You know what's weird in the retro gaming community? All the flak Working Designs gets for changing the difficulty level of the games it localised. Fans across the internet cry bloody murder at the changes. As shown in previous articles, we love Working Designs at Time Extension. (Even though founder Victor Ireland no longer replies to our emails; we still want that interview Vic, call us! We want to be friends!)
Yet despite all that, fans will give Konami a free ride, despite it being far worse in terms of butchering its own games during localisation. Konami was infamous for making games harder for the American (and therefore also PAL) market.
The Adventures of Bayou Billy on NES was so made so difficult, fans fixed it not once, but twice! Contra III on SNES had cheat codes removed, infinite continues nixed, plus the secret boss was no longer accessible on Normal. Fans fixed that too with a restoration patch. Contra: Hard Corps on MD had the life-bar removed, to make it unnecessarily difficult - and that game was hard even with the life-bar! Again, fans fixed it. Castlevania III on NES, meanwhile, had so much ridiculous fiddling we don't know where to begin. Most changes just brute-forced the difficulty higher, but a lot of them simply dilute the original's intelligent design – why, for example, did they alter the unique damage each enemy inflicts, to a blanket damage value based on the stage? That just makes the gameplay shallow and uninteresting.
Ramping up the difficulty during localisation goes against the original team's vision. Why though? Why did American publishers make these changes? There's a lot of speculation online, but if we look at interview quotes, we find a recurring theme.
Ayano Koshiro, in an interview with Time Extension, said the reason for ActRaiser 2 being so difficult was due to the American publisher:
The reason for the different difficulty levels was, again, the US branch of Enix. They wanted us to make the game harder because, apparently, people were complaining that they took a whole week off to play the first ActRaiser and then reached the end credits after only two days. They bought it, and then took far less than a week. And those complaints ultimately caused the change in difficulty for the US version. These are simply very different values. We already made the game a bit more difficult than its predecessor. But then Enix came to us with feedback that it should be much harder. So we looked at the damage values of the hero and the enemies, tweaked them a lot, and at some point, we barely had any more overview ourselves. We were just paid to do it that way.
Kouji Yokota, designer and artist on Gaiares for Mega Drive, described to me during the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers project how Renovation Products in the US demanded greater difficulty:
Gaiares was originally intended for the overseas market, to begin with. But overseas, since there was a tendency for people to buy and play a game and then immediately sell it, as well as rental systems, the overseas publisher had asked us to make the game more difficult so that it would not be rented and completed easily. So we went over to the overseas publisher to show them the demo, and then they said, 'You should make it even more difficult!' We started getting concerned at this point, but we complied with their request. So ultimately the game became very difficult when it was released.
Victor Ireland (we're still waiting for that reply, Vic) of Working Designs reiterated this when explaining why Popful Mail was made harder during localisation:
The Japanese one was far too easy, and there was no real challenge or strategy to any of the bosses. In Japan you buy a game and you own it. In the US, especially at the time, return policies were extremely liberal. To leave the game as-was, would be to guarantee that a substantial portion of the games would be 'extended rentals' at our expense.
Masato Maegawa of Treasure said the same regarding Dynamite Headdy on Mega Drive:
In the US, there is a system for renting games, and if they get to the ending of a rental game, they won't buy it... I thought, 'Is that really true?', but I said, 'If you want to make it difficult, let's make it as difficult as possible,' so I made it as difficult as possible.
We don't have explanatory quotes for the specific Konami games listed at the start, but it's safe to surmise all these changes, for various games, were the result of concerns over American kids renting a title, finishing it, and then not buying it. In the minds of the American publishers, clearly, the way to encourage kids to drop $50 or more was by making a game so teeth-gnashingly punishing they'd struggle to get past the second level... Yeah, because that would totally make us want to spend our limited pocket money.
Anyway, if you dig through Konami's back catalogue you will find countless localisation trainwrecks - including Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose on SNES.
The Japanese release had two difficulties: Kids and Normal. The Kids mode truncated levels by around 60%, so by playing it, you wouldn't see the ending, and you'd experience less than half the game. However, Buster's dash move could defeat enemies, and it was easier. The Japanese version also had infinite continues and a password system, which worked on both difficulties. If you reached the credits on Kids mode, you just had a text scroll on a black background, while on Normal, you'd get the proper ending and a fun credits scroll over the in-game characters fooling around. It was balanced just right.
The US version (and, by extension, European releases) added a harder Challenge mode, where you only had one energy heart instead of three. It reduced the continues to 5 for Normal and 3 for Challenge. Worst of all, it disabled the passwords for Normal; inputting a password automatically defaulted you to Kids mode, which was garbage since you missed out on most of the game. It also disabled the level 5 password for Buster's Sky Jinks since it couldn't be played in Kids mode. Oh, and just to say "f**k you" to their customers, Konami USA locked the nicer credits scroll behind the Challenge difficulty! The entire thing was a travesty.
Some have said that losing the password system and being forced to play through the entire game in one sitting was fine since it was satisfying to beat it. This is the wrong attitude. Buster Busts Loose is a wonderful game, and having passwords after each level allows you to access later levels just for the joy of playing them. The American Football level, for example, is unusual and inventive in how it subverts traditional platforming. Every level is so different; they're worth savouring individually. The original Japanese team's vision for the game was to have passwords, and Konami USA be damned for thinking they could just mangle the game.
After its release in 1993, the press loved it. Super Play awarded it 89%. GamesMaster gave it 92%. GameFan scored it nearly as high as Star Fox. Total! magazine rated it 87%, stating the Challenge mode was so difficult it had to be Konami playing a prank. To any young enthusiast of the SNES (or the cartoon), the game was captivating. But something always felt off... Why did the password system default to Kids mode every time? Years later, discovering the import, the answer was revealed: Konami USA did its usual half-arsed job. Thanks guys.
While this won't matter if you're emulating (you could just save state each level), if you're playing on real hardware, it's going to be annoying. So we decided to fix things!
Originally we simply posted on the RHDN forum, in the "hack ideas" thread. That's where people with big ideas but limited skills go to make suggestions. Surprisingly, prolific hacker Bankbank sent a PM saying it would be easy to implement, and perhaps we should collaborate. He would do most of the heavy lifting, but as a tutorial to learn hacking assembly code. As we discovered, he's not only an extremely prolific hacker, but also a developer on Steam, creating games for legacy systems such as the Mega Drive (plus, he's an all-round cool person – thank you for the help).
It would turn out to be quite the adventure. Hopefully once you've read how it happened, you'll be encouraged to try some hacking yourself. It's easy with the right tools, is a lot of fun, and everyone who enjoys games should hack one at least once! We used the emulator Mesen as our primary debugging and hacking tool, since it's extremely versatile and quite straightforward.
First thing: finding out which work RAM (WRAM) value defines the difficulty and why the game forces itself into Kids mode when entering a password. If we can correct this, then passwords will work on Normal and Challenge. This was easy since you just change the difficulty in options and see what WRAM values change. Most emulators will alert you to values changing, and since you're doing nothing else in-game, it's easy to narrow down.
Turns out byte $6C holds the difficulty setting in WRAM. Keep that in mind, because $6C is going to crop up a lot - most of Konami USA's hamfisted meddling here revolves around this value. Once you know this, you can tell Mesen to alert you every time the game's code references this value. Every time the game checks to see if it's in Kids or Normal, or whatever, in order to alter something, it'll check the value of $6C, and the emulator will then tell you. Because then you can change the code there. Bankbank sent a screenshot showing how, after successfully entering a correct password, the game's code references the difficulty value, and there are two instructions: STZ and $6C.
The Mesen emulator actually explains assembly instructions if you hover your mouse, so it's super easy. But Bankbank reiterated that STZ means to store the value zero (00) in whatever comes next. Meaning after entering a password, the game turns the difficulty value to 00. Meaning that Normal is 01, and Challenge is 02. So these two little instructions (STZ and $6C) will change the difficulty to Kids. The solution? Replacing those two instructions with NOP, meaning "no operation". Or, if you're editing the hexadecimal code directly, you type EA for the same effect. With this knowledge, your author opened up Mesen, did a search for the address 91EA80 (as shown on the screen), and replaced STZ $6C with NOP NOP. The result? It no longer stored zero in $6C, meaning no more resetting to Kids mode!
If you're a veteran programmer, our explanation probably sounds like it's for preschoolers, but we want readers to see how simple this can be. You change one value and have the emulator track it, to find where it's stored in WRAM. You then have the emulator tell you each time the game code references this WRAM value. Then you can change the game code. Simple.
Now that we knew what value the game referenced for difficulty, we could also fix the end credits. Using Mesen, your author set about reaching the end screen on Normal and Hard, creating save states to compare WRAM values and reinstate the proper credits sequence. Bankbank did the tedious job of then going back and forth between saves, noting any differences. The credits are a fixed block of code, without lives or timers, or enemy placement. So the only differences should be the difficulty ($6C, being 00, 01, or 02) and the background.
The next bit was more tricky. Bankbank sent a screen explaining he'd found where it checks just before rolling credits. First it loads the $6C value, and then it compares to see if it's value is 02 (Challenge) or not, because the full credits only appear on Challenge mode. Next is a branching instruction - to branch to the full credits or not. How to fix this? Bankbank explained the next bit used STA, meaning it stores a value in memory. We could use NOP again on the three subsequent bytes after STA; that would brute force it. Or we could invert STA with LDA - meaning it'll do the opposite, loading a value from memory. We were a little shaky on the technicalities, but decided to try swapping STA for LDA, and it functioned perfectly. The full credits now rolled regardless of the difficulty. Granted, this deviated from the Japanese, but no one should play Kids mode anyway, since it cuts gameplay. Also we didn't want to mess about further – it worked, let's just move on.
Anyway, passwords work again, and full credits can be seen on Normal, job done. Right? Not quite.
When you die and choose "end" instead of continue, it's meant to show the password for that level. But this only happens on Kids, since the passwords are not meant to work on higher difficulties. But for an authentic playing experience, players need to be able to see the passwords.
Armed with some working knowledge, I was determined to figure this out myself!
Three save states on the continue screens (Kids, Normal, and Challenge). Have Mesen break every time it references $6C. Thus, we found another LDA (loading a value) and another BEQ (branch if it equals). At first trial and error was used, seeing if changing LDA to STA would work, or using NOP, or even STZ to revert the value to zero.
Nothing. The Normal mode still went straight to the title screen. There was partial success with changing $6C to $68 or $82, two values which at that specific moment were 00. This had the effect of tricking the game into thinking it was loading $6C as if it were 00, but you can guess the problem here. Without knowing what $68 or $82 specifically did, weird behaviour might crop up. It was possible to have the emulator break on those two values, to see what they did, but this would be tedious. The solution needed to be logical and elegant.
Then an idea formed – that branching instruction, what if that was changed? Looking up assembly instructions online revealed that BEQ has its own polar opposite, BNE, meaning Branch if Not Equal. You know what we did next, right? We swapped BEQ for BNE and now the password only showed if you were not playing on Kids mode. Again, this deviates from the Japanese version, but we figured Kids mode has had passwords for over 30 years now, so this is retribution! (Also, it was simple, and it worked.)
Except the password that popped up now was gibberish. Back to the debugger. It turns out the game references the difficulty ($6C) again afterwards, to call up the correct password. It was another BEQ, so we swapped for BNE again (twice now), and lo and behold – the correct password showed up when selecting end. But only when not on Kids mode.
Job done, right? Nope. Remember how we said that the Buster's Sky Jinks level could not be accessed in the US game? You put the password in, and the game just beeps as if it's wrong. This needed fixing, otherwise re-implementing the passwords was a waste of time.
Bankbank did the heavy lifting again finding the section of code which governed passwords. Your author was worried that since Konami deleted that bit we'd have to find a way of programming in a whole new section... Could we splice the code from the Japanese ROM? Was there even space to add it back?
Turns out the programming code was still there, highlighting what a cheap hack job Konami USA did on this. The game checks the Sky Jinks password, as it's meant to, but Konami shunted in a dirty line of assembly, where if the level accessed equalled 04 it would branch as if a wrong password was entered (it's the 5th level, but if the first is considered 00, then you can see why 04 is checked). They hadn't even bothered to delete the code checking for that password. Well, that BEQ was no good, we needed to stop that. NOP NOP on the addresses 91EA5D and 91EA5E, perhaps? Why yes, that works nicely. Konami's stupid shunt code was replaced with "no operation", and the Sky Jinks password worked again, as it should.
If you're curious, we found that the following codes represented the password characters:
- 00 - Babs
- 01 - Plucky Duck
- 02 - Montana Max
- 03 - Elmira
- 04 - Lady Duck
- 05 - Tweety Bird
- 06 - Gogo Dodo
- 07 - Bookworm
- 08 - Coyote
- 09 - Road Runner
So the Sky Jinks password would be read as 06 / 08 / 09.
Right, so passwords now worked on Normal, and Normal showed passwords when ending the game, and the credits were fixed, and the Sky Jinks password worked again. Phew!
Bankbank suggested we try to reimplement the ending graphics. In the Japanese version, there's a unique image of Buster or Babs, depending on difficulty, whereas the US version just re-uses the title screen. Honestly, we weren't even sure if the ROM data still held those graphics. In your author's opinion, we were close enough for a V1.0 release.
The end result wasn't quite a reversion to the Japanese release. We kept the Challenge mode, and Kids mode lost the password, and all modes now have the full credits. Could it be done better? Obviously yes, but for a first-time effort in hacking assembly, we're pleased with the result and intend to do more in future.
Hacking game code is supremely satisfying. It doesn't even need to be as complicated as this. If you find the X,Y coordinate of a player character, for example, you can force the values to place that character outside of walls, for fun experiments going off-grid. It could even be as simple as giving yourself extra lives by searching for a specific value.
In fact, it occurs to us that Bankbank's help was akin to the proverb of giving a man a fishing net. With a little guidance, it started to make real sense.
As Bankbank explained:
I think if more people got exposure to assembly / debuggers, they'd be into it. There's just not a lot of places where people can learn about it, besides that one Youtube video series 'Behind the Code'. If you analyse the code, make notes in the disassembler. Annotate it, understand how the execution works, try to label as much as possible. You can also label addresses in WRAM, for example right click on $6C and you can write 'difficulty'. Once you understand the execution flow, I'm only talking about a small section of code, maybe 10 lines, then you can figure out how you want to make modifications. Doing things in a guessy way isn't a good idea, there can be unintended consequences. Just take your time; you can use the semicolon to make notes in the disassembler while execution is paused, and you can right click and re-label the blue labels. Like it'll show 80A64E, and you can change that to something descriptive such as END_GAME_CREDITS.
Following all the advice, we created an IPS patch, submitted it online, and confirmed the project was ready for release. Bankbank replied: "Hooray! But it's bittersweet because it's been fun working on this, and now it's over <laughs>."
It is a little, but there's plenty more hacking ideas to tinker with. We might go back to it later, and maybe also see if there's any anomalies in the UK, Spanish, or Korean versions. In the meantime, you can find our hack on Romhacks, while the submission process for RHDN has it in the queue. Please enjoy.
Would you like further articles taking an amateur look at hacking? We recently hacked the NVRAM save file on Virtuoso for 3DO, and the results were really strange. We also discovered some PC Engine games that do not use hexadecimal under the hood! Plus, messing around with the WRAM values of selected weapons in some games revealed things players weren't meant to access. Post in the comments if you'd like more.
Comments 52
They made games harder because of the rental and second hand market, but I guess they never considered that people would not sell their games if the games were actually fun to play (and replay). I enjoy a challenge, but some retro games certainly went too far with it, ruining an otherwise enjoyable game.
(note: the creator of this message was unable to finish reading this article immediately upon finding vulgar (or profane) language among its text)
I didn't read all that--seemed to go a little bit into the weeds--but I think I got the gist. And, assuming I did get the correct gist, I certainly appreciate someone patching SNES games like this to improve and/or just fix them in various ways. So, kudos.
Edit: Yeah, it seems you're thinking it should be extremely easy to follow some stuff you did with the code there in this article. Yup, sure. I laugh sometimes at how some people who are clearly really out of touch with the common man genuinely think certain things are so simple for everyone, especially anything around code and all the tools required to mess around with it. It's simple for certain people who think a certain way and do things a certain way. Outside of that, it's a convoluted mess. If your granny couldn't follow it all on her own without further instructions, it's not "easy".
But, double kudos to you for actually figuring it out and doing something there. That's more than worthy of praise for sure. Because, I'll tell you this, messing around with this kind of stuff really ain't "easy" at all. It takes a certain type. And it's not for the average gamer.
@Mario500 Gosh darn it, I think Konami USA had access to this article and made it more adult oriented!
@RetroGames It's not a gigantic jump to assume readers of an enthusiast publication might be more in tune with how those things work than the common person. Would you go to someone who wrote an article about how a car works for a car magazine and say "how dare you assume I can figure out how a car works?" No, it's not dead simple, any idiot can do it--but with time, it's perfectly possible to learn these things. It's not voodoo, it's step by step instructions for a glorified calculator.
Ironically Buster Busts Loose was the first Super Famicom game I played; so was interesting to read some of the details. I remember the dash being effective in Kids mode and the reduced number of levels. Also explains why years later I played the US version and was stomped by it. Thought it was the speed difference (played the SFM version with a converter on a PAL SNES).
@mariteaux I think you think you're debunking something I said or something. What is this, national kangaroo court day. Your point is about on par with my point: I'm saying for most people it's actually not "easy"*, and you're basically saying for some people it is easy. Bonus star for you. Do you feel better about that now. All good and fair in the world again.
*What is easy is flippantly throwing out to to world how "easy" something like this is, which is actually potentially pretty insulting and offensive to anyone who doesn't naturally grasp this kind of thing instantly and intuitively (think of people with learning disabilities, autism, non-programmery-type minds, people who just learn things a different way, ME who probably combines a few of those, etc).
What an interesting article.
Not really on topic but just a chance to say what a great great game Buster Busts Loose is. I think I have 3 copies... (2xSFC and 1xPAL SNES)
I always loved the train level on Stage 2 - it feels like a 16-bit precursor to the amazing train chase in Uncharted 2, but obviously within the limitations of the time.
@bring_on_branstons Agreed. It's a very solid SNES title imo. One little thing I would change is just the exact way Buster attacks, because it's never been quite my jam how he specifically flips back there, but other than that a nice little game overall. Great visuals (lovely sprite work, excellent use of colour, and quite a few of the SNES' features and cool graphical tricks thrown in for good measure), solid controls and gameplay (if you're all good with the specific attack method), catchy music and appropriate toony sound fx, nice use of the characters and license, etc. It's actually a very good licensed game on SNES.
It’s astonishing that a select few were able to complain and whine to the right people and change gaming so much in the US. Especially the fact that they changed it for the worse. I’ve been gaming for almost 40 years and I love the modern era where games are easier and more fun. And I love being able to go back to old games and beat them using new methods like save states and rewind.
I always try and patch unlimited lives codes onto the roms of most games I play since imo limited continues add literally nothing to the difficulty aside from making it so you can’t learn and adapt to the games challenges comfortably. I’m so glad that for the most part modern retro inspired indie games go the route of either giving you unlimited lives or no continue limit since it’s simply the better way to design your game.
Unless it’s a Treasure thing where you gain more of them as you play until they eventually become infinite that is a genuinely goated system that is the one exception I will make to all this lol.
@KoopaTheGamer imo it’s always down to how the games punish you for dying that can make or break it, it’s why I usually do what I described the comment above lol, it makes 90% of them a million times better😉
I most enjoy shorter, replayable games. If I like a game I’ll beat it and then often seek out a hard copy for the collection. 2x the sales, though I typically start with a hard copy if there is one.
Difficulty in retro games can definitely sometimes be frustrating, but it’s how they were, and now we know why—excellent article! These days I don’t look for that but I do look for new takes on the old style, gameplay and aesthetics. Luckily, many of these include some QoL updates and difficulty levels that allow a wide range of players to enjoy.
I find myself getting exhausted by most bigger AAA modern games; they never end, and because of that it’s just a slog. I want to achieve the goal and love it every step of the way, then immediately start playing again. These types of games also fit most people’s schedules. Guess I’m rambling now so I’ll get back to reading 👍
@RetroGames
If you feel insulted then I wish to apologise. My intention was only, sincerely, to encourage others to prod at games with the available tools.
I don't think one needs any special abilities beyond being able to play games and hold a controller, and basic literacy.
If your immediate belief is that this is out of touch, then I've fallen short of my intended goal.
I am not good at maths, and I found assembly prior to this intimidating. But allow me to share a simpler example or two:
A lot of emulators allow you to search for a single number value. The first time you do this, it will check every possible value. Too many to be useful.
But after this, if you lose 1 life, you can ask it to search that list again, for anything that went down by 1. The result? It will show you where the game keeps track of lives.
You can also use this method to move to the right. Then ask it to search for any number that went up by any ammount. Probably a few things went up. But you can keep repeating to narrow list. Go left and ask it to search numbers that decreased.
Eventually you will find the value tracking your onscreen position. So you can change it to go outside walls.
These are just two simple number searches. But that's still hacking. And it's fun putting your character beyond barriers.
Anyone who can play games and navigate game menus can fiddle around like this.
I don't expect anyone to do feats of Rainman style genius. But if you use emulators, pop open that debugger or cheat search, and see if you can find and change just one number.
Maybe it's lives first. Maybe you play around more and try other stuff.
My desire is not to imply I have superhuman abilities, but to encourage everyone to use the powerful tools now commonplace to play around.
Even if it goes wrong, so what? All you've lost is some time spent playing. Of course if try it and find it boring or frustrating, then fair enough. At least you gave it a go.
@Sketcz Thanks for the reply. Thanks for the understanding and acknowledgement that not everyone is made the same. Thanks for the extra encouragement without being patronizing. Maybe I'll have a look at that at some point.
This is the rare article whose headline undersells it. Bravo on such a meaty deep dive! No one should be irritated by your getting into too much detail since on the 8th day God created skimming.
The regional trope that sticks with me is always the SMB Lost Levels whereby Western gamers were assumed to be softer than Japanese ones. As frustrating as this Konami situation is, it at least salvages Western gaming cred. Haha
So, I'm having a look at this right now. I have Mesen 2.0 and Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World open on my PC (a patched version, in case that's relevant).
Question, I might have missed something in the article above, but where/how do you actually type in to change the number to then test the difference in the emulator?
@RetroGames
There are two options that I used in this instance. Debugger, which shows you the game loop as it runs (you'll need to hit Esc to pause it). And then WRAM, which will look like a list of numbers in a grid. Which is slightly less intuitive, but hacking a number in RAM is simpler than hacking assembly.
If you're wanting a gentler introduction, SNES9X (I use the Xbox port) has a cheat search to look for specific values. Probably an easier less intimidating start.
But Mesen, in that massive screen of options, should allow you to have it check for single value changes (not at my PC otherwise I'd type a mini walkthrough).
Mario is good. Once you find the option to search / track values and changes, you can search for lives. Lose one and see what goes down by 1.
Warning: some games assign the internal value 00 to something onscreen which says "1".
If you fail to get anywhere, I will sit down and type a simple tutorial for you (and others), over the weekend at some point. Just a basic step by step to dip your toe in the water.
EDIT: sitting here trying to describe it without the emulator in front of me, from memory, makes me realise how frustrating it can be for a newcomer.
@Sketcz Either way, I think that step by step tutorial would be something great for anyone even remotely interested to have something to just go through.
I guess it might be a bit like how people went through typing in one line of code at a time from a magazine back in the day, however that specifically worked. But, for me, any step by step instructions that make at least some meaningful sense as I'm following them in terms of what I'm doing and why, including the very initial getting started steps, and that basically cannot be easily guffed (that just means I can't f' it up somehow), are exactly what I'm looking for. I pretty much cannot even start to learn something any other way.
Now--and this is a [half] joke--if you can do that showing me how to setup my my system for and then program a very simple SNES game, that would be perfect.
Edit: Yeah, I can't quite follow what to do. I can run a game in Mesen, open the debugger--not sure about where to see the WRAM bit (maybe in the memory viewer?)--but outside of that it just looks like I'm in the Matrix. I'm like Neo as he's first awaked to the real world and only sees a bunch of random green numbers scrolling down a screen. I can't quite see the woman in the red dress as I'm looking at those number yet. I clearly still don't believe I am the one! Lol
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose was a great game. Not that long, but the level design and the variation is great with new intresting gameplay added to each stage. Some levels was tough but on the first level in the school, you can stock up lives when you bounce on enemies. That was my strategy to beat the game.
@Mario500 I was able to finish reading it, but I agree. Seems like this stuff is creeping in everywhere. There isn’t even a warning at the beginning. This isn’t really an adult oriented site that is trying to be edgy, it’s just a regular history and news site, so it seems out of place/unprofessional. Not familiar with the writer, that may be his thing and perhaps he’s freelance so his writing style may be more for other things he’s been published under, so not placing blame there. But the story should be adapted to the site, by the editors or have a warning at least.
I could understand if it was a quote from an interview, but even then you normally would get a warning at the head of the article. But this was just put in the text by the publishing system of Time Extension. As many kids are these days, my kids are into retro gaming with stuff like the Nintendo Online service and Mario maker being popular in my home. They are also new readers, I would have though up until today to let them use this site in reader mode (no comment section).
Hope someone can see this as constructive feedback. Thanks @damo @Sketcz
@bring_on_branstons The train stage has a bug in most versions of the game (apparently the game got an official Spanish PAL release which fixed it). I read about it in Nintendo Power as a kid but they didn't specifically call it a bug. The cutscene engine specifically presses the R button when it wants to dash, instead of pushing the buttons assigned to Dash (they got Jump and Kick functions correctly programmed). I actually tracked down that bug and made patches the Japanese, US and English PAL versions, then when looking for the code in that Spanish version found it had already been fixed.
Konami pulled something similar with Babs' Big Break on Game Boy. It had a password feature in Japan that was removed in English, as well as having a two Continue limit imposed.
I looked at the code and it seems Konami and removed the password function in English (I played with bgb to figure out how I use RAM cheats to choose the new game option and cheat over to the password feature in Japanese, only to find that didn't work in English. Suggesting Konami didn't just do the easy hack of hiding the text/cursor and disabling its movement on the title screen).
I could've SWORN the game still gave passwords on Normal difficulty in the US version, and they just DIDN'T WORK (correctly) when you tried to enter them (they'd be accepted but still auto-switch to Children's difficulty). That is what I remember playing as a child.
This was definitely interesting and does seem easy enough to pick up a bit with some kind of guidance as starting point. I remember those days well. I think there was a divide between the parents buying the games and the kids playing them. Parents were so goofy back then. I know games were expensive then in relative terms, but it seemed to parents were more upset at short games. I had a number of games that ended up being easy enough where I beat them quickly. And then I played them some more and would have fond memories of them. And then others were so infuriating that I reached a point where I just said never again. Battletoads was one of those games, and I mastered the turbo tunnel. It just stopped being fun due to all the gimmicks getting in the way of the core gameplay. And it's not that I dislike all hard games. I always enjoyed Ninja Gaiden because the game is so fun to control on a basic level. A couple of years ago, I decided to try beating it without save states and I did that twice(once with the sword trick, and once without). I did that because it was fun. I remember Dynamite Headdy getting the rental difficulty spike back then. Same for Streets of Rage 3. I just think jacking up the difficulty like that might have had short-term benefits, but hurt things long term.
One of my favorite ROM hacks, and I mention this here because it probably is not much more complex, is for Super Mario All Stars. Specifically, the hack fixes the weird behavior when breaking blocks. Breaking them kind of sucks Mario or Luigi up further a tiny bit and feels really odd. It definitely does not play correctly. From what I remember, the value was reversed vertically in the original game moving the character up instead of down upon hitting blocks, so it was just a matter of reversing that to restore it to the proper behavior. There have been times when I wondered is a specific hack existed. For example, just recently I was playing Assault Suits Valken/Cybernator and I would have liked being able to disable double-tap dashing since that function is also mapped to A by default and the double-tap control caused me a bunch of problems. It's already a good game, and that would improve it in my opinion.
I’ve done quite a few hacks like these lately, mostly on SNES games to get the full ending on all difficulties. I’ve done Area 88, Contra III, Gradius III, Salamander II (arcade) and Street Fighter II Turbo (I’ve also hacked the arcade ROM to disable the difficulty scaling).
I’ve been working on doing this for F-Zero but I’m trying to get it to show both endings rather only one of the endings but it’s hard to find where it’s branching after the end sequence.
I’ve modded Axelay to offer the hidden final difficulty setting called Monkey on the options screen and finally I’ve also changed ActRaiser to speed up the egg timer. It still needs some work though as it’s not possible to max out your population levels with the monster lairs being destroyed more quickly.
Congrats on coming up with the idea and making it happen! I've always wanted to play this but have never made it past the 2nd level.
Also thank you for documenting the process especially. I think it really helps people also start the process when they have an idea like this.
I'll remember this thread if I need it for my presentation at the Strong Musejm's Videogame Hall of Fame next month. They're having a 2-day symposium and accepted my presentation about fans preserving and enhancing games through fanhacking.
I've only hacked with a disassembly so I haven't really thought about what I'm going to do. This might be great for it!
@RetroGames I think you're getting hung up on labels here. "easy" "hard" whatever.
What matters is the process is possible, and it's documented for those inclined. The "hardest" part of things like this is knowing where to begin.
If you have ideas on how to simply anything, I think that would be really helpful for the author to hear!
Cool. I’ll be downloading this hack when it’s out. This was one of the few SNES games that I had back in the 90s but never finished for whatever reason. I was usually able to complete games I was lucky enough to get.
@Bonggon5 If you want to dive right into it, it's already out on romhacks.org. It's romhacking.net where it's still pending.
Good job! I will always say: hacks like this are true videogame preservation.
This reminds me one of my favorite childhood games: Tiny Toon 2 for Game Boy, which had its password feature also removed. I want to take a look at it sooner or later.
Do mario games on nes and snes have different difficulty in japan and the rest of the world? Just make a fun games and people will buy and keep it for replaying it over and over.
For example double dragon 2 on nes is easy even on higher difficulty, but I replayed it over and over back then because the game is so fun, especially with friends.
This was a very fun article, I'd definitely like to see more like this.
I never knew that difficulty was tuned around the whole rental/return thing, for me it works the other way around though: If a game is too difficult/frustrating, i won't buy it.
I rented a lot of games in the NES/SNES times, and the frustrating games were one-time rental only (Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me)
The games with decent difficulty (SMB2, Double dragon 2, Ducktales, Final fight 2, aLttP, Mario kart) were ones i'd rent repeatedly (And when they were available second-hand, i bought them outright), in the case of DD2, i rented it so often it would've been cheaper to just buy the game!
The RHDN submission was rejected due to the supplied screenshots being "too pixelated". They've tightened up their process, and it's a PITA to get approval. I could resubmit with cleaner screens. Or you know what? Just get it on Romhacks. No fuss there. It's not like RHDN pays anyone, their submission process should be easier than this.
@marc_max
Interesting. I wonder if they actually deleted the code for passwords, or left it in but put a shunt in so you can't access it. If the latter, it might be as simple as NOP'ing whatever line dismisses it.
@MysticX
Same. Skyblazer on SNES was finished in two days, but it was so much fun I kept it for years and would replay my favourite levels just for the pleasure of it. Excessively tough games were dropped pretty quick. I finished Earthworm Jim once and never went back.
@GhaleonUnlimited
I'm flattered, but I think there are at least 101 other better hacks that better represent this. Fixing Contra and CVIII for example. Good luck with you presentation.
@BulkSlash
We have a veteran here! These all sound quite excellent. Are you uploading online? Good luck with the F-Zero endings.
@sdelfin
This Cybernator hack sounds very simple given it won't even need save states. I'll have a peek if time permits. It should be as simple as starting on the first level, having the debugger open, and then repeatedly doing it to see where the branch is. Then possibly just putting NOP there. It depends how the double tap is read by the loop. I would not want to accidentally disable the dash for all control methods.
@DestructoDisk @Mario500
Thank you for the feedback. It was an off the cuff remark reflecting my deep annoyance at Konami's attitude, but you're right, it is not essential to the tone of the piece and if younger readers enjoy the site I will endeavour to encourage this by refraining from such language in future. (I just freelance, given it was asked.)
@RetroGames
OK, so I've been thinking about what kind of specific simple tutorial one could give that's easier than this Buster hack, but also fun, and I've just tested it: Link to the Past, those guards at the start? You can mess with Link's vertical position to bypass them and explore the rest of Hyrule in the rain. It's weird and cool! No enemies, except in caves and dungeons. I'm busy today but hope to write up a set of instructions for this tomoz. (I used SNES9X which is a bit more newcomer friendly, but if I can I'd like to give a tutorial on doing this same thing in both emulators - every emu has a slightly different GUI and style of tools.) If not Sunday then Monday. Or Tuesday at the latest!
I think this is a fun primer for anyone who hasn't tried it before. You're only hacking just one value - Link's vertical position. But it allows you to access the map in a non-normal alternate state, with spooky stuff going on. If one can crack this, you'll have the knowledge to do similar in other games.
Princess Zelda's "help me" message keeps popping up, so I might also look at NOP'ing that.
Also, the password characters are actually:
00 - Babs Bunny
01 - Plucky Duck
02 - Montana Max
03 - Elmyra Duff
04 - Shirley the Loon
05 - Sweetie Bird
06 - Gogo Dodo
07 - Bookworm
08 - Calamity Coyote
09 - Little Beeper
@BulkSlash What do you mean when you say difficulty scaling on Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting? I ask because I have noticed some cases in Capcom games where the difficulty setting seems to do nothing at all. Super Street Fighter 2 arcade seems to be broken in that way. I haven't played much of the arcade Hyper Fighting so I don't know what it does. Also, much earlier than that, Strider has the same problem at least on some versions. I remember trying it on max difficulty and it was one of the easiest runs I ever had. Strider is buggy in various ways, but I still enjoy it. Funny how the NES version is a mess too.
Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I have a love / hate relationship with Buster Busts Loose.
I bought the game right when it came out, it has great visuals, music, controls, and fun level concepts. It should have been a winner, but there's a strange problem with the game. I could never beat the second stage (Wild West) on Normal difficulty, and it wasn't for a lack of skills, but the game just wouldn't let me jump onto the flying logs on the train section.
I spent months, and countless attempts to beat the game, but never could, and I truly believe it was some type of error in the programming, it drove me crazy, and I eventually gave up. So I looked at the cheat codes in Nintendo Power, only to be extremely disappointed that it forced on Kids difficulty, which didn't allow me to play the full game. What garbage nonsense!
So much potential down the toilet over Konami USA meddling. Thanks for making this patch, its the only way I'd ever dare to attempt to play the game at this point ever again.
@Sketcz I haven’t uploaded any of them, as I wasn’t sure anyone would want them. In some cases they could probably just be made into Game Genie codes as they don’t change much. The Contra Spirits one is a bit bigger though as I needed to jump to the end of the ROM to add some extra instructions. 😅 Also I tend to mod the Japanese releases as those are the ones I imported back in the day, so I’d need to also do the US ROM before releasing. I probably should do it at some point!
@sdelfin Yeah Super SFII Turbo’s difficulty is broken, it always starts on hardest. For the rest of them, when you set the difficulty dip switches it reads that into another part of the memory when starting a new game and increments it after each fight you win, I find it eventually becomes impossible to win. I think it’s supposed to drop the difficulty when you lose, but I’ve never noticed it get much easier.
Many of the Capcom games from that era increase the difficulty the longer you play for, Strider is one of them. When you see those little robots flying in from the top or bottom of the screen you know the game wants to kill you and make you put more money in! 😂 Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts and Final Fight have it too IIRC.
@BulkSlash Thanks for answering. It's strange how Capcom games are broken in that way. I played Strider quite extensively last year. Frankly, I was a bit obsessed, but it was fun. As far as I could tell, there's some amount of randomness to the difficulty as I'll sometimes get one bad break after another just starting the game up, especially early in the game. The later stages seem to have less variation, perhaps because they're already hard enough. Maybe there are difficulty and scaling differences between the different ROM versions as there are a number of other differences and possible bug fixes.
@GhaleonUnlimited For now, just to make any guide as straightforward and easy to follow as humanly possible.
As the saying goes “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself” ― Albert Einstein
And this six year old, going on 48, agrees.
ROM hacking is a lot of fun, I've done a few.
I don't even remember Buster Busts Loose having passwords...that must be why.
@sdelfin I love a bit of Strider as well, I finally managed to 1cc it a month back! It wouldn’t surprise me if there are glitches, I tend to play the Japanese release and you can occasionally see small garbage pixels at the edge of Hiryuu’s sprite where it overlaps with another sprite in the ROM. Some versions re-use level 1’s music on other stages instead of having their own unique tracks too.
@BulkSlash congrats on that. Strider is a good one to 1CC because it's not easy, but it's more manageable than it looks. I used to be crap at the game, but it always looked like fun so I came back to it. I only 1CC games if I'm enjoying it, and that's one I went ahead and did. I had some no-death runs, but the randomness we discussed makes that hard to do repeatedly.
I have heard people mention glitches. I've encountered a glitch when restarting at the checkpoint in stage two before the airship part where the background doesn't load and the game can't proceed properly. I don't know if it's an emulation issue or if it happens on real hardware, but considering how robust CPS1 emulation is, I think it may be a real glitch. Those gravity machines can also send you off screen which is really annoying which has to be a glitch.
I read up on the game and it was really interesting how the music wasn't implemented correctly in early versions. I believe there was a bit more music that was never implemented in any of the arcade versions, some "hurry up" music and a unique ending tune. I'm not sure if you are aware, I recently saw that there's a hack(2022) for restoring all the music to an early US version of the game as well as cleaning up those garbage pixels. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't give any first-hand impressions. It flew under my radar as arcade hacks aren't very common.
Good ol Konami has always screwed stuff up, huh?
@sdelfin I don’t think I’ve had that glitch, but I’ve been caught more than once with a glitch in Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts where taking a shortcut on level 4 doesn’t load the rest of the level. 💀
I think I know the Strider patch you’re taking about, I downloaded it but it was for an older version of the game not supported in MAME anymore. I wonder if it’s possible to port it…
The “ridiculous fiddling” link seems to be broken.
I loved this game but yeah, passwords only working on "Children" difficulty was beyond stupid.
Over the years I have come to prefer the Japanese version of many games simply due to being the "true" experience over butchered localized versions.
Thanks for this. I borrowed a copy of Buster Busts Loose from a friend as a kid and really liked it for the brief time I had with it. Years later, I bought a copy and was disappointed to find how it had been butchered.
@sdelfin
Bankbank cooked up an IPS patch to remove dashing via double tap in Cybernator. I'm not sure if we should upload it to rhdn or just email it to you. I need to do some testing first.
@RetroGames
Wrote a step by step tutorial for two fun hacks in Zelda for everyone to try (18 steps so everything is covered). They teach a method which can be done in other games too. Will update you when it's up.
@Sketcz Great. Thanks.
@RetroGames I would venture that explaining the concept behind something is not the same as teaching the step-by-step on how to do the thing yourself.
I really enjoyed the Einstein biography "His Life and Universe" because it explained his theories in layman's terms, but that doesn't mean it equipped me to follow up on his theories with my own physics. I would need separate materials to do that and I think it's important to know the difference
@Sketcz Well this is a pleasant and unexpected development. No need to worry about getting it to me as I just checked romhacks.org out of curiosity and it's been uploaded there, so I'll be doing some testing myself later. I might still refer back to this article and see if I can replicate the results as it was cool to follow along and see how your hacking experience went and that you could get some good results without having to have a deep technical knowledge.
Edit: If my appreciation wasn't clear already, I just wanted to add a simple thank you for passing that request along. Never hurts to say so explicitly.
Tap here to load 52 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...