Category Archives: Streaming

Hack Showcase: Zelda 1 Ancient Dungeon v3.0 (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 additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Ampoly created an amazing Zelda hack that makes going through dungeons reminiscent of a Rogue-type game with randomized dungeons (think Hades, the Ancient Dungeon in Lufia 2, or Diablo). Crawling through the dungeons you fight your way to find items to proceed even further! The dynamic loading of this hack means new rooms, bosses and more are generated more-or-less on the fly, compared to other randomizers where you build the randomizer and patch it to its parent game. Definitely check out the readme file included with the path for tips! Features include:

  • Roguelike Gameplay: Every playthrough is different and it is all included directly in the ROM file. No external randomization programs needed, just load and play!
  • Dynamic Enemy Loading: Normally the overworld and each dungeon has a specific set of enemies available. In Ancient Dungeon, new enemies are loaded dynamically during every room transition. This means there are no restrictions in the combinations of enemies you may encounter in the dungeon.
  • Room Generation: New to version 3.0, the dungeon room layouts themselves are randomized. Rooms can be made up of pieces of existing room designs and/or randomized blocks.
  • Additional Item Abilities: Some items have new functionality specific to Ancient Dungeon. One such example is the Recorder, which now both defeats Pols Voice and forces Peahats to land.
  • In-game Timer: A built-in timer keeps track of your runtime and is shown at the end of every run, win or lose. Best completion times are also saved when playing in random mode.
  • Seeds: You can choose a custom seed value and play the game in seeded mode, which gives you the same randomized layout every time. This is perfect for setting up races!
  • Custom Palettes: New palettes have been added that change periodically through the dungeon, providing a touch of variety.

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Hack Showcase: Mega Man Wily Wars Improvement Hacks (Genesis)

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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 additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Mega Man: Wily Wars came out for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in Japan and Europe, but only released on the Sega Channel service in the US in the 1990s. It finally got a real US release on the Sega Mini. It’s a collection of the first 3 Mega Man games along with the new Wily tower level with new bosses to fight. The jump to 16-bit graphics and music were applauded, the play control, uneven challenge in all 3 games, the sluggishness and slowdown…not so much. Since emulators and the Sega mini rom of Wily Wars dropping, various hacks have attempted to fix the shortcomings of this collection.

For this Hack Showcase, I used the European rom of Wily Wars and put 4 hacks together for a better experience, which I’ll be reviewing separate and together in the order that I patched the rom. Anyone reading this is welcome to patch their game the way I did. These hacks are made for the European rom of Wily Wars and I patched SRAM + Proto Man first, then the others, testing each one as I put them together. I played these in Retroarch, your mileage may vary on Retroarch and other systems. Feel free to try these together or separate!

The SRAM + Proto Man Size Fix hack by JackelZXA is the first hack attached and adds the following:

  • SRAM saving
  • Changes the ROM from EU to US (50Hz to 60Hz)
  • Fixes Saving so Wily Tower can be unlocked
  • Improves Input Lag
  • Improves Buster Fire Speed
  • Adds the Slide to Mega Man 1 and 2
  • Redraws all of Proto Man’s sprites.

Weapon Master by Woodfrog adds the ability to use any weapon and item in all 3 Mega Man games, along with Wily’s Tower! Hit the C button for the Window will pause the game and hitting up or down will cycle through the weapons and items from Mega Man 1, 2 and then 3. Worth noting that you can only use MM1 weapons on the Copy Robot fight in MM1 to prevent crashes.

Wily Tower Always Available by Gruesome_Garie gives you the option to go right to Wily Tower from the start! No need to use save states or worry about saves not working after finishing Mega Man 1-3!

Fixer Upper by Josephine Lithius adds the following improvements, which actually build upon some from the 1st hack I added:

  • Enemy invulnerability time has been all but eliminated.  This means that enemies can take damage more frequently and reliably.  No more “missed” shots!
  • The default weapon (the Buster) has been sped up to match its 8-bit counterpart.  Watch those lemons fly!
  • The default weapon and some boss weapons can be fired more rapidly!  Hammer that “fire” button and launch waves of projectiles!
  • Rockman pulls his Buster back a little sooner after firing!  This… only affects a handful of weapons and the change isn’t that big, but hey!  It might help!

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Mega Man Derusting Mega Man X3 (SNES)

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So I have a long history with the Mega Man games growing up. I came up with the Mega Man Derusting series to do such a task. The goal is to play and finish the Mega Man classic series along with most of the X series and some other Mega Man titles. I still have some of my Mega Man and X carts and discs and hadn’t really played them in years but I wanted to share my adventures on stream of relearning my way through the classic titles, and in some cases finish the later games to completion! 

THE REVIEW: The last of the X games on the SNES, this one was also released on the Sega Saturn and Windows. Capcom pulled out all the stops to get the best out of this game in terms of music and graphics from the SNES and it showed. This one has always intimidated me the most of the SNES games due to the difficulty and backtracking too. X and Zero have been living their lives as maverick Hunters after Sigma’s defeat when a Dr. Doppler rose to create a Reploid paradise. of course, things went wrong and it’s up to X and Zero to stop the mad doctor’s plans and defeat his henchmen Bit and Byte, and the return of another old enemy too. You can even switch out X for Zero too! Besides going through stages on foot, you can switch to different types of Ride Armors for different situations to get through the larger levels, or find hidden stuff.

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New Super Mario Land SNES v1.5 Homebrew & Review (Updated 6/5/2023)

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Note: I’ve recently learned that there have been updated versions of this homebrew released with graphical and control fixes, along with improved features closer to the Game Boy original Super Mario Land. Latest and last version of this is v1.5.

So I came across this little homebrew completely by accident, a SNES homebrew version of the Gameboy classic Super Mario Land. I had never played SML before or had a giant brick Gameboy save for playing emulators back in the day or borrowing a friend’s (I think that’s how I finished the og Link’s Awakening and Pokemon Red). Finding the rom, I fired it up on my phone emulator and had a blast with it! This project was originally a homebrew of SML as a Christmas gift for the anonymous programmer’s friends. Of course this being 2019 the rom got dumped online and can easily be flashed to a cart, or played on your favorite SNES emulator. I recommend Retroarch, Snes9x or Bsnes.

You can find more information about this amazing project and its history and videos at the below articles. More information can be found here:
RetroRGB Article
NintendoLife Article
Archive.org Download v1.5

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Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man X2 (SNES)

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So I have a long history with the Mega Man games growing up. I came up with the Mega Man Derusting series to do such a task. The goal is to play and finish the Mega Man classic series along with most of the X series and some other Mega Man titles. I still have some of my Mega Man and X carts and discs and hadn’t really played them in years but I wanted to share my adventures on stream of relearning my way through the classic titles, and in some cases finish the later games to completion! 

THE REVIEW: X2 was always my favorite of the X trilogy on the SNES. Better graphics, gameplay and music made this a worthy sequel. Months passed since X defeated Zero and a new enemy appeared with an army of mavericks for X to battle, and they’re also holding Zero’s body parts hostage!

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Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man X (SNES)

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So I have a long history with the Mega Man games growing up. I came up with the Mega Man Derusting series to do such a task. The goal is to play and finish the Mega Man classic series along with most of the X series and some other Mega Man titles. I still have some of my mega Man and X carts and discs and hadn’t really played them in years but I wanted to share my adventures on stream of relearning my way through the classic titles, and in some cases finish the later games to completion! 

REVIEW TIME: I loved this game as a teen and replaying it now, I still love it! Finishing it finally I’ve only finished X, X2, and I think X4. The gameplay is solid and the graphics are very pretty as per Capcom’s usual high quality. The music is incredible! The story of X fighting Sigma during the Maverick War (the 1st of many), and X seeking vengeance from Vile and later Sigma is classic. Besides the graphical and music improvements, X sports a number of new moves and features. One of them being the 8 bosses you fight being called Mavericks and their names being based upon different animals and plants and are humanoid in appearance, and of course Sigma replacing Dr. Wily as the final boss. X can still gain new weapons from defeating the 8 Mavericks just like in the classic series. Another change are the upgrades to X’s helmet, armor, boots and gun which are found hidden in capsules around the 8 levels. X now sports a dash move when you upgrade his boots, along with a wall jump move letting the player jump up walls and slide down them, along with doing dashes off walls themselves. Other upgrades found in stages include heart tanks which increase X’s life bar and 4 sub-tanks which replace energy tanks from the classic series. Unlike the classic series, you can fill these with energy until max, and use as needed, and keep refilling them with energy when your life bar is full. A password system like the classic series, saves your progress on fought Mavericks and other upgrades.

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Mega Man Derusting: Mega Man 8 (PSX)

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So I have a long history with the Mega Man games growing up. I came up with the Mega Man Derusting series to do such a task. The goal is to play and finish the Mega Man classic series along with most of the X series and some other Mega Man titles. I still have some of my Mega Man and X carts and discs and hadn’t really played them in years but I wanted to share my adventures on stream of relearning my way through the classic titles, and in some cases finish the later games to completion! 

THE REVIEW:  Released for the PSX in 1997, this was the first mega Man to jump to 32 bit along with Mega Man X4. MM8 was also released for the Saturn with 2 extra mini-bosses in the form of Wood Man and Cut Man. Plot of Mega Man 8 isn’t so much a “Wily wanting to take over the world” like the others, but Evil Energy from space and a mysterious robot named Duo showed up which got the curiosity of Dr. Light and Wily. of course Wily decides to use the Evil Energy for his next Robot masters as its corrupting Wily more and more. This one added animated cutscenes to continue the story and questionable voice acting when translated to English. I actually didn’t like this one as much as the previous games.

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Retrorevisited: Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 (SNES/Genesis)

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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 still have or had at one point, playing them with and without nostalgia goggles, and do with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play any fully later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle or system, games reviewed will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session.  

The Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series were big hits in the arcades in the 1990’s and that translated to their home editions, becoming big hits in the 16bit era for the SNES and Sega Genesis. The various game ports are translated perfectly to the home systems (complete with cheating AI!) from the graphics, gameplay and soundtracks. Street Fighter 2 Turbo was really the port to own and the one most gamers in that era knew and studied all the move and combo lists.

The Mortal Kombat series had a more creative and public history when it was introduced by midway due to the graphic violence as part of the gameplay. Blood, gore, and violent Fatalities were what everyone wanted to do and see, and what non-gamers were appealed over. Because of this the editions of Mortal Kombat which came home had the more violent elements removed or locked out behind a code. SNES MK had the better graphics and music, but the blood was changed to sweat (which you can easily change to red or any other color with Game Genie codes!), while the blood was behind a code for the Genesis. MK2 and onward everything was intact for gamers!

For the record, I do enjoy fighting games, but I suck at them. I can hold my own to a point, I’ve always had trouble building combos and thinking fast with performing special moves and the like.

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Hack Showcase: Y’s 3 Renewal & Rebalanced Hacks (Genesis)

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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 additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Y’s 3 Renewal by Plombo aims to clean up the dialogue and script of the game into something that flows and sounds better. Beside that, the hack also presents terms and names used by XSEED in the modern remakes of the Y’s series along with some graphical improvements to clean up the look of the game more.

The goal of Y’s 3 Rebalanced by Mentil is to reduce the amount of time grinding and a lot of the difficulty issues this game has with the following changes:

  • The player getting hit now grants 25 invincibility frames rather than 10; each mistake is now less likely to get you hit more than once.
  • Enemies now grant 6x the gold and XP in the early game; once reaching an area where you should be about halfway to the level cap, this drops to 2x. One should reach the recommended level for each area by the time one arrives, with almost no grinding required, if one slays every monster in one’s path.
  • Many enemies and bosses have had their damage output nerfed to more-reasonable levels. The final boss got particular attention and should be far less frustrating to fight.
  • Each enemy defeated now grants 3 ring points instead of 1, making rings more useful without frequent recharges in town.
  • Adol now starts the game with a sword, given the intro states he has one.

I combined both these hacks for gameplay and for this review, which is recommended and possible to do. Review will be for both together and separate and same with my final score.

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Retrorevisited: Sonic 1-3 (Genesis) & Sonic CD (Sega CD)

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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 still have or had at one point, playing them with and without nostalgia goggles, and do with mini-reviews of them too. If I decide to play any fully later and do a full review, parts of the mini-review would be incorporated into it. Depending on the playstyle or system, games reviewed will either be mini-reviews or one about all games in this session.  

The Sonic series quickly became Sega’s flagship series when the first game came out in 1991, becoming the pack-in game with the Sega Genesis and later Sonic 2. The first game sported beautiful graphics and a great soundtrack, and faster gameplay not seen on consoles at the time. After Sonic hit it big, the series continued on the Genesis with Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic Spinball, and Sonic & Knuckles (aka Sonic 3 Part 2), which was a continuation of Sonic 3’s story and sported new lock-on technology that allowed gamers to plug the cart into other games for new and exciting bonus levels to test their skills. Of course there was a Sonic for the Sega CD system too! All future games sported even better graphics and soundtracks and faster gameplay! 

I plan to cover Sonic 1-3 for the Sega Genesis and Sonic CD for the Sega CD in this edition of Retrorevisited and my mini-reviews.

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