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Hi guys.

I have been working with creating 'trainer' patches for Altered Beast and Golden Axe (level selection, unlimited lives, + other features). I have documented my experiments, collecting bits and pieces into a kind of tutorial on ROM hacking to create trainer patches for games. This tutorial is ~~appended to the existing page on trainers~~ a new Articles page:

http://www.smspower.org/Articles/TrainersDoItYourself

My approach might not be the most simple or straight forward way to achieve quick patches like unlimited lives etc. My motivation for hacking ROMs is not only the pleasure of enabling trainer features by patching some isolated bytes (but this IS also a major thrill for me). As a child, I did spend a lot of time wondering about how my SMS games where made, how the console worked, etc. Now, as I'm coming back to all this SEGA 8-bit stuff after 25 years, hacking the games is more like a practice of reworking some of the great mysteries of my childhood. So I'm primarily fuelled by a passion for exploring the inner workings of the games. I'm set on both process and product here.

Hi hang-on,

good work! This should be valuable to everyone who's new to hacking :)

That's.. inspiring, to say the least.
Nice article; it gives me ideas. ;)

There's a few things in there that I'd like to correct, if that isn't too annoying. It's an interesting journey from simplistic patching all the way up to custom trainer intro menus, quite an achievement. Given the size and the personal nature of the writing viewpoint, I think it ought to be split to its own page, possibly in the Articles section of the site, and linked from the trainers page.

Thanks for the kind words all three of you. I'm glad that you think the article can be useful to others.

Yes - quite a journey it has been - and still is. When I created this account in the spring, I knew nothing about assembler, hexadecimal and ROM hacking. I hope this newbie status is reflected in a good way in the material, but you are welcome to correct, rearrange and edit things as you see fit, Maxim :)

I split it out to its own page and tidied up a few things. I edited the link in the first post, here it is again:

http://www.smspower.org/Articles/TrainersDoItYourself

If there's anything broken then let me know.

It's incredible stuff you've been doing, and ever more so for documenting it so nicely.

I very much like the improvements and new structure Maxim! And thank you Bock - you inspired me to document ROM hacking in the first place: A few months ago you described how to hack Shinobi (http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14235) - and I thought "Hey, maybe I can contribute with stuff like this for people like me" :)

Author	Message
hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Trainers - Do It Yourself (SMS ROM hacking) Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 7:47 pm
	Hi guys. I have been working with creating 'trainer' patches for Altered Beast and Golden Axe (level selection, unlimited lives, + other features). I have documented my experiments, collecting bits and pieces into a kind of tutorial on ROM hacking to create trainer patches for games. This tutorial is ~~appended to the existing page on trainers~~ a new Articles page: http://www.smspower.org/Articles/TrainersDoItYourself My approach might not be the most simple or straight forward way to achieve quick patches like unlimited lives etc. My motivation for hacking ROMs is not only the pleasure of enabling trainer features by patching some isolated bytes (but this IS also a major thrill for me). As a child, I did spend a lot of time wondering about how my SMS games where made, how the console worked, etc. Now, as I'm coming back to all this SEGA 8-bit stuff after 25 years, hacking the games is more like a practice of reworking some of the great mysteries of my childhood. So I'm primarily fuelled by a passion for exploring the inner workings of the games. I'm set on both process and product here.

Calindro Joined: 14 Apr 2013 Posts: 624	Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 10:08 pm
Calindro Joined: 14 Apr 2013 Posts: 624	Hi hang-on, good work! This should be valuable to everyone who's new to hacking :)

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 874 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 10:37 pm
	That's.. inspiring, to say the least. Nice article; it gives me ideas. ;)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 8:41 am
	There's a few things in there that I'd like to correct, if that isn't too annoying. It's an interesting journey from simplistic patching all the way up to custom trainer intro menus, quite an achievement. Given the size and the personal nature of the writing viewpoint, I think it ought to be split to its own page, possibly in the Articles section of the site, and linked from the trainers page.

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 7:28 pm
	Thanks for the kind words all three of you. I'm glad that you think the article can be useful to others. Yes - quite a journey it has been - and still is. When I created this account in the spring, I knew nothing about assembler, hexadecimal and ROM hacking. I hope this newbie status is reflected in a good way in the material, but you are welcome to correct, rearrange and edit things as you see fit, Maxim :)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:35 pm
	I split it out to its own page and tidied up a few things. I edited the link in the first post, here it is again: http://www.smspower.org/Articles/TrainersDoItYourself If there's anything broken then let me know.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:42 pm
	It's incredible stuff you've been doing, and ever more so for documenting it so nicely.

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:41 pm
	I very much like the improvements and new structure Maxim! And thank you Bock - you inspired me to document ROM hacking in the first place: A few months ago you described how to hack Shinobi (http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14235) - and I thought "Hey, maybe I can contribute with stuff like this for people like me" :)

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