#RomHackingDotNet

[blind3dbylight]

RIP RHDN.

[Internet Archive upload]

[mrwhozeet]

To add onto this, I think the loss of RHDN accepting newer submissions really hurts the 80-90's game console hacking scene. There really aren't a lot of sites I'm aware of outside of RHDN that offered the ability to distribute game patches in such a clean way! Especially for 'niche' titles. You want to distribute your Super Mario World hack? Ah, that's no issue. SMWCentral is right around the corner. However, finding a place to promote and share patches for say an obscure Japanese only Game Boy title become a bit trickier. I think RHDN's 'News' page and recent updates/random screenshots really gave people an area to discover and discuss these freely. I think the site still saw enough foot traffic that people would see those passing through. I get that since everything has been backed up to the IA it's not going to all disappear overnight, but man. A lot of things are going to be trickier to recommend to people because you're going to have to dig through that archive if the author hasn't been active in a couple of years. If I ever do anything else, or want to find a new hack, I gotta look elsewhere. I'm really hoping another centralized website for sharing .IPS/.BPS files pops up and picks up where RHDN left off. I'm not sure I feel comfortable touching most of the drama surrounding the decision to shut down new submissions, either.

Sad news, romhacking.net is shutting down.

This makes me sick to my stomach. Romhacking.net has been the place to go for ways to play english fan translations, quality of life hacks, bug fixes, creative twists on existing games that maybe let you play as other characters or have new abilities, or total conversions that essentially take your favorite games and make something new out of it, not to mention many valuable tools for learning how to make your own romhacks. It even hosted work arounds for modern problems. Did you know it's now possible to play Duck Hunt and other light gun games on an LCD TV now? Before, it was only possible to play it on an old fashioned CRT TV. You could also play Gyromite without ROB the Robot, and Mario and Wario without a SNES Mouse.

When I would play a retro game, I'd tend to look for the best possible way to play it. More often than not, that usually meant just playing the game as is, but there are some games that are practically unplayable in their default form. Festers Quest needed to impliment all the changes from the European version of the game into the NTSC release in order for the game to play as intended, without shots disappear when they collide with walls. The original Zelda and Metroid encouraged players to draw their own maps because there was no map system included, but both games have hacks that include maps. Many NES games without the ability to save your progress now have Sram saving, and can save your game on a real NES.

I'm sure there will still be romhacking websites. Specialized sites for Mario 64, Sonic the Hedgehog, Zelda, MSU1, and Super Mario World still exist. There's a few lesser known hacking sites I won't mention, places that distribute hacks, and youtube channels that showcase them. But this is still a huge loss that retro gaming will take a long time to recover from.

So I urge you, if you like any romhack, please learn who the creator of the hack is, and follow them wherever you can find them. And boost their work whenever you can.

[trash64]

Shiren The Wanderer 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle! has been translated to English. These games are of the Mystery Dungeon series, which includes popular spin-off franchises Pokémon and Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon all developed by Chunsoft.

This has been a long anticipated translation project, N64 has few RPGs and Shiren 2 is one of the best the system has to offer - now available in English!

From the Translation Description:

“Two and a half years in the making, SharkSnack and Ozidual are proud to present the English translation of Shiren 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle! for the N64.”

Screen grabs taken from Romhacking.net