(Please note that this is just a concept: This project is hyper-Alpha right now)

I recently got in touch with Thaddeus again, and told him about the various assembly modifications I've been doing to Castlevania 2. We had toyed with the idea of hacking the game early this year (Which is what started me hacking the game initially), and I think we're going to go ahead and do it.

So far, we plan on doing the following:

Entirely new graphics, levels, music.
SRAM support instead of the password system.
Vastly expanded game size: Possibly up to four times as large (!), assuming I can do what I need properly.
Real bosses: Once killed, they're dead, and you can no longer just pass by them.
Far more like Metroid/SotN in gameplay. Ability upgrades (Like a highjump item) as well as different weapons will be available.

We're using a very good level editor that hasn't been publicly released yet (I won't mention its name or the author due to not knowing if he would like to keep it secret), and it'll most likely be set in the CV universe, so it won't be something completely original like the DXO series. But that should cut down on development time, anyway.

Sweet! I'm excited to hear about you guys working on something.
The concept is something I have been wanting to do myself ever since I first started hacking. I wish you luck with it! ^_^

Out of curiosity, would the SRAM hack actually be transferable to a real cart? (In this case or in the case of any of the other SRAM hacks that exist.)

I have only seen that done once, and I must admit it is rather awesome,of course it was not based on a hack, but rather as a method of getting a broken Zelda 2 cart to work again. I do not mean to get off topic but is there documented case of an SRAM hack ever being implemented onto working hardware in such a manner?

grumble...
AND it's going to stay Castlevania themed? I swear if I wasn't so determined I would probably tap out by now and focus on a different hobby.
I guarantee that this is probably going to be the best hack ever.

Before posting my question, I did a quick search through and found several candidates for donor carts, Dragon Warrior & Zelda II being two common carts of the few I looked at. Is the amount of CHR and PRG ROM relevant to something like this, or is that purely a matter of how it's allocated within the ROM? My knowledge of NES hardware is consists of various ways of blowing in the cart to get the game to play. (Also, this is pretty much all irrelevant at this stage, but since the fact that it is possible negates my prepared complaints, I have to talk about something!


Possibly. Even *I've* had help from Thaddeus on a project, and nobody wants to work with me. (Granted, it took him about 30 seconds to find something for me and the project is still sitting in my cold storage folder, so maybe it doesn't count.)

Okay yeah, I was actually kind of worried when you said you were going in a style more like the Classic CV games (which I think graphically are insanely ugly), but you're definitely making it work really well.

Isn't there any way of making new PCB's instead of destroying old carts?