Some Hacks and Fan Translations
Feb. 16th, 2023 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroTomato Adventure (Game Boy Advance, Played on RG350) – An extremely cute kid-oriented rpg that was fan-translated a couple of years ago and I finally got around to. It feels a lot like the Mario & Luigi games, with some puzzle-based dungeon action, on-screen enemies, and turn-based battles where the attacks all require timed hits. The biggest gimmick is that your weapons have limited uses, but when you use them all up they all recharge, so you’re forced to use every weapon and keep them all upgraded. Fortunately, if you’re bad at the timed hits for a particular weapon, each of them has a difficulty slider that makes the weapon stronger at the cost of the timing being tougher. The plot is goofy and there isn’t really a lot to it (fight the evil empire, save the girl, but in a really silly way). I did the first two areas and found it mildly entertaining, but lost interest and probably won’t go back.
Kick Master (NES, Played on Powkiddy X2) – A side-scrolling platformer of the usual NES variety, with the added quirks that your character can gain XP and level up (for more health, MP and moves); that you collect a large variety of magic spells as the game goes on; and that enemies explode into three drops when killed (that quickly drop off the screen) so you need to scramble and decide whether to get HP/MP restores or XP increases (or useless points). RPG elements in action games often make me happy. The aesthetic is a Castlevania-like medieval fantasy world (you’re an aspiring martial artist in a world of knights and wizards, and it turns out that swords aren’t as effective on skeletons as kicking is), and the biggest gimmick is that your collection of kicks increases as the game goes on (and you gain levels), and you can wrap to do additional runs through the stages at higher difficulty after you finish level 8. I played a hacked version that made the player invincible, but I found the concept entertaining even though my ability to make effective use of all the kicks was lacking.
Zelda 3: The Winter Lion (SNES, Played on RG552) – A hack of A Link to the Past that changes Link to an old man, splits a bunch of the dungeon paths into multiple (shorter) options, and attempts to add a deeper plot that involves threading the political needle between the ruling military and the rebels against it. While I give it credit as a noble attempt, it’s deeply flawed: The dialogue attempts to be “artsy” but mostly comes out unintelligible. The branching paths aren’t really made clear, so you’re likely to end up wandering. You can very easily softlock the game by using the 1 bomb it gives you in the wrong place (and I’m not clear if you’re “supposed” to get more bombs any time soon after that—I got some by selling a fish, but never saw any others). And despite claims that this is supposed to be a similar difficulty level to vanilla, it removes all the shops, most of the heart container pieces, and at least the first three heart containers; so you’re wandering around Death Mountain with three hearts, a level 1 shield and no bombs. I’ll keep half an eye on this to see if there’s a revision at some point, but I’m not impressed so far.
Final Fantasy ++ (NES, Played on RG552) – One of the random roms on my PowKiddy X2 was the sequel to this hack (which was called World of Chaos and looks really cool, but is basically unplayable unless you port a save from this). I was intrigued enough to pull this down, despite my general opinion that Dawn of Souls is the best way to play FF1. (For this, I used cheat codes and fast-forward fairly liberally.) It significantly improves the graphics, including using “back-ported” sprites from later games (the characters are from FF5, the dungeon sprites mostly from FF4, and the monsters are a big mix). The new Time Mage class is a take on the Dragon Quest goof-off; being kinda useless until the class change and then becoming a Sage—but the class change also swaps fighters with white mages and ninjas with black mages, reversing the rest of your party composition. The plot and general flow is the same (through dungeon maps are redone), with the biggest change being removing the Rod and Sarda entirely and making the Titan a boss (instead of vampire) so the Earth Cave is a single run. (The Cardia Island caves other than Bahamut’s are also gone…and you have to fight Bahamut before he’ll help you, now.) This added a MarshKey in Astos' chair, which lets you return to the Marsh Cave for a hidden goldpin hat; but if there are other new secrets I didn’t find them. I may attempt to port my save to World of Chaos to see where that goes.
Kick Master (NES, Played on Powkiddy X2) – A side-scrolling platformer of the usual NES variety, with the added quirks that your character can gain XP and level up (for more health, MP and moves); that you collect a large variety of magic spells as the game goes on; and that enemies explode into three drops when killed (that quickly drop off the screen) so you need to scramble and decide whether to get HP/MP restores or XP increases (or useless points). RPG elements in action games often make me happy. The aesthetic is a Castlevania-like medieval fantasy world (you’re an aspiring martial artist in a world of knights and wizards, and it turns out that swords aren’t as effective on skeletons as kicking is), and the biggest gimmick is that your collection of kicks increases as the game goes on (and you gain levels), and you can wrap to do additional runs through the stages at higher difficulty after you finish level 8. I played a hacked version that made the player invincible, but I found the concept entertaining even though my ability to make effective use of all the kicks was lacking.
Zelda 3: The Winter Lion (SNES, Played on RG552) – A hack of A Link to the Past that changes Link to an old man, splits a bunch of the dungeon paths into multiple (shorter) options, and attempts to add a deeper plot that involves threading the political needle between the ruling military and the rebels against it. While I give it credit as a noble attempt, it’s deeply flawed: The dialogue attempts to be “artsy” but mostly comes out unintelligible. The branching paths aren’t really made clear, so you’re likely to end up wandering. You can very easily softlock the game by using the 1 bomb it gives you in the wrong place (and I’m not clear if you’re “supposed” to get more bombs any time soon after that—I got some by selling a fish, but never saw any others). And despite claims that this is supposed to be a similar difficulty level to vanilla, it removes all the shops, most of the heart container pieces, and at least the first three heart containers; so you’re wandering around Death Mountain with three hearts, a level 1 shield and no bombs. I’ll keep half an eye on this to see if there’s a revision at some point, but I’m not impressed so far.
Final Fantasy ++ (NES, Played on RG552) – One of the random roms on my PowKiddy X2 was the sequel to this hack (which was called World of Chaos and looks really cool, but is basically unplayable unless you port a save from this). I was intrigued enough to pull this down, despite my general opinion that Dawn of Souls is the best way to play FF1. (For this, I used cheat codes and fast-forward fairly liberally.) It significantly improves the graphics, including using “back-ported” sprites from later games (the characters are from FF5, the dungeon sprites mostly from FF4, and the monsters are a big mix). The new Time Mage class is a take on the Dragon Quest goof-off; being kinda useless until the class change and then becoming a Sage—but the class change also swaps fighters with white mages and ninjas with black mages, reversing the rest of your party composition. The plot and general flow is the same (through dungeon maps are redone), with the biggest change being removing the Rod and Sarda entirely and making the Titan a boss (instead of vampire) so the Earth Cave is a single run. (The Cardia Island caves other than Bahamut’s are also gone…and you have to fight Bahamut before he’ll help you, now.) This added a MarshKey in Astos' chair, which lets you return to the Marsh Cave for a hidden goldpin hat; but if there are other new secrets I didn’t find them. I may attempt to port my save to World of Chaos to see where that goes.
