deeply and profoundly unnerving. takes the interesting, dreamlike sights and sounds of yume nikki and makes them nastier, grungier and fleshier. the implications left by its worlds and events and what can be pieced together from them lead to some incredibly disturbing conclusions, and are far less abstract than what yume nikki offers. the darkest of these involves sabitsuki (who is already withdrawn and bullied at school) being sexually abused and suffering a severe disease because of a botched abortion. fUCK. i actually played this game one night when it was snowing heavily outside and i could see it clearly despite it being 2am and the sky had a weird greenlike colour to it and i had just arrived in the snow world and it was awesome

I'll never forgive them for including Ape Escape screenshots from an emulator that forced texture filtering bro the PSX DIDN'T DO TEXTURE FILTERING

I know it's not as easy as this but there genuinely needs to be more vetting for the submissions, the Ape Escape one was horrendous and the Left 4 Dead 2 one was bullshit (using screenshots of L4D1 campaigns is just blatantly unfair); same with the Mario Maker one recently, like c'mon.

There's others too but those are the most egregious off the top of my head as far as visual bullshit, but they also just get basic info wrong like metacritic scores, genres and release dates.

All said it scratches an itch, always fun doing this with some buds to see who gets the lowest average.

This is a total ROM conversion for the original Mega Man X which can be downloaded here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8167/

I have been working off and on with this project for a couple years now. It's no secret my favourite character has always been Zero from the Mega Man series. The way he has always been eager to lend a helping hand to X and his comrades. How he would continuously save the world against overwhelming odds. That his life followed such a complicated trajectory across multiple sub-series' but he consistently tried to be a force for good despite his background, being made by the evil Wily for world domination. As a young child, he was an inspiration to me. So naturally my mind was blown the instant I discovered he was playable in X3. Doubly so when I discovered the Zero Project for X3.

The original Mega Man X is my most played game ever. For a while it seemed like every revisit, I learned something new about the game; be it the stages changing depending on the boss order tackled, or the enemies losing their body parts when hit with certain weapons.

This is why I wished for a world where this game could feel fresh to me again. After being wowed by the X3 Zero Project, I felt a rush of excitement to try my hand fully incorporating Zero into the world of X1, so I got to work. Over 2 years or so, I was faced with numerous self-doubts.

"I'll never be smart enough to edit the text."
"These files are in bin format? I can't open these with PowerISO, what can I do then?!"
"I'll never figure out how to change the music!"
"I wish I could change the 1up icon...."

I'm here to tell you that if you want to achieve something hard enough, you CAN get it done. Your biggest enemy is yourself, and everybody is their own worst critic. Creating this hack was a long journey and I learned so much about so many things that go into game creation, particularly the retro classics.

Assembly language coding. Music sheets. Which objects are transparent VS opaque. Pallet swapping. Health and ammunition variables. Scripting and font colours. It simply goes on and on.

To all those who love Mega Man as I do, I hope this hack is something universally enjoyable. I much prefer to spread my love for things I am passionate about than to focus on the negativity, which is why I went above and beyond to put this together. That the levels, stages, cutscenes, music, physics, graphics, and so forth can have so many significant changes to make the world truly feel like a what-if alternate universe where Zero was the main character, rather than some mere character swap. The overall aim was to have a game that was somewhat harder than the original Mega Man X, but still make Zero feel powerful and different enough that his campaign wasn't just X's campaign but harder.

And of course, I have to give a huge shoutout to everybody over the years who helped this project come into fruition. Xeeynamo for creating a level editor. xstuff for helping me with graphical and music edits. denim for compression and decompression programs. GoldS and Power Panda for disassembly files that gave me a great headstart. Falchion 22 and Peru for initial hacking elements I mixed and matched. cerberus-rack, brongaa12, Kensuyjin33, and fallensoldier420 for graphical work relevant to Zero’s canon design. Umiliphus for graphical work relevant to Dr. Wily’s sprite. Maël Hörz for HxD, the greatest hex editor I have ever used. And of course, Vis for the amazing cover art I submitted to IGDB. https://twitter.com/PD_CGT_games/status/1718036539622531354?s=20

I truly believe working with so many people to learn romhacking skills in the past couple years and gaining so many new perspectives around the hobby has not only made me a better coder, but also a better person. I thank everyone who helped push my dream of a fully integrated Zero in MMX1's world to reality.

"Sigma, you should have studied the blueprints closer! There is only one Zero!"

De la misma manera en la que Boorman en Excalibur retrata de forma mundana y sin gracia un evento tan clave en el mito humano como la espada en la piedra. Miyazaki en Demon's Souls nos pone como jefe final una figura patética que da pena ajena y que solo sirve como un saco de boxeo, ilustrando con puro cinismo el fin de una aventura expresada a través de mecánicas tan torpes como obtusas.


El juego realmente no intenta expresar otra fantasía oscura medieval del montón, sino el de plantearnos desafíos y más que superar el diseño en sí, es el comprender el control que tenemos a nuestra disposición, y esto se complementa de forma muy gratificante con los escenarios planteados que apunta a ser más un dungeon crawler, alejándose bastante de un diseño convencional, por lo que nos comprometemos en afrontar situaciones en donde nos adentraremos en sitios desconocidos llenos de trampa y enemigos aguardando en las sombras, es casi parecido a la misma sensación y emociones que expresa Castlevania, el ser un plataformero más lento y menos dinámico dónde la sola acción de subir por las escaleras significa un peligro latente, ya que podríamos ser golpeados por algún enemigo volador y caer a nuestra muerte inevitable, algo parecido aquí a cuando un soldado raso rompe tu guardia y te logra acertar un ataque que baja más o directamente toda nuestra vitalidad por no haber puesto nuestro escudo a tiempo o someterlo bajo mucha presión a las constantes embestidas del adversario.


Cabe destacar que otro fuerte es el siempre plantearse situaciones en donde te verás en desventaja, sin importar tu armamento, el enemigo más débil puede incluso ser un adversario a tener en cuenta en ciertos momentos, ya sea por despiste o mera suerte, ya ni hablar cuando el número de enemigos asciende a dos, en dónde una victoria sin recibir daño es casi imposible y ni decir cuando se plantean situaciones con un grupo aún más grande en dónde la huida es la única opción, tan constantes son estas situaciones que incluso conociendo superficialmente el diseño o sabiendo lo que te espera, inevitablemente moriras por el más mínimo error que realices.

Todas estas reglas favorecen aún más (algunos) de los enfrentamientos contra los jefes, Batallas como las de Flamelurker o Old Hero son excelentes por brindarte un gran espacio en el que desplazarte con alguna que otra dificultad (ya sean con obstáculos que interfieren de forma constante en tu movilidad) con la contra de que el enemigo planteado será errático y embista de forma constante, castigandote apenas te tomes un respiro y volviendo eterno la lucha si tus represalias no son constantes. o el caso de los Maneaters en donde se aplica la presión constante sumado a un espacio estrecho en donde un movimiento en falso significa caer al vacío y el no ser rápido acabando con uno, también implica la aparición de una segunda criatura que hará de todo esto aún más complicado. Pero estas son contadas excepciones, ya que ciertos enfrentamientos puntuales se resolverán a través de una gimmick que se debe descubrir, por lo que ofrece una variedad constante a lo que desafío se refiere (con todo lo bueno y malo que eso implica, verdad Dios Dragón?) volviéndose interesantes de forma más conceptual y narrativa que por el combate en sí, al fin de cuentas el reto real es el llegar a estos sano y salvo.

Lo que quiero decir es que Demons es un juego bastante torpe, pero es justo esa torpeza mezclada con su buen diseño de mazmorra es lo que logra hacer que destaque bastante y que por más que no tenga un sistema de personalización tan bien hecho, al menos el que seas tan frágil en combate hace que se marque una gran diferencia cuando el arma que mejoras hace al cinco puntos más que antes. Toda esta amalgama de cosas son lo que lo convierte en una de las experiencias más caótica, frustrante y divertida que he tenido el placer de experimentar y lo que lo ha vuelto en uno de mis juegos favoritos más recientes.