After over four months of solid effort (spread out over 16 months), Mentil has released the Jarvas Redux hack, for the notorious Famicom kusoge ‘Mirai Shinwa Jarvas’. Patches are available for both the original Japanese ROM, as well as ones already patched by Stardust Crusaders’ 1.00 English patch.
An action-RPG released in 1987, it was one of the first Famicom RPGs to support battery-backed saves. However, it was beset by numerous bugs, softlocks, difficulty spikes, poor performance, and all-around jank.
Mentil saw it as a challenge to attempt to repair this game’s deficiencies, and so worked to systematically fix its flaws. Aside from an aborted attempt to replace its grating music (playing with sound off is thus recommended), this effort was largely successful. The hack’s author hopes that such results will inspire and encourage other ROM hackers to similarly improve other games, even ones that might otherwise be considered irredeemable.
The most substantial changes included in this hack:
- Collision detection with the background has been completely reworked. You should get hung up on the scenery less often.
- All known softlocks have been resolved. In order to achieve this, some paths have been modified or added so that if you have the means to reach a location, you also have the means to continue or return. Relatedly, an ability that was very difficult to find has been made much easier to come across, and some things have been modified to utilize it when appropriate.
- The framerate has been improved from 20 to 30fps. Speeds/delays have been adjusted accordingly for everything except the player’s movement, which is no longer sluggish.
- Spells now cast from a new MP stat (instead of from XP). Maximum MP is set to 1 + half your level, and can be restored with Drugs. Spell cost is equal to spell rank. Mages now learn spells 5 levels earlier, thus they start with a spell at Level 0.
- Visiting a Wizard hut (aka House of Shoshin) now restores your MP. Inns of Illusion now live up to their name by restoring your HP and playing a little trick on you. They will both no longer warp you across the world, now letting you exit normally.
- Boathouse interiors now look the part, rather than expositing that you’ve entered one. They can now be exited, and there is now a confirmation prior to setting sail.
- Monsters now drop Gold. The difficulty curve has also been smoothed, nerfing some inexplicably-difficult enemies. Purists can disable these via optional patches.
- NPCs in towns now spawn in doorways and other appropriate entry points, when such a point is onscreen.
- Quests no longer need to be accepted in order to be turned in, fixing a notorious early-game softlock. They now give rebalanced rewards specific to the quest, rather than for the area where you turned them in.
- Touching a duelist now only does 2/3 as much damage as the first boss, rather than doing as much as the final boss. Winning duels now grants 5x as much Fame, and some dueling exploits were fixed.
- The stats screen was rearranged. It now shows XP required to level up, current and max MP, and your total Attack and Defense factoring in equipment. (Contrary to popular belief, equipment always did work, but its effectiveness is only equal to about half of your base stat.)
- A Draft will now permanently unlock passage through a gate, from both sides.
The readme details numerous other changes as well.
