The Wonders of RomStation

 Been a bit since my E3 article but we're back again with a topic I've been using to stream on Twitch!  Today, I'm going to talk about a little application called RomStation.  This isn't some fancy Playstationesque device, but rather a front to download games on for PC.  This includes games for almost all systems you can imagine too, from Gamecube to Saturn to even arcade.  Past just the regular games you can find on here are a special type of game that form the reason I wanted to talk about this- Romhacks!

Romhacks are games that someone has messed with or changed in some minor or major way to change the experience for the player.  These can be things such as level design like in Kaizo Mario World or just a simple character addition/ change like in Super Mario 3D World 64 or Goldeneye With Mario Characters.  These games can also change the story, move encounters around, and just be a completely new experience from the old one, so with that said, let's dive right in to RomStation and explore a few of the games one can find there!

While you can find all sorts of regular games to get from RomStation, We'll be talking about the hacks, as mentioned earlier.  With that said. Let's dive into a relatively normal romhack to start with- Super Mario 3D World 64.  The game, barring a few bugs due to emulation, plays and flows exactly like the original game, but the twist is that Mario isn't the only playable character anymore.  In this hack, players can switch between Mario, Luigi, Toad, Princess Peach, and Rosalina when selecting a file or entering a course.

Not much else changes in the game besides the dialogue and the fact that Peach breaks some of the platforming puzzles via retaining her ability to float in later games.  This is a relatively normal hack as far as things go because the core of the game doesn't really change.  Our next romhack changes things up a wee bit more than that though.

Next up, we have The Legend of Banjo-Kazooie: The Bear Waker.  This hack is a cross between Wind Waker and Banjo-Kazooie, where The King of Red Lions has asked Banjo and Kazooie to find Link, who's house is locked and has seemingly gone missing.  Though the location and many characters are from Zelda, the gameplay and graphics are all Banjo-Kazooie.  It's a fun experiment in meshing two games together to create a new experience, and it works rather well all things considered.

To show how minor changes can still make a brilliant hack, we're also going to look at Pokemon: Troll Version.  This game is a hack of Pokemon Ruby that sees many things get tweaked or changed around to mess with the player.  In my own play session, The starters were changed to Machop, Larvitar, and Ralts and the Pokemon Center music was creepily off tune.  Other changes like Pokemon name changes are also a thing in this, so the game really does live up to it's name and feels like it's trolling you.  The rival character of May is turned into Red from earlier games, even keeping the Pikachu as well as whatever the opposite of your starter is.  Music and sound can often start mixing or sounding off in this game so it's definitely worth a look at if strange hacks are your thing.

This is just a small taste of the strange games you can find on RomStation, and next time we'll jump right back into this topic for more madness.  Whether small or big game changes are your thing, RomStation will definitely have you covered.  Give it a look if you're interested and I'll see you next post for more hacks.

-SweetSailorRosalina