Zelda 3: Secrets of the Past (SNES Hack, Played on SNES-9X)

A romhack of A Link to the Past that was advertised as being “relatively low difficulty.” I’m not sure what scale they’re using for that because sure, it isn’t Parallel Worlds bullshit, but it’s a fair sight harder than vanilla.

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Overall: I found the action level too hard (and used cheat codes, and also save states for the Ganon battle that was full of extra holes), but the puzzles were just right for me. There was only one point (where you need to hookshot to a wall you can’t see) that I got frustrated.

EarthBound: MaternalBound (SNES Hack, Played on SNES-9X)

Earthbound, which in many ways was just an extremely quirky Dragon Quest clone, was actually one of the best-localized games of my childhood. While there was a bunch of censorship and a few localization changes, the US version of the game managed to have both a decent fidelity to the original and a ton of personality.

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Overall: I always appreciated the delightful quirkiness of this game. There are some aspects of the systems that hadn’t made it out of the NES-hard era (and the hack doesn’t touch those), but the plot and worldbuilding are whimsical and fun. The translation hack isn’t necessary, but it doesn’t detract either.