Why don't companies make official "rom hacks"? Surely they could put a newbie team on it who could crank out something better than the average bedroom dev. People would pay $60 for a new Zelda64
Why don't companies make official "rom hacks"?
Why don't companies make official "rom hacks"? Surely they could put a newbie team on it who could crank out something better than the average bedroom dev. People would pay $60 for a new Zelda64
Kinda getting that with some PC games - Age of Empires 2 got expansions just a few years back, so did Titan Quest
They have access to source and can use that to build new projects from older code.
It cuts down on development time and lets you put out new entries in a series faster to capitalise on the momentum and success of earlier entries.
That's what things like Super Mario Bros 2 J were, and the Mega Man series on NES.
Never understood why people want a new Zelda 64. The people that made those games great aren't the same people anymore and aren't working on the games in that same capacity. Old Zelda was great but it's dead and gone, the classic formula will never again receive the care and attention of a major company's flagship series developed by its best and brightest. Like it or not, open world Zelda is where all the effort and innovation will go. If we're lucky some indie dev will fill the niche but it will never really be Zelda. Zelda's dead.
Never mind a new Zelda 64, I wish Nintendo released a second SNES Zelda. The Satellaview games don't count.
i'm assuming you've already played link's awakening
I have, but that's a handheld game. I've always wanted another console-quality 2D Zelda. The closest we got was Minish Cap. also A Link Between Worlds and the Link's Awakening remake, but those aren't retro.
This is probably true sadly but I dream of nintendo picking up some passionate developer and giving him the keys to make perfect zelda game as a spinoff of the main series. Nostlagia makes me want to have one more adventure of the hero of time. I'm sure it would be a goldmine for devs. Imagine if the released something like final fantasy 7 1/2 with limited edition physical discs. People would eat that up
Opie and Anthony Mario Bros when?
>F-Zero x expansion kit
I'll have to check that out
>Opie and Anthony Mario Bros when?
A Super Mario Bros crossover with Bobby, Jessie Ventura as King Koopa, etc. would be incredibly kino
We need the Christian Whitehead of Z64. The guy who made that Indigo romhack could do it
Never played Sonic Mania so I'm not sure how well he handled the narrative and atmosphere of a classic Sonic game but it seems easier to get the gameplay right than the narrative. We might a fangame down the road that has the best 64 dungeons that never were but the atmosphere, themes, and writing of 64 Zeldas were the product of a specific group of people at a certain time in their lives and it would be hard to tap into that without feeling insincere or like they're trying to one-up MM with darkness.
That's a good point.
I bet I could do a good job. Seriously, if I got thrust into the position of coming up with a finale for the Z64 games - I think I could get the vibe right. You'd want a return to the spirit of adventure from OoT with the right level of integration of dark elements from MM. But you'd need a compelling new story that didn't just lean on references to the previous two games. It would be a tough balance to strike to bring a sense of closure.
Maybe you could set it in Hyrule again but with another territory opened up. You could *maybe* get away with introducing another friendly race - but even something like Skyward Sword jumped the shark with that. Maybe you could do a different type of Zora, like human races. Then you could get a new design going.
Idk I'm spitballing.
Nintendo doesn't need to do anything to encourage classic romhack development, they just need to stop going after the devs who currently make them. Maybe nintendo could give the devs access to the N64 microcode if they want to be nice, but it's not necessary.
Aren’t there already existing romhacks and mods of the PC port? I remember one of those getting a lot of threads a year or so ago. Seems to me like there’s nothing stopping people from making Zelda 64 3 on the downlow if they wanted to unless you want a Nintendo sanctioned release like Sonic Mania. AM2R got some shit from Nintendo but at the end of the day we have it and can play it.
You're an idiot.
You know damn well the brand name would carry anything decent to a 90 metacritic
Nintendo did stuff like promotional releases of Super Mario Bros based on a Japanese radio show called "All Night Nippon", replacing familiar characters and items with radio personalities and iconography.
"All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros" features the majority of content from the original Super Mario Bros, but uses SMB2J as the basis for engine and visuals with a small amount of level content from that game.
They did majora's mask
Underrated post and only correct answer ITT.
>Ughh I just want an official Nintendo-produced Zelda64 asset fli-- I mean rom hack!
>>Nooo not like that
A twentyfive year old "asset flip" would be great.
A small team of pros with modern software could certainly produce a game quicker than one unkrainian dude in his bedroom.
Master Quest is exactly what you're describing, though it's the only one I can think of.
90% of annual sportball garbage is a fricking glorified fricking romhack
Nintendo DID make a rom hack, and nobody knew it. They scammed over 7 million people with a rom hack of Doki Doki Panic.
You may know about it as Super Mario Brothers 2 (AKA Super Mario Bros 2 in the USA).
There is also a lesser known rom hack that was sold as if it were a different product, and Nintendo has repeated the process, over and over again. You may know these games as Pokemon Yellow, Pokemon Red, and Pokemon Blue.
Zelda 1 second quest is kind of like that. There's also F-Zero X Expansion Kit and New Super Luigi U. Tons of games have DLC nowadays.
It would be great incentive to actually buy Nintendo Online, if they were also getting some of those really good romhackers to put out new content for old games.
Probably wouldn't even be that hard to arrange.
Big corporations have no passion. They just milk existing products until there's nothing left.
Because corpooooorations like Nintendo are competing not only with other companies, but themselves. Every new Zelda will have to compete directly with the one that game before, and if they start producing rom hacks not only would that be seen as damaging to their brand, but it would also divert resources and marketing from their new releases. It's as simple as that.
>why doesn't nintendo care about literal pennies
because they can just release a new game instead and make hundreds of millions?
I would buy official OoT romhacks for $40 apiece
What makes you think they would be any good?
nta but I play every oot hack that comes out and I enjoy them. A completed game that nintendo would actually sign off on couldn't be bad. They already have a proven engine and probably tomes of unused dungeon ideas. Just write up a decent story that doesn't step on lore and it would be mint. Could not fail. Free money
MM which is mostly made of OoT assets took 2 years to come out and thats with a full team of people working on it. Now imagine only a handful of people working on a ROMhack, how long would it take to come out, would it be worth it? I think most ROMhacks only exist because of the unlimited love (autism) of its creators for the game. They are willing to dedicate all their time to it and the projects usually take years to be released and only last for a dozen or so hours of gameplay.
>MM which is mostly made of OoT assets took 2 years to come out and thats with a full team of people working on it.
in fricking 2000 Black person
it's 2024, they could stick a couple people on it and rotate them around sometimes, they could pump out a new romhack EACH YEAR.
boggles the mind why they didn't.
>gamecube could have gotten one eventually
>wii could have launched with one
>got another at some point
>by the wii u they could have released one each year
>enter switch
>enter switch successor
It makes no sense to not have done it, and to toss them together on a physical product every few years.
Super Mario Maker is basically this. Same with other games like F-Zaro 99
>People would pay $60 for a new Zelda64
you are clearly suffering from nintendorrhea if you believe this
People would absolutely pay that for a modern game 'designed like' the N64 Zeldas. It's just that there's no shortcut to designing something like that, you just have to be that good and capable of original thinking, the engine won't automatically tell you what to do.
I think you underestimate how streamlined workflow has become since the mid 90s
>underestimate
I don't, it's the biggest issue to address. streamlined workflow leads to all these streamlined games. how do you get a game from before everything got streamlined?
Eh, I can see it. Customers will buy repackaged ROMs with a required online connection seeing how Nintendo managed to trick their buyer base into it.
Why stop there?
Why not making a new N64 with one of the new MIPS chips, a lot of RAM, hard disk, backward-compatible to N64.
With 4K HDMI, upscaling, anti-aliasing and so on.
I wonder what the Analogue N64 thing will be.
I thought stuff like that would pop up during the Wii VC era. Kinda disappointed it didn't
My guess is that it's probably too much trouble. Older more experienced staff that were there back in the days are in management now or are basically in high important positions in the game making process, for big games. The younger staff aren't experienced enough with the antiquated code, that they didn't write themselves
And that's if they even had self-made easy internal tools to make these games. What I mean is, does HAL/Nintendo has a level editor for Kirby Superstar? If not, yeah, that'd be a mess. If yes, then there's still the issue of dealing with the pixel art, code, attempting to make it fresh, etc.
I wish they could, I did wish for it at some point, but I guess there's just too much things in the way, it's probably a whole lot harder than just even remaking it
Anons... ANONS... did you forgot about Satellaview? It was romhacks after romhacks, of course using the word romhack to mean just projects with the same engine that look nothing more than cheap romhacks.
It was japan only so I doubt many people on this board played any of those
Keeping these old games sacred gives them a legendary reputation, allowing them to be resold perpetually.
>majoras mask was the first OOT romhack
Interesting. Too bad it was mostly PC games that got romhacks aka expansion packs and not console games.
sonic 3 was a romhack of sonic 2 which was a romhack of sonic 1. san andreas was a romhack of vice city that was a romhack of 3.
>Surely they could put a newbie team on it who could crank out something better than the average bedroom dev
this isn't necessarily true. the randoms who are making the hacks are obsessed with zelda, they love zelda, it is their life's work. the devs nintendo pulls in may be more talented than those autists doing it for free(debatable) but they were hired for their general talent/connections not specifically their aptitude to steward a legacy property.
it's fricking moronic that companies (specifically Nintendo) in the 16-bit era refused to reuse the game engines from popular games and just crank out a bunch of games which might be considered "romhacks". there are a number of incredible SMW and Super Metroid hacks which show the engines in those games were more than capable of being reused and still being fresh.
somehow it took a decade for someone to figure out that if you have a good engine, you can just replace the assets and levels to make a completely new game, saving time and money, and also guaranteeing the quality of the game because the engine was already proven.
> somehow it took a decade for someone to figure out that if you have a good engine, you can just replace the assets and levels to make a completely new game
Doubt. There were 6 NES Mega Man games in 7 years, though, and before that Ms. PacMan was a famous example of a canonized rom hack. Do those not count for some reason?
those are sequels. same game, different levels. I probably exaggerated with "10 years", but I'm talking about game engines like Source where you have completely different games built on the same base.
if you still don't get what I mean, see romhacks such as Super Junkoid or Chao Bandstand, which change the look and even some mechanics to create something new. Nintendo (or Konami, or Sega, etc) could have created smaller studios of mostly artists and level designers and pumped out a couple extra games a year by reusing their game engines.
>Surely they could put a newbie team on it who could crank out something better than the average bedroom dev.
My money is on the bedroom dev. These companies are a shell of their former selves and full of nu-devs who have never made a good game. There is nothing easy about making a OoT 2, nu devs struggle with hard limitations and using tools outside of unity and unreal.