My History with the Final Fantasy Series

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The “My History With…” series are my thoughts back when I was a kid to young adult, about when I got games of a series, my initial thoughts about them, and other thoughts about the games. I stick to games I have or had, not one I played for the first time when i discovered emulation or modern system remakes. 

I started my journey in the Final Fantasy series started later than Dragon Quest/Warrior, but i fell in love with it as I did DW. I loved reading as a kid and my love for sci-fi and fantasy really drove me to the FF series seeing how Dragon Warrior was always more medieval fantasy. The longform storytelling here of having an objective for your party and solving problems along the way, or not knowing who or what you’re fighting or fighting for made me want to keep playing as I grew up. Even as a kid I didn’t mind grinding that much (though now with emulators you got that magic fast forward button). I should really start seeing down with these again with some the remakes and rediscover my childhood joy. For this I stuck with ones

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Hack Showcase: Mega Man X1-2 Zero Playable + X3 Zero Project 4.6 (SNES)

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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 X and X2 Zero Playable was designed by Programmer Peru and makes Zero instead of X the main hero using his sprites from throughout the games and some other fixes. You’ll proceed normally throughout the game to fight the Mavericks, get items and upgrades on your way to fighting Sigma normally. Skull_emperor_ is the developer behind the graphic and text fix hacks which can be attached easily to the Zero Playable hacks to make some small graphical fixes in both games, and change the dialog in the openings and endings and cutscenes to reflect Zero being the main hero instead of X. In X1 the Dr. Light capsules were changed to Dr. Wily capsules and the dialog reflects that. Future updates for the X2 hack will change Dr. Light to Dr. Wily.

The Mega Man X3 Zero Project (as of this writing is version 4.6) by Justin3009 adds Zero as the main hero, with X playable too, and adds a lot more (worth noting this is different and rewritten from the ground up than their original Zero in X3 hack). Added in the Zero project is improved music and sounds, gameplay, Zero and X having their own sets of dialog through the game, and other options like a save/load system! Zero also starts with 2 mega shots and his sword attack! There’s also a New Game+ feature!

With most romhacks, strongly suggested to check out the readme files for advice on the changes to hacks and any gameplay tips, especially with rpgs. Readme files for rpg hacks can contain additional gameplay advice, etc, and it’s worth subscribing to hacks you like on RHDN to keep up with updates for bug fixes, additional content, etc.

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Hack Showcase: Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash (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.

Celeste Mario is a hack made in the span of 2 months by w7n. This hack completely changes Super Mario Bros gameplay into that of the PC game Celeste, where you have to dash and jump in different ways to collect items and solve puzzles to progress. Mario is there along with other stuff from SMB! Every few rooms you can save and failing to solve a room doesn’t mean game over cause you have unlimited tries to succeed!

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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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Zelda 2: Adventure of Link (NES) Review

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Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link is the 2nd installment of the Zelda series, and known as the black sheep of the series. This is due to its change from the gameplay and view of the first game, and future Zelda titles. Instead of an overhead view, you have a side view when Link is in palaces, towns, and fighting enemies, the overworld being how you navigate from one area to another. As a direct sequel, Link must save Zelda who is under a sleeping spell and prevent himself from being killed.

This is for the original NES Zelda 2, not any of the later ports or remakes.

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