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When I go around the Internet, I can find a lot of interesting ROM hacks to create a complete new experience with great classics, specially Super Mario and Sonic.

But I'm surprised there's no interest of the comunity to create ROM hacks of SMS games. Games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, Castle of Illusion or Land of Illusion have huge hacking potential to create new stages with more challengers than the original games, or even add some new elements.

Is there any explanation for this lack of interest?

One possible reason is the fact that the SMS wasn't very popular in the USA; while it did make some successs in other countries, the U.S. were by far the largest game market at the time; as a result, the modern SMS retrogaming community is smaller than its NES and Atari counterparts.

To make a serious rom hack requires a huge amount of work to modify game logic and rebuild data structures. A simpler hack would be a level editor, buy that's still really hard and we don't have many games reverse engineered enough for that - I know of a few but nothing much ever came of them. That's because of the last big problem - making fun, interesting, worthwhile levels is actually really hard.

There's been some recent activity on reverse engineering Alex Kidd in Miracle World with a view to level editing, check it out on the development forum and get involved if you can.

NES roms are easier to hack because
- by nature of how the hardware works, the tiles tends to be stored and encoded in a known location
- the community is bigger and has more tools

It's a sad fact: The NES/Genesis/SNES community is huge if comparing with the SMS community. So, there's many tools to ROM hack available for those systems, and many information and documentation about hacking specific games (Sonic Retro is the house of hacking documentation for Sonic games, for example). In result, even games looks simple to level edit (like Miracle World) is a hard, difficult work. Sad fact, like I already said.

It could be cool if could have some Hacking Documentation page for specifics SMS/GG games, just to store information. It could be an incentive for other hacking work with SMS/GG games.

We already have that, as for Alex Kidd in Miracle World, there's a Development page for every game* and any forum user can edit those pages. Any bit of information can be added and over time it could build up to a good resource, wiki style.

* You don't see them until something is written though.

Author	Message
rouken Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 248 Location: Aracruz - ES, Brazil	SMS ROM Hacks? Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2013 9:25 pm
	When I go around the Internet, I can find a lot of interesting ROM hacks to create a complete new experience with great classics, specially Super Mario and Sonic. But I'm surprised there's no interest of the comunity to create ROM hacks of SMS games. Games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, Castle of Illusion or Land of Illusion have huge hacking potential to create new stages with more challengers than the original games, or even add some new elements. Is there any explanation for this lack of interest?

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 877 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:39 am
	One possible reason is the fact that the SMS wasn't very popular in the USA; while it did make some successs in other countries, the U.S. were by far the largest game market at the time; as a result, the modern SMS retrogaming community is smaller than its NES and Atari counterparts.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:34 am
	To make a serious rom hack requires a huge amount of work to modify game logic and rebuild data structures. A simpler hack would be a level editor, buy that's still really hard and we don't have many games reverse engineered enough for that - I know of a few but nothing much ever came of them. That's because of the last big problem - making fun, interesting, worthwhile levels is actually really hard. There's been some recent activity on reverse engineering Alex Kidd in Miracle World with a view to level editing, check it out on the development forum and get involved if you can.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8675 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 12:25 pm
	NES roms are easier to hack because - by nature of how the hardware works, the tiles tends to be stored and encoded in a known location - the community is bigger and has more tools

rouken Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 248 Location: Aracruz - ES, Brazil	Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:12 pm
	It's a sad fact: The NES/Genesis/SNES community is huge if comparing with the SMS community. So, there's many tools to ROM hack available for those systems, and many information and documentation about hacking specific games (Sonic Retro is the house of hacking documentation for Sonic games, for example). In result, even games looks simple to level edit (like Miracle World) is a hard, difficult work. Sad fact, like I already said. It could be cool if could have some Hacking Documentation page for specifics SMS/GG games, just to store information. It could be an incentive for other hacking work with SMS/GG games.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:28 pm
	We already have that, as for Alex Kidd in Miracle World, there's a Development page for every game* and any forum user can edit those pages. Any bit of information can be added and over time it could build up to a good resource, wiki style. * You don't see them until something is written though.

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