A Link to the Past Romhacks
I’ve played a whole bunch of Romhacks of A Link to the Past. Part of my alttp evangelism involves spreading awareness of these Romhacks. All of these romhacks are complete and I experienced them with no problems. It’s become much easier to patch roms these days, so they’re all easily accessible. Oh and they’re free!
One thing romhacks love to use is bonking. When you dash into a wall, you bonk and are flung backward. It is common in romhacks to use this to get across gaps (there is one optional part of the Link to the Past that requires bonking). Once you get the boots, you often need to be bonking around.
To play a romhack, you need an emulator (I recommend snes9x), a rom (japanese version for randomizer and english version for others), and a rom patcher. I suggest a browser-based patcher like here: https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/ Other than the roms, nothing is illicit.
All these romhacks besides randomizer can be found here:
https://www.zeldix.net/f15-finished
---Conker's High Rule Tail--- (Recommended)
This longer romhack is absurd and a lot of fun. It's heavily changed, including all the sprites and new items and a radically changed menu system. It has a nonsense feel to it, where one dungeon is Resident Evil and the next is Mario and the next is Doctor Who. But don't let the goofiness fool you: this is a very well-designed game. The dungeons are inventive and everything's pretty creative.
One issue is that the overworld is devoid of spatial reasoning. This is very awkward to deal with, but the map system does help this problem somewhat. It's difficult to figure out where things are, especially as one of the later dungeons you have to continuously traverse to get to the earlier dungeons. It’s pretty cool, but it can be confusing.
Also, there is a "hard mode" in the game, and it sucks. It completely ruins the bossfights. Don’t bother with it.
---Milk Utopia--- (Not Recommended)
This seems to be a beta version or sequel to Conker's High Rule Tail. It has all the same assets and menu system. However it’s significantly shorter and less well designed overall. It is still a pretty good and a complete experience. But Conker’s High Rule Tail is definitely better and does a lot of the same stuff. I would only recommend this to someone who’s already played Conker’s High Rule Tail.
---Parallel Worlds--- (Not Recommended)
Parallel Worlds is one of the earliest alttp romhacks with a very intense Kaizo-level difficulty only complete-able with savestates. I found it just be a slog with some honestly absurd demands on the player. Don’t bother with it.
However, it is quite innovative and even has dungeons that can be completed in almost any order. In fact the design is eerily similar to Link Between Worlds, so I find it likely that the developers of that looked at Parallel Worlds.
This romhack is quite infamous/famous, and many of the other romhacks reference Parallel Worlds in some way. For instance, Conker’s High Rule Tail has the dungeon “Parallel Tower Ruins” which has the same general layout of the Parallel Tower.
---Parallel Remodel--- (Not Recommended)
This is a redone version of Parallel Worlds with considerably easier difficulty. Unfortunately it also changes around the item progression radically, and forces the dungeons into a specific order for some reason.
Making the game easier is done very conspicuously, with lots of oddly empty rooms and strange shortcuts. Also the final dungeon is basically just cut out entirely. It’s not a well-designed experience and it removes a lot of the interesting aspects of Parallel Worlds in the process.
---Lyra Islands--- (Recommended)
Also called A Link to the Islands. This was the first romhack I tried and it worked pretty well as a starter. It’s not terribly complex, and other than a few sections not too frustrating. It is medium-sized, reasonable difficulty and fun progression.
---Secrets of the Past--- (Recommended)
This was a delightful hack that felt much shorter than the others. Basically only three dungeons and a boss rush. The designs were solid. This is also a great one to start with.
---Gerudo Exile--- (Recommended)
Gerudo Exile is one of the newest romhacks on this list, created in 2018. It is awesome, with really cool and strange puzzles. It seems as first that there are only three dungeons, but there’s actually several mini-dungeons as well so it’s not that short. It has a lot of “racing” sequences, which I found pretty enjoyable as long as you use savestates to reset the races. It also has wild frozen-enemy puzzles, puzzles with the tube mechanics, and even a fun little logic puzzle.
One issue is that it has this idiotic thing where you basically have to 100% the game to have a reasonable fight with Ganon. I missed some heart pieces and didn’t want to hunt them down, so I never bothered beating Ganon. But minus that issue at the very end, everything was fantastic and innovative.
---A Link to the Past Randomizer--- (Recommended)
I’ve already reviewed alttpr (https://iammichaelrose.com/game-reviews/2020/6/10/a-link-to-the-past-randomizer), but I just want to reiterate that this game is amazing. It’s Link to the Past, but all items in chests have been randomized in such a way that it is always complete-able.
There are also fancy modes like Retro, Door randomizer, and Boss Shuffle which add further complexity and fun. Whether you want to watch people on twitch, or play wacky modes casually, or try to get good at speedrunning, alttpr is a blast.
Randomizer can be found at https://alttpr.com/
---Randomizer Winter Festive 2020--- (Recommended)
This isn’t actually a randomizer itself but was designed to showcase the Door Randomizer technology for randomizer. You play 25 days of christmas, where each day is a self-contained amalgamated dungeon (like combinations of rooms from different dungeons). You are finding three pendants in each dungeon, blue from a boss, red from a telepath tile, and green from opening the chests.
I had a ton of fun playing this. It’s a wild ride and the amalgam dungeons bend your mind in all the fun ways. It really shows the inventiveness of what can be done in a romhack, and it doesn't even change the rooms of the dungeons.
The 2020 Winter Festive Randomizer can be found at https://alttpr.com/en/h/30yAZnLRGV
---Goddess of Wisdom--- (Recommended)
This is a longer romhack that is very involved. With awesome, complex, sprawling dungeons. The difficulty of the bosses is quite high especially as there aren’t armor upgrades in this game. There are also these incredibly tedious statue puzzles over and over again that are incredibly annoying later in the game. It’s definitely got some Kaizo-level difficulty here and there but I still found it very enjoyable.
---Master Quest Retold--- (Not Recommended)
Enemies have their health and damage doubled, considerably raising difficulty. Dungeons are all vanilla, except the items are now all on the overworld in caves and such (except the armor upgrades for some reason). It’s pretty straightforward.
Similar to Link Between Worlds, items not tied to dungeons incentivizes just clearing the overworld before bothering to go into dungeons.
---Link to the Proto--- (Not Recommended)
This is a romhack that is trying to emulate the Link to the Past prototype. Essentially it has a lot of different assets and a simpler overworld. Dungeons are vanilla. A nice thing if you’re looking for a mostly vanilla experience, but otherwise don’t bother.
---Echoes of the Past--- (Not Recommended)
This looks pretty vanilla at first but the dungeons are radically changed and much harder. The progression is also wildly different, with totally different items and order. This game also expects the player to do bomb jumps which aren’t too hard but you do need to look it up. It also has strangely obnoxious use of the red/blue switches. They’re pretty common in these romhacks, but they are ridiculous here.
The reason I don’t recommend it is that I kept getting super stuck. I don’t know how to progress with the items I have.
