I saw a recent post, “PMD fat rom hack?” and it gave me a few non-Pokemon related ideas, specifically for fat rom hacks for games.
I haven’t been a part of the community of rom-hacking for a while, but that post revived my interest. I currently know of a few games that could definitely be hacked, with tools that almost anyone could pick up.
Super Mario World. This one has a massive community, with a very active website/forum. The tools available are mostly for map editing, but there is sprite editing, mechanics editing, adding completely new things, etc. If someone knew enough, I think they really could add in a weight gain mechanic or something.
GBA games (mostly Pokemon). According to this website, there are a lot of tools for editing GBA (Game Boy Advance) games. While it’s mostly based around Pokemon, if you look closely a lot of the tools work with any game, such as GBA Graphics Editor and Advance Text. There are so many possibilites with this, seeing how many GBA games there really are. I can go into more detail for certain games in the replies if anyone is interested.
Mother 2 (Earthbound). This game has a few tools made specifically for it, including sprite editing, text editing, etc. Enough to make a fat rom of it. I do recall the tools being a bit hard to learn, but they might’ve changed in the last few years. Obviously the characters would probably have to be changed, though.
Non-GBA Pokemon. Due to Pokemon being extremely popular, there’s a lot of support and tools for making rom hacks of it, outside of the GBA games too. While the GBA games would be better, there’s tools for pretty much every game before it, even Gen 1.
Early Sonic Games. Most of the early sonic games have a few tools out for them. While there’s already been a fat hack for Sonic 1 (or was it 2?) There’s still a lot of other games, such as 3 and even Chaotix.
That’s all for now. But, there’s one more thing. I’ve seen a lot of people scared about making hacks since they can’t release them, due to Nintendo thinking it’s piracy. The folks over at SMW Central found a way to get around this, and it works for most roms. Basically, you use a program or website to produce a file, called a patch, and then you release that. Someone can download it, and use the same website or program to patch it onto a normal rom (that they have to find themselves, usually easy with popular games) and then they can play it, without anything getting taken down. Example of one of the sites.
If you want more information on anything, leave a reply. I’ll try to get back to you.