio ] Sometimes something a bit more extreme is
warranted.
Some hacks go all the way, combining different
facets of Restorations, Delocalizations, and Quality of Life hacks to give a game a more
thorough makeover. Now, I’m an unabashed fan of Working Designs
– the game publisher responsible for localizing a number of relatively obscure Japanese titles
for systems like the Turbo Grafx, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn. But for all of the interesting things they
did before shutting down in 2005, their translations and their tweaking of various aspects of the
games they published is… well, pretty divisive to put it lightly.
[ Game Audio ] From 90s pop culture humor to upping the difficulty
in extreme ways… there’s a large contingent of people that absolutely loathe what they
did to certain games. Enter the Un-Worked Designs. [Music: Lunar 2: Eternal Blue ] These hacks were created by ROMhacking.net
forum user Supper, which undoes most of the changes by Working Designs, and reverts them
back to their Japanese counterparts… except for their signature translations. These restoration hacks are available for
a range of their releases, from the Turbografx-16 CD to the PlayStation 1. Each game specific download includes the necessary
pieces to patch a disc image either automatically or manually However, I’ll be honest here. It took a lot of trial and error to get MOST
of these to work right. Depending on how your disc image is ripped,
things might not go smoothly.
Some games were more heavily altered by Working
Designs than you might’ve realized. The most heavily affected were both Lunar:
The Silver Star and its sequel Lunar: Eternal Blue. While the first game increased the stats of
some bosses, the second game buffs all enemies across the board significantly and makes the
game pretty challenging. Returning these factors to normal makes things
a lot more fun, but not too easy. But, the biggest change is one that I think
everyone who has ever played the Sega CD version of Lunar 2 can agree on being awful and that’s
the use of having to spend magic points to save your game.
Why this decision was made is beyond me, and
combined with the increased difficulty, makes the game exceptionally grueling in the early
parts. The Un-Worked Designs patch reverts these
tweaks. But not all changes to these games were underneath
the hood. You’ve probably noticed the use of upper
and lowercase letters in the patched version, which is much more aesthetically pleasing
than the all caps screaming of the originals. In addition, some previously censored content
has been restored. But I must say that there is one particular
disappointment for me with this version of Lunar 2 – the removal of the Star Dragon Tower
music, which in my opinion remains one of the best final dungeon themes of all time.
[ Game Audio ] But I’ll gladly take the loss of this track
as a trade off for the save and difficulty restoration. [ Music: Popful Mail ] Working Design’s other Sega CD games, Vay
and Popful Mail, don’t have quite as elaborate “UnWorkings” but are nonetheless worth
checking out. Both games have restored enemy and character
stats in addition to bringing item costs back in line with their Japanese counterparts. Popful Mail in particular becomes much easier
as a result, which might not be to everyone’s liking, but I think it's a bit more fun and
breezy this way. Cosmic Fantasy 2, Exile, and Exile Wicked
Phenomenon on the Turbografx-16 CD has some censored content restored, and enemy health
brought back to match their Japanese versions.
However, this is where I ran into the biggest
snag… I couldn’t apply the patches to my disc
images no matter what I tried. Hey, at least it doesn’t seem like we missed
out on too much with these. Even some of the 32-bit releases were given
the UnWorked Designs treatment. Magic Knight Rayearth on the Saturn has enemy
stats and speed restored. Both Lunar Complete games also have many changes
compared to their Japanese releases, but much less work was needed to restore them compared
to the Sega CD games. Most of it comes down to stats and money tweaks. As of the time of this video, there’s been
very little progress on the project in the past two years, so it’s hard to say whether
or not these will ever be finished completely. Perhaps someone can pick up and carry the
torch, because I’m sure there’s a decent number of people who would like to see the
PS1 version of Silhouette Mirage get Un-Worked! When the Game Boy Color released in 1998,
one of the most exciting early releases was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX,
an enhanced version of the black and white Game Boy classic, now featuring excellent
use of color.
While Nintendo would go on to colorize a handful
other Game Boy games with GBC-specific features, it never really became a major trend. This is one area where the ROM hacking community
has been able to step in to give us what Nintendo never did. [ Game Audio ] A popular more recent Game Boy color update
is the Super Mario Land DX patch by toruzz. This is much more than a basic colorization,
with many of the sprites and backgrounds having been updated to mesh better with a fully colored
world. Extra flourishes like gradients use the Game
Boy Color hardware in a way that makes Super Mario Land look almost a step beyond what
you’d expect from an 8-bit game. However, the most notable drawback is that
this very ambitious coat of new paint does seem to strain the hardware a bit, and scrolling
is oftentimes not as smooth as the original version. Some might not notice this choppiness, but
it is also present in toruzz’s popular Super Mario Land 2 DX patch, which was actually
released first. [ Game Audio ] Super Ghouls’n Ghosts on the SNES was a
flawed but decent follow up to Ghouls’n Ghosts.
The biggest problem by far was the extreme
slowdown which cropped up at even the slightest bit of stress on the system. For many people, this did irreparable damage
to the series name and reputation. It was discovered years later that it actually
stemmed from a programming error buried deep within the code. Decades after it's release, the Super Ghouls’n
Ghosts Restoration hack patches the bit of errant code that causes the slowdown, while
also bringing back the censored demonic names and religious imagery. The difference can be felt from early in the
first stage, making this pretty much the ultimate version of the game and may do a lot to repair
your views on the game. [ Game Audio ] I still think Ghouls ’n Ghosts on the Genesis
is way better though. Anyway, does this mean that the slowdown in
a lot of the early Super NES games were due to a programming error? Noooo, no no.
Let’s not kid ourselves – slowdown on the
system was a very real problem… but one Brazillian ROM hacker is going to great extents
to fix this in some of the early Super NES games. [ Music: Gradius 3 ] One of the most interesting projects to get
a lot of attention this past year is Vitor Vilela’s Gradius III SA1 hack which applies
Nintendo’s enhancement chip that was used in games like Kirby Super Star and Super Mario
RPG to offload the heavy lifting from the SNES’s CPU. The results are incredibly impressive. Even the slightest hint of slowdown is gone,
even when the screen fills up with bubbles on level 2. Since the slowdown gives you more reaction
time, chances are that this version of the game is going to be significantly more difficult
for most players. Diehard fans though, they’re gonna eat this
up and have probably already been playing it since it's release. A much less talked about SA1 conversion that
Vitor has been working on is for Super Mario World. [ Game Audio ] You’re probably thinking, “What? Why?” and yeah, improvements aren’t nearly
as apparent here, but when you really start looking for slowdown in Mario World, you might
be surprised how often you find it.
I never noticed it…and I’m not sure I’ll
eve able to UN-see it now. I also never knew that the circle out at the
end of a level was slowing down. Whether you think it's worthwhile or pointless,
the work that Vitor Vilela is doing is paving the way for even more SA1 hacks, and I can’t
wait to see what’s next! The world of video game hacks is super expansive,
there’s so many of them out there. Although it seems like the stupid or bad hacks
get all the spotlight these days, there's still a ton of people out there working on
more… subtle hacks like the ones I’ve shown here that improve upon or fix certain
aspects of some of our favorite games. How cool is that these features are even possible? And that they’re playable on real hardware
to boot? I want you to know that the people that play
and enjoy these hacks truly appreciate the work that you’re doing, and that it's not
going unnoticed..
