Regarding my earlier post here I couldn’t actually find any hacks adding super sonic to Sonic Advanced 1-3 (GBA) or Sonic 1 (Genesis) and if none exist them I would like to look at making them myself.

Since I have never attempted to hack a game before I had a couple of questions from the Pro’s. I have already read the (getting started link) here at Romhacking.net and I just wanted to know what I was getting myself into before I started attempting something like this.

1. What would be easier to hack a Genesis or a GBA game?

2. In the situation for Sonic 1 (Genesis) Would I be able to just find the coding and sprites from Sonic 2, 3, or S&K and import them into the Sonic 1 rom using a hex editor or is it more complex than that?

3. If the above questions proves true, would I be able to export coding and graphics (super sonic) from a genesis game and a import them to GBA rom or would that not work due to the things such as color palette differences, system limitations ect?

4. Since I haven’t done anything like this before how long would you estimate would take to hack either the Genesis Sonic 1 or any of the GBA titles?

Thanks,

I already checked the archive earlier and found 2 sonic level editors but haven't looked at them yet.

Thats what I'm worried about. I don't want to invest several months or even years in a project that I would run into dead ends. I did find a hack that imports knuckles into sonic 1(very well done in my opinion, I also submitted it to the database today) and everything to me looks like a professional conversion, however it appears that he ran into a slight issue. He included Super Knuckles in the game but instead of changing the sprite model he just made it look like the character jumped on an invincibility box.

Funny that you submitted that, I was playing it again last night and planned on adding it myself but my connection was acting up and I didn't bother, I was going to do it tonight. Just don't submit drx's Tails in Sonic 1 hack, it's impressive but it crashes way too often to be a fun hack to play, I'm hoping he releases a bugfix one of these days.

Super Knuckles' non-glowing palette is intentional, it's there for the same reason Knuckles uses the wrong shades of red in that hack, some enemies in Sonic 1 use Sonic's palette, unlike Sonic 2 and Sonic 3K where it's used exclusively by Sonic/Knuckles, Tails, and the animals that pop out of the enemies. If he made Knuckles the right shades of red the blue enemies would turn red (Honestly I don't think this is a big deal but Stealth obviously did) and if he made Super Knuckles glow any red on the enemies would glow as well.

I've been thinking about the super sonic hack I planned on starting and I think I want to go a different route.

I was wondering what the limitations of hacking a genesis rom are. If I wanted to hack Sonic 3 (with Sonic and Knuckles attached) and then import all the levels from Sonic 1 and 2, & CD, would I be able to do that? The 2 questions I thought I would need to answer before I start my voyage into the wonderful world of hacking are

1. Is their a size restriction on genesis roms? (Practically fitting 5 games into one file)
2. Would I have a compatibility issue with porting Sega CD stages and sprites to a Genesis rom?

I wanted the whole 16 bit series in one game. I was planning on doing other modifications to each game as well but these are my main concern.

I thought I would do the hack this way because sonic 3 and S&K attached has the most information contained with-in the actual rom so I figured it would be easier to start with that and then port the levels/sprites from the other sonic games.

*Edit*

Oh and I don't really care if the rom works on the actual hardware as long as you can play it in an emulator I'm fine with that. (unless someone brings up a good point as to why I should care)

You have to consider that some of those games (namely Sonic CD) have features that aren't available to Sonic & Knuckles. I remember in Sonic CD you were able to interact with the environments in pretty weird ways which you would never see in any other Sonic game. So unless you can hack the Sonic & Knuckles game engine itself, then I don't see it happening any time soon.


You're forgetting Knuckles Chaotix. (for the 32X) I wouldn't really count Sonic CD or Knuckles Chaotix, though. They're both blacksheep!

I'm not sure if you've played Sonic CD or not, but I should mention that the levels are divided into time themes -- i.e., you have a past, present and future version of each. Sonic actually time-travels in this game, so you jump back and forth between these variations. Unless you plan to impement that feature into the Sonic & Knuckles game engine, then it won't work. Even if you do, I think it would be quite quirky. Sonic CD has a strange level design that's mostly puzzle-oriented, requiring very frustrating interactions with the environment.

Actually, I sort of advise against this project in general. There's just such a huge difference between the games that it would be weird for you to jump from one level set to the next.

Well, given that most emulators (that stay in development long enough) seem to eventually strive for accuracy at some point or another over speed (as faster PCs reduce the need for speed hacks and such), your hack could very well be unplayable in future emulator releases as well as on hardware.

Take the NES, for instance.  There's plenty of hacks (the quality of them aside) that work on Nesticle, but more accurate emulators like nestopia will fail to run them.

If you don't have the capability to test on real hardware, there are people who do.  For a Sonic title, specifically, the Sonic hacking board that was linked to somewhere around here would likely be a good start (I recall seeing someone over there say they tried that Sonic 1 demo that was mentioned here on real hardware).

Yeah, compatibility is already an issue in the Sonic hacking scene, most people use Gens+ for playing/testing their hack, I'd say about half of the Sonic hacks I've played are broke in some way in Kega Fusion, and whenever someone brings it up the hackers always seem to blame Fusion, which is the more accurate emulator \