If you could mod/hack a game, what would you do?

Great thread.

Hack WWF Wrestlefest, change the characters to Game of Thrones characters and call it GoT Melee. One-on-one mode could be called "Trial by Combat". Swap out Bobby Heenan for Tyrian Lannister. Boom.
 
Are those the same mods needed to convert Mappy to Dig Dug II? I had assumed it was, it was just that it needed a second chip swapped out.

http://www.jrok.com/project/dd2/mappy_to_digdug2.html

If you swap out the custom I/O controller like Jrok says then you don't need to patch anything, just do what he says. If you were going from Dig Dug II or Motos back to Mappy then you could likely just patch the code to deal with the different custom I/O controller since the smaller ROM data could just be duplicated in the larger ROMs. Unfortunately to my knowledge only Mappy was released in North America. Dig Dug II, Motos and The Tower of Druaga were not (and I doubt anyone wants to play Tower of Druaga anyway).

That would be a cool game to see get some attention, I think it was only released in Japan and it's a lot more fun than Alpine Ski (which in itself ain't bad) in my opinion. I haven't tried the conversion myself but I remember reading somewhere on KLOV in the past that a simple ROM swap didn't work.

Based upon MAME Alpine Ski would not work on a Water Ski board due to the protection code in Alpine Ski. Water Ski might work on an Alpine Ski board since Water Ski doesn't use the protection though the dip switches would need to be changed. Also Water Ski uses a second button.
 
I'd add some background music to Berzerk. Probably some synth/electro tunes.

It would also be cool to add some music to Ninja Gun and add some sound effects so the ninjas scream as they get shot. :)
 
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Not feasible, Time Pilot and Time Pilot '84 use different CPUs and different hardware. Time Pilot doesn't have a scrolling background, the clouds are just sprites and they are repeated 128 pixels down and right by the hardware. Time Pilot '84 has a scrolling background layer.

Considering the complexity of the Namco System 2 hardware that would require access to the source code and it would require new graphics which would need to be broken down into 8x8 tiles for the rotate/zoom tilemap layer for the new level (assuming there is even ROZ character ROM space to spare).

You have to remember, the thread title is "If you could mod/hack a game, what would you do?"

And not "If you could mod/hack a game, how would you do it?"

And from my experience, there is always ROZ character ROM space to spare...

:D
 
I'd add some background music to Berzerk. Probably some synth/electro tunes.

It would also be cool to add some music to Ninja Gun and add some sound effects so the ninjas scream as they get shot. :)

I wonder how much an Ikari Warriors style twist & turn joystick would improve or fail berzerk & frenzy.
 
I level editor for Championship/Super Sprint, Level editor for bobble bobble, level editor for Revenge of DOH.

Back in high school days (late 80s) a friend reverse engineered Major Havoc so we got an extra life every 1000 points so that we could get to Vax.. but of course you couldn't.
 
They did that for Blasteroids and it was pretty good.



Yes, then you could add a trigger-based joystick, and some theme about planets being mad. That would be a cool game. ;)


The idea of adding a spinner to AD is an interesting one, as there's a subtlety to it that would need to be addressed. The existing button scheme limits the rotational speed of the ship (i.e., you can only rotate at a fixed rate).

If the spinner acted the same way, I would think it would be fairly hard to control. However if the ship rotation was variable, and tracked the rate of the spinner, the game would feel very different.
 
I could/would/have modified the game structure of Defender.

Called it Pink ROM as it started as a toned down RED.
 

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Frogger: Pushing the 1P or 2P button will make your frog jump straight up and land back in place. You could potentially time it to jump over cars and things etc to avoid being hit. The original game is fun, and this would be another way to play.

Punch-Out!!: Would be fun to have a reskinned mod with boxers from the Rocky series. The existing punch animations could be used but the timing of punches would be all different making for a new game. Alternatively, the existing game could just be remixed so the AI of the opponents patterns is different.

Return of the Jedi: Make a version for the vector game.

Qbert: I believe I'd read Qbert was originally designed to shoot pellets at the enemies. Would be interesting to play a version like that sometime.
 
I'm gonna be the odd one out, and talk about a newer game.

I'd love to have the dev tools for the Rush driving series. Would love to (1) Find ALL the easter eggs / shortcuts, and more importantly, (2) make my own courses.
 
Cool thread!

I know this is a super-rare game that not a lot of folks probably care much about :) , but as much as I have been enjoying my recent acquisition of a Boxing Bugs, there is one game element that I think would make a great addition to the gameplay.

When you start a game, you get 3 "Panics" which knock all of the bombs away from your player all at once to get you out of a particularly sticky situation, but there is no way to earn additional "panics" :( .

I would hack the game if I could to allow one to earn extra panics for certain scores (i.e. every 20K or something like that).

If you are able to attend the next CAX (dates to be announced very soon ;) ), try the game and you'll see what I mean.

Still a fun game though...

Jon
 
Oh yeah...

The other hack I would LOVE to see would be the addition of extra digit for the Tempest scoring ;) .

I know a few folks have chatted on this through the years, but nothing ever saw the light of day.

Anyone out there who thinks that they could do this, please give it a shot! :D

Jon
 
I know Robotron doesn't have a lot of hacking space left to it, so this would probably require a hardware hack as well. Integrate a RTC with the hardware so that in addition to recording scores, you could record times. I've always wanted to record how fast I've cleared level X.

It would open up additional Robotron contests like:
1) How many points can you score X minutes?
2) How fast can you get to X million points?
3) Record time to clear level 1

etc...

A cheap/easy way could be to tie the inputs to said time tracker to the soundboard triggers (level start sound, level complete sound).
 
Oh yeah...

The other hack I would LOVE to see would be the addition of extra digit for the Tempest scoring ;) .

I know a few folks have chatted on this through the years, but nothing ever saw the light of day.

Anyone out there who thinks that they could do this, please give it a shot! :D

Jon

That would likely require the Tempest source code so that an extra digit could be added and the game code reassembled. I'm pretty sure the scores are two 3-byte BCD variables (2 digits per byte).
 
Would the Tempest code and any of the information at ionpool.net include what was needed?

Link here:

http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/tempest_code_project/tempest_code_project.html

Way above my pay grade, but if you could do this, I'd be eternally grateful :D .

Jon

Interesting but no. The actual source code would be needed since only 3 bytes are allocated for each player's score and the high score. Adding a millions digit would require a 4th byte. The routines to update scores and display scores would need to change, the high score table would need to change and the routines to update it would need to change as well.

One other problem is that even if you got hold of the Tempest source code, Atari used a VAX 6502 cross assembler with archaic constructs that no 6502 assembler I know of recognizes so rebuilding the code would be a challenge.
 
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I'm gonna be the odd one out, and talk about a newer game.

I'd love to have the dev tools for the Rush driving series. Would love to (1) Find ALL the easter eggs / shortcuts, and more importantly, (2) make my own courses.

There are a ton of great ideas on here and yeah, great thread! :)

I'd love to know where all the easter eggs are in RTR and +1 for adding more courses or shortcuts to the existing.

But really, any driving game would be great with more courses. RTR happens to be my favorite, so it would be especially great.
 
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