Hacking the Mainframe #3 is here, and this one swings from forensic Saturn archaeology to petty interstellar politics and Mega Man at the Olympics. Good week.
SEGA SATURN SHIRO!
SEGA SATURN SHIRO! dug into the “Sega Flash Vol. 3” Saturn demo for Last Bronx and discovered it wasn’t a glorified video at all, just an aggressively kneecapped early build of the game. After poking at the disc, they hacked it into a fully playable slice with proper rounds, working opponent AI, and more access to the systems than SEGA intended for a magazine disc. It is a small, mind‑blowing look into those old tech demos, which could hide secrets for those willing to peel back a few layers of archaic code.
Secret of Mana: Reborn v2.5
Secret of Mana just had a very good month. First, the Secret of Mana: Reborn v2.5 patch restored two previously unused areas that were left on the cutting‑room floor for over 30 years, rebuilding them from leftover data and integrating them into the main game. On top of that, the hack delivers a full retranslation of the original script, fixes story inconsistencies, and folds in obscure event and lore material that never got localized, effectively merging the US and JP versions into one definitive edition.
Suikoden: The Last Hope
Suikoden: The Last Hope is less of a tweak and more a “what if” route for the original PS1 game. This long‑running patch branch keeps Odessa alive (spoiler), lets you save Gremio and Ted, adds new events, and opens up Toran Castle, Gregminster, and the Elven Village for post‑final‑battle exploration. Version 8.2 further refines events, rebalances characters, adds new sprites, and even tweaks high‑end spells and Soul Eater’s Lv4 animation, turning the game into an alternate‑timeline main story rather than a simple improvement mod.
Embers of Mana
Embers of Mana is a full‑conversion Game Boy hack of Final Fantasy Adventure by Ok Impala, pitched as a brand new Mana game built on the original engine. It features a completely new storyline about a fading Mana Tree, new dungeons and world map, an original soundtrack, custom graphics, thoughtful gameplay adjustments, and Super Game Boy support, all tuned to feel like a 1991‑era sequel that simply never existed. Four years of work went into it, and the result is closer to an unofficial new entry than a simple mod.
Bangai‑O N64 Translated
Treasure’s N64 original Bangai‑O finally has English support, twice over. Two separate fan teams released full translations within days of each other, each bringing menus, story text, and mission briefings into English while preserving the system’s wonderfully chaotic spray‑and‑pray shooter feel. The Dreamcast version has been easier to approach for years; now the N64 original is just as playable without a guide.
GTA VC: The Backstabber’s Blues
Over in mod‑land, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City just received a huge free expansion mod called The Backstabber’s Blues that GamingBible reports adds new story chapters, missions, and areas on top of visual upgrades. It is the kind of fan DLC that feels like a small sequel, and proof that old open‑world sandboxes never really die as long as the toolchain survives.
RDR Inside RDR2
Modders are also continuing the grand tradition of putting old games inside new engines they were never meant to touch. A team is actively rebuilding the original Red Dead Redemption inside Red Dead Redemption 2, using RDR2’s PC framework and assets to recreate RDR1’s map, missions, and systems. DSOGaming notes it is early days and absolutely unofficial, but progress is far enough along that large chunks of the first game’s world are already explorable.
Chrono Trigger ATB Fixes
Chrono Trigger ATB Fixes is a subtle hack with big consequences. It rebalances how the Active Time Battle system handles single, dual, and triple techs so that basic attacks and skills do not feel mathematically dominated by combos, and it tweaks turn flow to reduce awkward waiting and odd edge cases without changing the game’s feel.
The Runaway Bride
Elsewhere, The Runaway Bride turns the original Super Mario Bros. into a full Peach escape story. While Mario is off saving Daisy elsewhere, Peach bolts from her forced wedding to Bowser and fights through 21 brand‑new levels spread across five main worlds and a one‑stage “wedding” intro. It adds custom enemies, new block types, checkpoints, bespoke world themes, and a full narrative about Peach taking matters into her own hands, and was technically released two years ago, but is getting more attention now, from me.
Mega Man at the Tokyo Olympics
Speaking of NES, Mega Man at the Tokyo Olympics is exactly what it sounds like: a NES hack that drops Mega Man into a multi‑event Olympic backdrop. Stages and challenges reframe classic running and platforming into event‑like scenarios, keeping core controls but bending them around sports‑themed gimmicks for a very strange crossover.
Seiryaku Simulation – Inbou no Wakusei: Shancara
Seiryaku Simulation – Inbou no Wakusei: Shancara is an obscure Famicom strategy game that now finally has a full English translation. Set on a distant planet that has declared independence from a Galactic Empire, it casts you as one of four presidential hopefuls vying to become Shancara’s first leader by any means necessary.
That can mean bribing factions, stoking civil wars, or even sending hitmen after rivals, turning what looks like a dry political sim into something closer to a dirty, interstellar campaign manager game. The patch repurposes advanced dual‑tile encoding routines from other projects to squeeze in all the English text, opening up one more deeply weird corner of the Famicom library.
Romhacks prove nothing is ever really “finished.” Demos become real games, cut levels come home, political sims start talking, and 16‑bit towns suddenly sprout whole new wings three decades later. Let me know down below if I missed any stellar romhacks this week!
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