| ROM HACKING REMEMBERED Wifred Brimley Kong, Toilet Mario, Dragoon X Omega, and other Wackiness |
 Around 1995, Emulation started to become a thing, and along with it "ROMS" - ie files with the data contained on old game cartridges - named after the functional part inside the cartridge, the Read Only Memory (ROM) Chip(s) that the data was stored on. Somewhere along the line, some clever person, or persons, started to figure out that you could indeed edit/alter/modify the data in these files, and thusly, modify the games.
Now, just about ANY platform's ROM can be modified. Even Tile Layer can decipher Atari 2600 ROMs well enough that the sprites can be modified for the player graphics at least. Relative searches could be done using a basic HEX editor to find in-game text and change it. People managed to figure out the pallet tables, sprite, and chunk tables located inside the games leading to the creation of game specific utilities at the time such as Mario Improvement or Dragon Warrior Editor. So why would anyone go through with the effort to do this rather than learn to program Assembly/Machine language? Well, that's frickin' hard, that's why! Much harder than just working with relative data found by cross-using different tools that looks at the data in the ROM in different ways. And while it's a LOT easier now to learn to program this stuff with various custom IDE's developed for modern computers, complete with libraries and whatnot......back then, nobody wanted to learn an obsolete assembly language just to make a Nintendo game that could not even be pressed into a cartridge at the time. You have to remember, all this "Retro" stuff is pretty darned new comparitiveley speaking. It was only 30 years ago when nobody would press a new Atari 2600 cart or Nintendo cartridge, nobody wanted to learn 6502 Assembly Language, nobody wants to spend the development time and money on such a thing. It was a HOBBY, and nobody gave a crap about making money from it or preserving the longevity of the systems, because to us at the time, it was just old FUN junk that nobody else wanted. But today, ROM hacking has almost seem as if it has started to fade as people now can create 100% original works for a NES or Atari 2600 or some other vintage platform using some well developed integrated development environment system tooled to that specific system, complete with libraries and linkers, and all that fun stuff devs are more astute at than myself. With Romhacking.net coming to an end, NIntendo trying to sue anyone with an emulator on their computer into oblivion, and having setups for VIsual STudio for programming original works that can be pressed to a open source cartridge board from the internet via a service like PCBWay, and then burned using a Chinese EEPROM Programmer from e-bay...or whatever...this page is more about talking about what it was like back then.What was involved in making these hacks? Among the earliest ways to modify NES games was to save things to a VRAM or SRAM save in the old Emulator NESTicle (the one I showed above with the "Pattern Table" aka - where the sprites are put together). Basically, you loaded up your ROM, opened the pallet Editor, changed the colors, opened the pattern table, edited the sprites, and you could have Frank Zappa running around the Mushroom Kingdom with a pile of waddling sex toys for no good reason (more on the subject matter of early ROM hacks later). Later, a program called "TileLayer" came along and allowed a more permanant modification of the ROM's graphics. It basically deciphered the digital information inside the ROM to show the pattern tables - basically the "TILES" That make up the "SPRITES" That make up the graphics you'd see on screen. So you could edit them, and continue torturing Noel Gallagher in a world full of Demon Mushrooms. Hexpose, a Hex Editor, was often used using "Table Files" that could be loaded into it, so that you could do relative searches for things like the pallet, in-game text, and other stuff. And as time went on, peple could use Hexpose (and other HEx Editors) to find other in-game data and do more elaborate hacks. So now Dragon Warrior could finally have the sarcastic, MST3K Worthy tone you always wanted, or you could make a gothic mario game where the sky is always black, mario has on guyliner, and you have to fight with severed heads sliding across the ground. Let's talk about some of these old ROM Hacks... So let's consider the audience and creators. AT the time, I was 15-20 years old, most of the people around me doing this, also were, or slightly older. We were young ,immature, the internet was our goofey playground for this madness. We came up with ideas that were, well...to say the least, somewhat interesting, if not somewhat blatently offensive... Wilfred Brimley Kong - So you think the whole "Diabeetus" thing is new huh? Well, we were making fun of those PSA Commercials for Steel Cut oats going all the way back to the late 90's, and this was one result of that time before the term "meme" was even a thing on the internet - Wifred Brimley Kong - a basic hack on your garden variety NES black-label era Donkey Kong, where Donkey Kong has been replaced by Wilfred Brimley throwing bowls of Quaker Oatmeal at you instead of Donkey Kong and powder kegs. Meanwhile, your timer has now been changed to "FIBER". Wheelchair Mario (aka. Handiman) - Continuing in the lines of poor taste, seemed, ROM Hackers did a lot of strange things to Super Mario. One of these was to put him in a wheelchair? Was he crippled falling down one of the pits, or is this just some Jackass stunt one day when bored in the Mushroom Kingdom? Maybe Steve-O in a Mario halloween costume in a Wheel Chair from the sporting good section of the local Goodwill? IIRC, that was the ONLY thing changed in the whole ROM hack, except I think the mushrooms were changed to the universal symbol for the physically challenged (or I think I hacked this ROM Hack further to have that one day because of the fact Mario doesn't have a Wheelchair until he got the Mushroom?). Toilet Mario - And just when you thought it could not get worse, now Mario gets to "Ride the Porcelin Honda" on his adventure, with his skin pallet somewhat altered to make him look even more pale...like he's got some kind of serious bowel issue or something. So anyway, has he rides the Boldness of Kohler around the Mushroom Kingdom....assuming it's not the result of a prank housecall that involved superglue and the toilet seat, Debate Dude - This was a mere textual re-write of Dragon Warrior filled with sarcasm who has to hold a debate with the Dragonlord to get the Ball of Patronizing back from him. Dragoon X Omega - A massive graphical hack of Dragon Warrior that changes the whole plot to take place in the future. A nation just over a rebellion by their own psychic soldiers is attacked by an alien being in a giant star ship. The last one of the rebels that has not been executed is given a choice: Save the land of Amnethen or die at the hands of her former master, Lord Vin. The graphical hack is so massive it was hard to notice what was walkable and what was not, but what WAS indeed noticeable is this was one of the earliest hacks with a lot of effort put into it. |
