Other Recommended ROM Hacks
Motivation
As a lover of classic games, when I first heard about ROM hacks, I was excited by the prospect of new content for my favorite games. However, I was quickly deterred, as the overwhelming majority of hacks are either completely awful, or excessively difficult to the point of being completely unenjoyable to play. At first I thought it was bad luck, but after trying many different hacks, even the most popular and recommended ones, I was forced to accept that this was simply how most hacks were. I'm not even bad at video games. There's plenty of players out there who are better than me, sure, but I'm significantly above average in game skill.
I became obsessed with Rockman 4 Minus Infinity because it broke that trend for me. It is an excellent ROM hack that is not excessively difficult. Most of the reason I created this site was because I wanted to promote Rockman 4 Minus Infinity to people who were in the same camp as me, who love classic games and liked the idea of hacks but were frustrated by their poor quality and overwhelming difficulty.
Since I started this site, I have found and enjoyed a few other ROM hacks like this one. I have decided to start a side project to list these hacks. To my knowledge, no resource like this exists. If you know of such a resource, I would love to hear about it. Romhacking.net is an excellent resource, but it lists those rare few gems amidst a sea of mediocre and excessively difficult hacks, so they are nearly impossible to find. /v/'s recommended games is a good resource which includes pages for ROM hacks, and at least does the job of filtering out the worthless hacks, but lists the reasonable hacks alongside the nearly-impossible ones with no warning which is which. The other issue with /v/'s recommended games is that it is a wiki, and anyone can add a game to it, and games basically never get deleted. Neither does it present a single editorial point of view, the way this page does. It's my point of view, for what that's worth, but if your taste lines up with mine you may find this page a valuable resource. If not... well, I'd encourage you to start your own!
Guidelines
I will list two types of hacks here. The first is the type is complete remodels, like Rockman 4 Minus Infinity, which change the base game into a completely new game. The second type is for improvements, which significantly improve the base game without fundamentally changing it.
I will generally only list full remodels here that I personally beat without save states. If I used save states or failed to beat it, it is either because the hack was not good enough or too difficult, both of which contradict the motivation behind this page.
I won't list translations here. I play fan translations frequently, but I don't think they need to be recommended. If you want to play a game and don't speak the source language, you generally don't have many options. The exception is for improvement hacks that completely rewrite a game that previously got a botched translation.
This isn't a submission-based system. This is my personal opinion. If you'd like me to list a hack here, you're welcome to recommend it to me, and if I like it, I'll list it here.
Highly Recommended
These romhacks are the best of the best. They are on par with Rockman 4 Minus Infinity in quality. You won't be disappointed with these excellent games.
Project Base, by Begrimed, is the Director's Cut Super Metroid never had. Its original purpose was to be used a base for other hacks to work from, and to that end it makes a lot of improvements to the game. Door transitions, elevators, and item acquisitions are lightning fast. Another big change is the controls, which enable simple tasks to be performed with ease, while adding new techniques as well. The new palettes are beautiful; they really make the game look a whole lot better, as well as serving as a constant reminder that this isn't the same old Super Metroid you're used to. It's such an improvement that it's actually a little hard to go back to the regular game after this.
This game recreates the feeling of playing Super Metroid for the first time. It mixes the familiar with the unfamiliar to create an experience that simultaneously feels nostalgic and novel.
The map is highly interconnected, and most of the artificial progress gates that Super Metroid uses to guide you along its linear path are removed, making this game the non-linear adventure Super Metroid pretends to be. This game essentially gives you the equivalent of Dark Souls's Master Key. I wouldn't play this hack if you've never played Super Metroid before, but you could.
Overall, the game is noticeably easier than Super Metroid. I wouldn't have minded a slight bump in difficulty to compensate for all of the other advantages it gives you. Maybe that's planned for a future release; after all, the hack is only on version 0.72 right now. Go ahead and play it now, though; it's a complete and amazing experience as it is, and it's been in development for a long time. I'd recommend playing the default version, which changes the palettes and the gameplay. You can use the Justin Bailey version if you want, but I don't like the sprite.
If Project Base is the Director's Cut Super Metroid never had, then Hyper Metroid by RealRed is the sequel it never had. Hyper Metroid re-hacks Project Base (which is what it was originally designed for), and creates an entirely new map for Super Metroid with all of Project Base's improvements incorporated. While the bosses and items are all the same, the sequence is greatly changed. There isn't as much to say about this hack but it's really good and worth playing.
Recommended
These hacks are good, and worth playing to the end, but either have flaws that hold them back or simply too small to make it into the big leagues. You can't go wrong with these hacks.
This is an excellent, full-length hack of Super Mario World by Japanese ROM Hacker carol. It has custom bosses, many secrets and references to other games, and a totally reasonable difficulty level (The title, "Brutal Mario," means that Mario himself is brutal, not the game). The only thing keeping it out of the "Highly Recommended" category is the fact that it is not finished, and likely never will be. Another drawback is that, while this was planned to be a single, complete hack, right now its content is spread across several different demos and it's honestly really confusing trying to figure out which ones to play. I recommend playing the translated Demo 7, released more than ten years ago at this point, which has the vast majority of the game finished and playable in English. The game ends in a pretty rough anticlimax, though, as you're going through the final world and you suddenly get to an empty stage that kills you instantly and says "sorry the hack isn't finished yet." The other major drawback of Demo 7 is that it has no custom music, so you'll be listening to the SMW soundtrack the whole time.
After beating Demo 7, you can then go and play Demo 7.5 and 8.0. Each of these contain new content, but they DON'T contain all of the content from Demo 7. I've never actually played these hacks so I'm not entirely sure what they contain, but I believe they contain a couple of new stages and bosses, and (finally) some custom music.
This is a full remodel of Rockman 5 by Yuki Miyuki. This hack introduces one major new feature: the ability to slide in the air. The difficulty never gets unreasonable. It's not in the "Highly Recommended" category because, well, those hacks are amazing and this hack falls a bit short of the standard those games set. Don't get me wrong, though, it's a good hack.
If you ever want to play Super Metroid straight, this hack by Kejardon improves the controls significantly. It works the way Metroid Fusion does, where there is a single Aim Lock button instead of Aim Up and Aim Down, a Brandish button which is used to fire Missiles, Super Missiles, and Power Bombs, and a dedicated X-Ray Scope button. To me, the biggest upside of this hack is that it is now reasonable to bind the dash button to a shoulder button. Having to juggle dash, jump, and fire with the right thumb on the face buttons was awkward and one of the biggest flaws in Super Metroid (a flaw which carries over into Project Base and Hyper Metroid, sadly, unless you rebind the controls in your emulator, which is a pain.)
There is a downside to this hack, though it won't affect the average player. Certain advanced techniques that require the use of Aim Up and Aim Down no longer work. This hack improves the controls for average players at the expense of advanced players. For this reason, this patch is incompatible with Project Base and Hyper Metroid. But, if you've never played Super Metroid before, this is a great way to do it.
Recommended with Reservation
These hacks are good, but may have some annoyances that get in the way of your enjoyment. They're worth checking out, but not everyone will like them.
This is a high-quality hack by IKA. It's a full remodel of Mega Man 2. As you can see from the screenshot, the visuals are quite good. The music is excellent as well. The only drawback is the difficulty. It rests on the very borderline between reasonable and unreasonable. After an extreme amount of effort, I beat the normal mode of this game without save states. No joke, this is probably the hardest game I've ever beaten. I assume hard mode is a nightmare. Granted, there are plenty of hacks harder than this; the fact that it's on this list is because it fell just short of being too difficult.
Do you think this game is easy? Yeah, this page isn't for you.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest Multilingual Enhancement
(Click the "Click here to transform this page into English!" button at the top of the page unless you speak Finnish!)
This hack by Bisqwit is extremely high-quality. This patch adds a ton of improvements like a map and a battery save, and introduces a high-quality re-translation from the original Japanese into English (and several other languages as well). The official translation was a garbled mess, which rendered an already cryptic game basically unplayable without a guide. This re-translation restores Castlevania II to what it should be. The "patch vending machine" at the above link (there's a button at the top of the page that switches the page into English) allows you to thoroughly customize the options in the patch you download. I recommend all defaults, except set the Chipset to MMC4. This is the setting Bisqwit himself recommends, it's just not selected by default. Might want to get on that, Bisqwit.
Why is this excellent hack in the "Recommended with Reservation" category? Because, even with this hack applied, the resulting game... is sort of a mixed bag. Castlevania II is a classic, and well-known, and if nothing else worth playing as a study in bad game design. There must be something to it, because a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to fix it. And I'm sure many people will continue to go back and subject themselves to this game for the foreseeable future. For those people, I fully recommend this hack to improve the experience.
Bisqwit has produced a fascinating analysis of the original Japanese and the original English translation that's well worth a read after you finish the game, or instead of playing the game.
There is a similar hack called Simon's Redaction which has the aim of making the game playable by completely rewriting all of the dialog to provide hints, but I feel like that hack also fails to fix the real problems with Simon's Quest, and Bisqwit's Multilingual Enhancement provides an experience that is simultaneously better and more faithful to the original.
This hack by DragonDePlatino, like the hack above, is a phenomenal hack held back by the game it's a hack of. I haven't played this one myself; I had the misfortune of playing Mother (aka Earthbound Zero or Earthbound Beginnings) before this hack was made. The original Mother was very difficult, grindy, and unbalanced. The game's final area is notorious for containing extremely overpowered enemies you should simply run from because they are stronger than the game's final boss. I played the game with the Easy Mode patch that doubles your EXP, and I was still forced to spend a lot of time grinding. The Anniversary Edition re-balances Mother, changing it from being unbalanced and crazy difficult... to being balanced and merely very difficult.
This hack also redraws every sprite in the game, and fills the game's bleak, empty overworld with more scenery. I don't think every single sprite is better, but overall, the game's visuals are much improved. It also adds a map, and incorporates the script from Tomato's Mother 1+2 Fan Translation (which is also worth mentioning, but I feel like the Anniversary Edition is the superior experience.)
Like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, this is a flawed classic, remembered fondly by people who played it as children, and played out of curiosity by fans of other games in the series. To Mother fans who want to experience this classic with some of the rough edges smoothed off, I highly recommend this hack.