Mods/Rom Hacks that fix a game

playing Metroid 2 on my GBA flash cart meant running it on a GB emulator made for the GBA because that voltage thingy
so one feature was it could extend the background layer to the edges of the screen
this meant you had like "long range radar" for the cave walls so you could see where the fuck you were, but only short range radar for monsters so you still got the jumpscares
made it a lot more enjoyable for me
 
some pokemon rom hacks were great. played sacred gold that is based out of heart gold that fixed the leveling scaling, made more pokemon available too capture, able to evolve trade evolutions without the need of trading, giving out good items early or made buyable earlier, made trainers carry more number of diverse pokemon (team rocket not using a million rattatas and koffings anymore) and having gym leaders use 6 pokemon from the start. it was a blast and it never got too hard even if i was under leveled at times.
 
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Metroid Other M: Maxximum Edition. It fixes a shit ton of stuff that was wrong with the base game, you can use missiles in third person, and the gravity suit is actually colored properly. The biggest thing it fixes is the story, by removing 90% of all cutscenes and dialogue so you don't have to suffer through the autistic voice acting. There are a couple of fan edits that are obvious to the point of cringe but those are few and far between. The music is replaced with a much better soundtrack. It removes about 2.5 gigs from the base game, but I'm pretty sure those were mostly cutscenes no one would have missed anyway. I was able to actually enjoy the game while playing through it.

Of course, if you're not a Sega autist like me and prefer Nintendo games, there's Metroid Mother, a remastering of the original Metroid game that adds save files, a map screen, and overhauls the sprite-work to maintain an improved look that's consistent with manual and future artwork of Samus.

There's also Metroid Mother: Galactic Edition. It adds onto to the base hack by letting you start the game with full health each time, so you don't have to spend 5-10 minutes grinding for health to fight one of the bosses. You also have the ability to wall jump, with a mini map added to the corner. Scroll to the bottom of that thread for the hack.
 
playing Metroid 2 on my GBA flash cart meant running it on a GB emulator made for the GBA because that voltage thingy
so one feature was it could extend the background layer to the edges of the screen
this meant you had like "long range radar" for the cave walls so you could see where the fuck you were, but only short range radar for monsters so you still got the jumpscares
made it a lot more enjoyable for me
If you haven't checked out the unlicensed remake of metroid 2 for the PC you need to.

Nintendo took a massive shit on it, as they do everything good, but it's still floating around. It's a Xinput supported, SNES style remake that's utterly bitchin. If you cant find it yourself and are interested PM me and I'll throw it on catbox in a rar for you or something.

As for mods: realdrugz mod for any of the fallout games: if adds real penalties to imbibing as well as some fun visual and aural effects, the survival damage rebalance mods for fallout 4, project cartographer for halo/halo2 (master chief collection a shit), skyrims unofficial patch/fix bundle.
 
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A few I can think off the top of my head:

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 EX: Fixes some bugs, QoL changes such as every character can link standing and crouching normal attacks like most of the cast (crouching Medium into Standing Medium for example), bad bugs fixed, and changing some assists for characters, including some that are just plain awful like Deadpool's Trigger Happy attack now being the Medium version (which shoots straight as he stands upright) instead of his heavy (meant to be an anti air shooting diagonally.)

Sonic Genesis Done Right: A romhack of Sonic Genesis, or, Sonic the Hedgehog on the Gameboy Advance, that showcases that the game could be handled ported. Sonic Genesis is an extremely awful port with slowdown, bad screencrunch, and an extremely bad redone soundtrack on the GBA soundchip. This mod fixes almost all of that. And to think, a decade later, the person who made this would go on to make Sonic Mania.

Literallly most Payday 2 Mods: Payday 2 is a great game but holy hell does it need some QoL improvements. Tons of mods make it an even better experience, including my favorite thing that's yet to be implemented, Toggle Interaction. Some interactable items can take almost a minute to fully interact.


Honorable mentions:
Street Fighter 4 Remix: A more interesting experience. Pretty much Street Fighter II Rainbow Edition for SF4.

Pokemon Romhacks: Depending on the kind, the best ones are the ones that let you obtain/evolve Pokemon you normally couldn't during emulation or in a single player experience.

Brawl Mods: Project M is usually the first to come up, but I personally love Brawl Minus, a game that was taking the piss out of multiple mods trying to "balance the game" with obvious bias, but the real goal was to make the game a chaotic broken mess.
 
BetterSpore was pretty decent back in the day. A rather comprehensive overhaul of both the Civ and Space stages with some minor tweaks of the previous stages, it vastly enhanced the gameplay and lategame was much more enjoyable.

I remember spending constant hours cheating for money to buy nukes that instantly destroy a planet, exterminating entire civilizations trying to befriend the Grox.

Bit of a shame 1.6 never came out, the last version is completely incompatible with Galactic Adventures.
 
Don't Starve/DST are horrendous, awful slogs if you don't have inventory expansion mods. Expanding the inventory from 12 slots to 60 makes the inventory management feel more like Diablo or Skyrim rather than something you're constantly fighting

Yeah, but isn't that sort of the point? This is a survival game, not a theme vacation.

playing Metroid 2 on my GBA flash cart meant running it on a GB emulator made for the GBA because that voltage thingy
so one feature was it could extend the background layer to the edges of the screen
this meant you had like "long range radar" for the cave walls so you could see where the fuck you were, but only short range radar for monsters so you still got the jumpscares
made it a lot more enjoyable for me

If you haven't checked out the unlicensed remake of metroid 2 for the PC you need to you.

Nintendo took a massive shit on it, as they do everything good, but it's still floating around. It's a Xinput supported, SNES style remake that's utterly bitchin. If you cant find it yourself and are interested PM me and I'll throw it on catbox in a rar for you or something

AM2R
 
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Showing my age with this one but Sunday the 15th, a romhack for Friday the 13th on the Commodore 64. Fixes a lot of the issues with the original game by upping the difficulty and making the AI more aggressive.
 
Total Annihilation mods that balance out (sometimes adding more units) the game. Increased AI (base AI wont send nukes even on hard difficulty and will box itself in when it builds, updated AI will start to swarm you within a minute), units on the map (from 250 to 500 units per side is huge for such an old game!), better maps
 
Lufia II for the SNES shipped with some pretty bad glitches, like one of the dungeons looking like this:

36-Lufia_II_-_Rise_of_the_Sinistrals.138.png


Also, some of the place names would change to random gibberish:

unnamed.gif



Frue Lufia fixes these, and gives the game a better translation that brings back all the religious references that Nintendo of America cut out.
 
I was going to mention using Game Genie codes for the Wolverine game on the NES at least fixes the weird design choice where using his Claws hurts you. The AVGN said it already but it was so weird that there was a period of time for X-Men games where using your powers was a penalty. Even the Konami X-Men arcade game did the same thing, when you use your power you lose health. That game was better designed of course.

Unfortunately, the NES Wolverine game is still bad even when you use the code I mentioned. Terrible hit-detection, delayed inputs, limited continues, and bullshit I Wanna Be the Guy type of level design the further in you get.
 
I was going to mention using Game Genie codes for the Wolverine game on the NES at least fixes the weird design choice where using his Claws hurts you. The AVGN said it already but it was so weird that there was a period of time for X-Men games where using your powers was a penalty. Even the Konami X-Men arcade game did the same thing, when you use your power you lose health. That game was better designed of course.

Unfortunately, the NES Wolverine game is still bad even when you use the code I mentioned. Terrible hit-detection, delayed inputs, limited continues, and bullshit I Wanna Be the Guy type of level design the further in you get.
All licensed games by Acclaim/LJN, with the exception of Shadow Man, were insanely bad. If you really want to see an awful Marvel game, play Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge for the SNES. It is also definitive proof that the Nintendo Seal of “Quality” was total bullshit, but only morons and spends ever fell for that shit to begin with.
 
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All licensed games by Acclaim/LJN, with the exception of Shadow Man, were insanely bad. If you really want to see an awful Marvel game, play Spide—Man and X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge for the SNES. It is also definitive proof that the Nintendo Seal of “Quality” was total bullshit, but only morons and spends ever fell for that shit to begin with.

The Punisher game on the NES was good. Some people like Maximum Carnage which was decent.
 
The Punisher game on the NES was good. Some people like Maximum Carnage which was decent.
Punisher I’ll give you, but the Spidey/Venom games were just noise among the millions of bad Final Fight clones on the SNES, and they sucked compared to the Japan-only Deadly Foes that Acclain never thought to license for North America. Any brawler that can be beaten by one move repeated 1,000,000 times is a shit game.
 
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Punisher I’ll give you, but the Spidey/Venom games were just noise among the millions of bad Final Fight clones on the SNES, and they sucked compared to the Japan-only Deadly Foes that Acclain never thought to license for North America. Any brawler that can be beaten by one move repeated 1,000,000 times is a shit game.

Key word: decent. There were better Beat 'Em Ups on both systems.
 
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