Turning an Ancient Chinese Legend into a Mario Rom Hack

Рет қаралды 15,679

2 жыл бұрын

I created a Super Mario Bros Rom Hack based on the Chinese Legend, Journey to the West.
Play the Journey to the West Mario Rom Hack: [www.romhacking.net/hacks/6647/] (IPS File)
4-1's platform at the end sometimes doesn't load the first time, try approaching again and it will eventually.
Full NES game download: notin.tokyo/source/Journey.zip
Resources:
SMB High Level Disassembly:
www.romhacking.net/documents/...
MMC3 Guide:
archive.nes.science/nesdev-fo...
Search for "Operation:" and you'll find the specific guide
Header Guide:
github.com/bonimy/MushROMs/bl...
From what I can tell, the scenery and platform type bytes in the area header may be swapped from what this guide shows.
Title Editor:
www.romhacking.net/utilities/...
Title Editor Guide:
• How to Edit the Title ...
File Icon by Astonish from NounProject.com

Пікірлер: 59

@Ladondorf 2 жыл бұрын

The method you developed for switching the characters could be used to create a hack which finally gives Mario and Luigi separate sprites.

@davecool42 2 жыл бұрын

Came here because Kosmic said your video was about the technical, and I love your explanation of how you made this ‘rom hack’ recompile happen. Thank you!

@mattgio1172 Жыл бұрын

Kosmic said it best- this video is indeed 'Sick'. Brilliant job! I love your other videos too!

@CakeTian Жыл бұрын

The 8-bit music at 2:20 of 天竺少女 is giving me goosebumps omg

@siraxlrose5659 2 жыл бұрын

If you're using the mmc3 disassembly, you should have used GreatEd as your level editor, because it doesn't have the data limits hard coded into the editor like smb utility. They're dynamic. Then, you just use a level extractor python script to convert the hex data for the levels into assembly code, then paste it into your disassembly. It's much easier to make good levels in GreatEd because you can actually add and remove shit

@SanithDemil Жыл бұрын

I love it. Any creative ROM Hacks are so much better than sprite swaps.

@SA77888 Жыл бұрын

Well done - Just downloaded it, will play tomorrow, looks great :)

@meanshape101 Жыл бұрын

哇，这个蛮好的！又是一个在我红白机游戏的收藏之一了。

@Mizumaririn 2 жыл бұрын

An 8 bit 光輝歲月？dang!

@HypoValence Жыл бұрын

城里的夜光 too!

@hdofu Жыл бұрын

Also when you dropped this on Rhdn I can still remember the noise this generated in the dischord server for smb romhacking when I shared it, EdenGT immediately took interest, especially at the character swap mechanic.

@henkdachief 2 жыл бұрын

So cool the journey to the west is a great story and very fitting for a rom hack!

@revonine3099 2 жыл бұрын

This is so cool, it must've taken so much dedication to write out all of the level data line by line. How much experience in assembly would you recommend someone had before trying anything that involved messing with the actual code?

@InkboxSoftware 2 жыл бұрын

I only had a few months experience in assembly before I began this hack, but I think the best way to learn is through experience. If you know basic assembly (not even 6502 assembly specifically) I think you'd be able to figure it out as you go along. Here's a good document I would always reference when I forgot something: www.masswerk.at/6502/6502_instruction_set.html

@ivanarrache5154 Жыл бұрын

@@InkboxSoftware One thing I've never seen in ROM hacks is someone using characters from the original Mario games. I mean Donkey Kong, Stanley the Bugman, Pauline, Junior. Maybe take inspiration from the Mario Bros Arcade levels before there was Super Mario on the NES.

@hdofu Жыл бұрын

@@ivanarrache5154 funny thing I noticed is that in the over 30 years that Super Mario Bros has been hacked, there have been hacks of pretty much more things than you can imagine, there have been many female centric hacksm but yet somehow to this day there has not been a Great Giana Sisters hack of Super Mario Bros 1 or Lost Levels to my knowledge, and this is considering that we are in an age where Super Mario Bros Special has a perfect port and there's a combined port of Super Boy 1 and 2

@MxMaker 2 жыл бұрын

What a journey to do all of this! I will check the rom in the future.

@NeoThemr Жыл бұрын

How do u only have 2.5k subscribers. This is freakin awsome

@tolstoj_ Жыл бұрын

How does that video only have 4,313 views? This is awesome!

@datbanan2717 2 жыл бұрын

hey this is pretty cool, a shame this video isnt getting more views

@DarrenC_1024 Жыл бұрын

Actually, there are only 81 trials, that is, 9 x 9 = 81 where in Chinese culture, 9 being the 'terminal' number for single digit, so 9x9 is consider a very serious and special value.

@ericwitney5086 2 жыл бұрын

Amazing doc. And a great romhack.

@DougSalad 2 жыл бұрын

here from Kosmic, love the hack, and the video! :)

@justinhicks306 2 жыл бұрын

Very interesting video. I hope everyone who watches Kosmic play the hack will come here after. It was well worth it.

@DavidCarrizoGuitarra 11 ай бұрын

This is a journey to chinese culture! So cool! Greetings from Argentina

@destroyedforcomfort Жыл бұрын

Lemme start by saying everything about this is super impressive. That said, I'm surprised you didn't base some of your sprites off existing Journey To The West-based NES games like SonSon or Super Monkey Daibouken. The sprites look great, I'm just saying there's existing visual references that could be played with. Also I wonder if this might be better served as a CNROM rather than MMC3, although it would lead to a lot of redundancy in the CHR graphics. It doesn't even require PRG bank-switching, right?

@IrisGalaxis 11 ай бұрын

People using assemblers to romhack _meanwhile me using the dissassembly as a reference, writing new code on paper, manually translating it to machine language and inserting it into the rom with a hex editor_ I'm dumb🤦‍♀️

@scotttl04 9 ай бұрын

No lives! So I can throw Piggy down a pit infinitely!

@SuperKlondike64 Ай бұрын

NES games based off JTTW are actually quite common in China and even Japan. Also, JTTW isn't really "ancient", while it is based on ancient Chinese mythology, the story was written in 1592.

@thetokutickler 11 ай бұрын

Next you should do a rom hack of Super Monkey Daibouken to turn it into a Mario game.

@ThePharphis 2 жыл бұрын

lol when you jumped to SMB2 and I was forced to remember it ALREADY contains exactly 4 characters... Did you consider that game as a candidate?

@ExtemTheHedgehogLol 11 ай бұрын

I misread this as Ancient Cheese, like the Pizza Tower level 💀

@Willty64 2 жыл бұрын

Hi there. I have some experience with smw hacking and programming in general, but smb1 has been a new challenge for me. I've downloaded the decompiled and commented rom, and a compiler, but i've been having trouble compiling the small test changes I made. I was wondering if you had any tips? Thanks.

@Willty64 2 жыл бұрын

I immediatley fixed the issue after posting. Splendid!

@hanchiman 9 ай бұрын

Nice background music.... Isn't the song from Beyond 光輝歲月?

@agitatorjr 2 жыл бұрын

Looks great. I'm about to watch kosmic play it. Is the film Warriors of Heaven and Earth based on Journey to the West? I love that film. And this reminded me of it.

@sqlexp 8 ай бұрын

With the scroll direction of the screen, it should be called Journey to the East.

@agitatorjr 8 ай бұрын

@@sqlexp not if you are facing south.

@samaeltheangelofdeath 11 ай бұрын

12:09 Alright kids you have homework I guess but... This is homework you will love! Like... I dunno . The POKEMON CHARACTERS

@samaeltheangelofdeath 11 ай бұрын

3:57 character sprites

@StopBuggingMeGoogleIHateYou 2 жыл бұрын

9:05 That’s a rather tragic and artificial source of tedium. There's absolutely no way you should have to manually transcribe hex values from one program to another. If the program is still being maintained, or if it's open-source, that kind of feature is trivial to add and would have made your life a lot easier.

@siraxlrose5659 2 жыл бұрын

Unfortunately, neither of those are true. But in another comment, I talk about how this could be made easier "If you're using the mmc3 disassembly, you should have used GreatEd as your level editor, because it doesn't have the data limits hard coded into the editor like smb utility. They're dynamic. Then, you just use a level extractor python script to convert the hex data for the levels into assembly code, then paste it into your disassembly. It's much easier to make good levels in GreatEd because you can actually add and remove shit"

@StopBuggingMeGoogleIHateYou 2 жыл бұрын

@@siraxlrose5659 I don't know what you mean by "neither of those" are true, but in fact, it is true. The timestamp I linked shows the author manually transcribing hex values verbatim, character-by-character, from a list view window. Obviously, the program has those characters in memory, because it's displaying them on the screen. Adding code to your program to pretty-print hex values out of memory is one of the most trivial pieces of code to write; the task is so basic that it might be one of the first programs that a beginner writes. If the program had that extremely basic and trivial-to-implement feature, the author would not have had to manually transcribe the hex bytes.

@siraxlrose5659 2 жыл бұрын

@@StopBuggingMeGoogleIHateYou smb utility is neither still maintained, nor open source

@dannous Жыл бұрын

It worths to mention than Sun Wukong inspired a lot of other characters in other stories and especially in Japanese cartoons. The most famous: Son Goku in Dragon ball.

@cybergoth2002 Жыл бұрын

what's the song that starts at 6:21?

@lordsussyindustries2021 Жыл бұрын

Hah, 西游记 as a rom hack? I love that!

@peisenmay061988 Жыл бұрын

wow American who can knows assembly and Chinese, that's cool

@jeffmoreau6844 Жыл бұрын

But why aren't you running to the left i.e. west?

@InkboxSoftware Жыл бұрын

When is north straight up in the sky?

@jeffmoreau6844 Жыл бұрын

@@InkboxSoftware So you're saying the camera is looking from some arbitrarily position moving parallel to the movement of the character, and they could be going any direction? OK. It would still be cool if it was going to the left.

@InkboxSoftware Жыл бұрын

That would be cool.

@hdofu Жыл бұрын

"while not as cool as hackers with there green on black screens" um rom hacks are actually a hell of alot cooler as they are real and make your favorite games into something new sometime for extreme awesomeness, sometimes for improvements to asspects that hinder enjoyability, and sometimes because a bored person has prejudicial views he feels a strong need to share with the romhacking community. Lets be honest, fastly clicking keys is just nerds trying to be edgy if we are being completely honest.

@zelda1420 2 жыл бұрын

"These are called Rom Hacks, and they're not just something Kosmic plays on Wednesday." So who's this _"Kosmic"_ person you speak of

@bennik8845 2 жыл бұрын

a Super Mario Bros. speedrunner, who reviews one romhack every Wednesday on his twitch channel.

@NonBinary_Star Жыл бұрын

这是了不起的艺术品

@soryabuscompany Жыл бұрын

1:12

@whtiequillBj Жыл бұрын

@1:00 "Editing the game code in high level assembly" I think this is the very first time I've ever heard of "assembly language" being called high level.