List Simple Game Hack Ideas and Requests

[gliptitude]

Some games have been hacked to simply play better. E.T. And Laserblast come to mind. I have a few other candidates, games that need some variables changed. Maybe others do too?

 

Starship - change player one to conventional left controller port. It is programmed to right controller port, which is very annoying.

 

Yars' Revenge - I would love a game mode that starts on a more advanced stage, when the Qotile changes direction during attack. .. I play game 6, "ultimate Yars", and I'd like to be able to start a game near where it is when I typically have 140,000 points.

 

Night Driver - Eliminate or black out the houses and trees in the screen margins. They are terrible sprites and unnecessary. The game has an interesting minimalist visual aesthetic which I think would play much more dynamically without these filler graphics.

 

Mountain King - Change the controls so that the fire button is jump. Having to accurately press up and left/right simultaneously is ridiculous. Flashlight could be changed to down and fire, or just down. Certainly shining the flashlight is less time and position sensitive than jumping and jumping ought to be more intuitive.

 

(Paddle games) - Choose a convention for which paddle is player one and which is player two and alter the non-conforming paddle games.

 

Those are the ones at the top of my list. I'm not a programmer and when I say "simple" hack I only mean that the game remains fundamentally the same. I don't mean to imply that the task is simple. I don't know if it is or is not or what's possible.

Edited September 10, 2017 by gliptitude