Or the American/European version of Hard Corps, with the lifebar and infinite continues from the Japanese version?

I did a forum search for "Hard Corps" and couldn't find anything useful.

I'm really fed up with the Japanese text, and I'm saddened to see that while some excellent work went into making Bare Knuckle 3 accessible for English speakers, to play the game in its original form, the only patch for Contra Hard Corps doesn't in any way address the major flaw with it: Konami seriously screwed with the design, taking it away from the game's original vision. I was rather disheartened to find the author actually applauded the game's butchering.

Now, I could just boot the US room with a hex code for invincibility, but I don't want that. I like the health bar dynamic. I tried the current CHC patch on the JPN rom, and it just crashes. Is anyone working on an English patch for the Japanese game? Is there a quick and dirty fix for this? Is it possible to hex hack the lifebar back in to the US release?

The original poster posted in the thread for the patch, I checked there, alas it didn't solve the problem.

It's probably possible, and it could be easy, but I highly doubt it. Finding the changed code amid all the other changes is probably going to be a son-of-a-bitch. Implementing the changes will probably be even harder.

I assume it's possible, but it's probably going to be the much tougher route to go. The easier way would be to add the lifebar, and its function and the continues to the U.S. version. I have no idea how to actually go about doing this, I don't know if all the data is even in the U.S. version, or if it was actually cut from the game all together.

Just as an example, Persona 1 has all the content cut from the Japanese release, it's just blocked off, and cannot be accessed, this means one could presumably unlock it. I don't know if this is the case with Conra.

What do you expect? Konami handled the port and localization. Of course the end result ended up a trainwreck.

I'm just happy XSEED will be handling everything Ys-related from here on out. :3