Hack Showcase: Mega Man 2 Megamix

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Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. I try to stick with games that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, try to show parts later in titles. Some of these i may stream or play on my own.

The Mega Man 2 Megamix hack is a suite of 4 different hacks put together along with other changes by DannyPlaysSomeGames. This is very well done and adds a lot to MM2 in terms of changing your usual stretegies when you would play, along with making some things easier and bringing a few features in line with the later NES titles. The hack features and other changes include:

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Retrorevisited: Starfox 1-2, Starfox 64

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Retrorevisited is a stream series where I revisit a game or a game series i haven’t played in over 10 or 20 years. I’ll go through to try see what i remember until a game over or I run out of continues. In some cases muscle memory may slowly return, in others probably not. This is a chance for me to revisit games of my youth that i enjoyed have or had at one point and bring more to the retro community with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play one later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle and graphics of the games the review will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session.

Starfox was released in 1993 and was the first SNES title to use a new graphic chip called the SuperFX chip. Sporting great game play and a killer soundtrack, this rail shooter was a bit hit, even if the graphics weren’t the prettiest. Other SuperFX chip games were later released, a list of which can be found here. Later Starfox games were released on other Nintendo consoles including the N64, GameCube, and the handheld DS. Starfox 2 was completed for the SNES but never released in 1995, over fears over looking inferior to 32bit games. Over the years, various rom images showed up online for it. The game got an official release with the SNES Mini in 2017, and on the Switch in 2019.

I loved Starfox as a kid!! I used to be pretty good at it, having finished it a few times i think. loved the gameplay and the great soundtrack and knew a few of the secrets. I’d just constantly get messed up by rng and my own mistakes in later levels, even after having racked up a number of extra lives and continues. This Retrorevisited will see how much I can remember of Starfox itself, along with trying out Starfox 2 for the first time as a bonus, seeing the rom from the SNES mini got leaked online at one point. I had Starfox64 and ate it up as a kid even with the N64 limitations! loved the additions to the series, hated some stuff like the battles with the Starwolf team but it was a great addition to the series!

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Happy New Year 2021!!

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Happy New Year everyone!! let’s throw 2020 in the dumpster fire it belongs and break on through to the other side for 2021! This year I finally took the plunge in streaming and found a liking to it even with my personal issues, finished some more rpgs and more! Not much was done outside of other interests like conventions and photo taking due to covid, but more on that later. And I’ve had this blog little over 2 years now too!

So that said, here’s the list of games i finished between streaming and on my own. I’m honestly surprised i had more than I expected to. Kirby 1 & 2 were the first ones I finished on stream! I normally wouldn’t include hacks or arcade games (due to their nature), but I wanted to include the 2 of each for completion purposes. That and those 2 arcade games were the longest ones I played. Wow 24 games between streaming and on my own! Continue reading →

Zelda 1 White Sword/Blue Ring 1st Quest Run

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So to celebrate getting over 270+ followers on Twitch, I decided to try my Zelda 1 White Sword/Blue Ring runs on stream, 1st quest only. I’ve been able to do this since i was a kid, and something I’ve been proud of! Always gets tough near the end, but i work though it. I’ve been able to do this for the 2nd quest too, which is always harder. I had done a video a couple years ago the last time i did this run on my phone emulators of beating Ganon in both quests, and a bonus video when I accidentally cheesed Ganon too.

I decided to do this in 2 streams, and my plan ended up going haywire. 1st stream was up to halfway through level 5. 2nd stream was the rest of level 5 through fighting Ganon at Death Mountain. It was tough going, especially since I’m going in underpowered with just the White Sword and Blue Ring. For references if I forgot anything, I have my NES Game Atlas, and making use of my Zelda hand-drawn guide by Phillip Summers. Come watch the videos of my journey!

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Hack Showcase: Zelda 2 Redux (NES)

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Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. I try to stick with games that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, try to show parts later in titles. Some of these i may stream or play on my own.

Zelda 2 Redux by ShadowOne333 aims to make a number of improvements to Zelda 2 for the NES, known as the black sheep of the Zelda family due to it’s higher difficulty, change from overhead to side-scrolling format and more. A lot of quality of life improvements were added too, along with optional patches to change your gaming experience to the definitive version of Zelda 2. I had finished this myself a couple years ago, after never finishing it as a kid for various reasons. Discovering this made me smile and I wanted to see what this hack was all about! ShadowOne333 is also the brains behind other Zelda redux patches for Link’s Awakening DX for Gameboy and Link to the Past for SNES. This hack was finally released after a long time in October 2020, with an update in December 2020 to bring this hack to version 2.3.

The changelog for this hack is extensive! And there’s a large assortment of optional patches to improve upon the Redux experience more! Continue reading →

Faxanadu (NES) Review

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Faxanadu was released for the Famicom in 1987, and for the NES in 1989 by Hudson Soft. This is an action-adventure game like Zelda 2. It’s a spinoff of Xanadu, the 2nd game in the long running Dragon Slayer RPG series in Japan by Falcom. Your hero returns home and find sit ruined due to a war between the dwarves and elves at the World Tree, started when the Evil One emerged from a meteorite. You travel the World Tree, fighting monsters and collecting gear in the towns you find along with magic and keys to be able to proceed. You have a life and magic bar, which decreases as you use magic and take damage. Enemies can drop gold or bread, bread refills your life. In towns you can refill your life at a price along with getting items and saving your game via password and getting a title from speaking to a Guru. Doctors (and “Nurse Boy”) can refill your health completely in towns too. This is one those early NES games with a long password of various characters that you need to write down properly.

I never played this game as a kid or teen, I discovered this some years ago when i got into NES emulation via my Dreamcast and loved it. I recently rediscovered how good and charming this title is earlier this current year from some friends, and gave it another playthrough which rekindled the magic of this hidden gem of a game, and i picked up a complete copy of it for my collection!

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Streaming Theme Nights

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So I’ve done a number of streaming theme nights over the year when i remember, etc. I’ve had fun doing all of them and gonna continue them and managed to write the 5 down so I can consolidate any ideas into them and so on. The 5 I’ve done and also did blog posts regarding:

  • Retrorevisited
  • Mega man derusting
  • System discovery
  • Hack showcases
  • Variety theme nights

So I figured as part of an end of year cleanup with my blog to jot the point of the 5, newest one being System Discovery. These blurbs are actually from the italic intros for some of those blog posts so they’ll look the same, i just expanded a number of them.

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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSX) Review

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Released in 1997, SOTN is a direct sequel to Castlevania Rondo of Blood, which at the time hadn’t gotten a proper US release. In this one, Richter Belmont has disappeared and Castlevania itself reappeared 4 years after the events of Rondo of Blood. Alucard, Dracula’s son last seen in Castlevania 3, awakens to discover what has happened with the help of an older maria from the previous game. This is the first of the Metroidvania style games, where the player explores an entire castle, gains new abilities, and fights bosses to uncover the plot. A second mode letting you play as Richter in a traditional Castlevania is opened up upon finishing the game. The game sports an amazing soundtrack and a number of dialogue scenes with voice acting (even if it is cheesy). SOTN wasn’t a big hit at first, until critic scores and word of mouth raised its status among gamers, prompting a number of re-releases.

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Retrorevisited: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1-4 (NES & SNES)

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Retrorevisited is a stream series where I revisit a game or a game series i haven’t played in over 10 or 20 years. I’ll go through to try see what i remember until a game over or I run out of continues. In some cases muscle memory may slowly return, in others probably not. This is a chance for me to revisit games of my youth that i enjoyed have or had at one point and bring more to the retro community with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play one later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle and graphics of the games the review will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session.

Like most kids in the 80’s, I grew up on the first TMNT cartoon, and the first NES title. Even back then I figured there was quite a bit off with it, especially the challenge and jankiness. Like most kids and teens, my friends and I devoured the 2 arcade titles, and loved the home versions for the NES and SNES, and even liked TMNT3 which built on the brawler style and wasn’t based on an arcade title. So in my retrorevisited video, TMNT 1 I limped my way to stage 3, TMNT 2 and 3 I made it to stage 3 also! TMNT 4 I made it to stage 5! Both TMNT2 and 3 have hidden codes to increase lives, difficulty and a stage select.

I recently played through the Famicom TMNT2 (called TMNT in Japan) and TMNT3 (called TMNT2) there, and there are a number of difficulty, graphical and gameplay changes worth looking up too.

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Tecmo Super Bowl Sundays 2020

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So for fun I streamed a season playing the Tecmo Super Bowl 2020 hack as the 49ers. This hack is an updated roster for the start of the 2020 NFL season, some improved ai and more. I’m a big fan of the orginial 1991 Tecmo Super Bowl and it was fun playing this! Many games went better than others, worse games due to opponent ai and some bad choices and limped my way into the playoffs. Everything changed in the playoffs and tore my way to a Super Bowl victory against the Raiders! Also did a Pro Bowl game as the NFC and tore it up there too.

You can see all the game results here and my final record for the 2020 season here:

Here’s the playlist for the 2020 season from my youtube videos:

You can get the rom hack here:

Tecmo Super Bowl 2020 – Week One Edition

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