 Hello, and welcome to part four of this series where I take a look at fan-made improvement patches for Super Nintendo games. To give you an example of what an improvement patch is, in previous videos I've already covered patches ranging from Vidor Velela's SA-1 fixes, which add processing power, so to speak, and help remove the slowdown in games like Gradius III, Contra III, and Super Castlevania IV. There's also patches that give you more playable characters, like playing as Eidol in Killer Instinct, and there's also simple quality of life stuff, like a patch that enables you to use the LNR buttons to scroll through all your weapons and link to the past, to use one example. To get these to work, follow the link for each patch in the video description, download the file, and use a utility program like Beat or Lunar IPS to join together the patch file with the game ROM. If you need help troubleshooting, there's people on the ROM hacking forums that can help you out. And hey, look, I've got a convenient excuse to talk about my favorite game of all time, Chrono Trigger. Here we've got a patch that restores a huge amount of censored content from the original Japanese game made by Chronosplit. It cleans up the script a bit by combining it with the translation that the DS port received, and this isn't one of those pedantic, accuracy-for-accuracy-sake type fixes. It still maintains the charm and personal touch of the original script, while also fixing the names of a lot of weapons, items, and gear. And there's the usual religious connotations that always got censored in the West, those are brought back as well. In addition to that, there's plenty of bug fixes here, too. Not that there were that many in Chrono Trigger to begin with, but this patch does fix some issues with targeting AI. If you're jonesing for another Chrono Trigger playthrough, you do well to do so with this patch. And of course, when you talk Chrono Trigger, then you also gotta talk Final Fantasy VI, and this game has a ton of improvement patches, and most of them can be stacked in a way so you can take advantage of several at once. Here's one that makes an adjustment to the Colosseum called True Duel. Normally, this is a simulated fight between two opponents. Your character's commands are randomly chosen by the game, and that can be frustrating because the Colosseum is a great way to get some rare stuff. But this patch allows you to take control of your character, with the exception of Umaro. Well, nobody uses Umaro anyway, so who cares. But still, this is a useful patch that can help get some otherwise hard-to-get weapons, armor, and items. There's also a lot of much simpler quality of life patches for Final Fantasy VI. One I really found useful was one that condenses your spell list. It's a major pain to have to scroll through all sorts of empty space to find one's spell, and this patch simply fixes that. But yeah, there's all sorts of patches that can be stacked onto the same ROM, everything from randomizing the battle music, to always being able to sprint on the world map. And there's over 200 now on romhacking.net alone, so check them out. In the past, I talked about improvement patches for Link to the Past that add quality of life mechanics to the game. I mentioned earlier about being able to scroll through your weapons with the shoulder buttons, instead of bringing up the menu every freaking time. But now, there's a patch called Link to the Past Redux, and it adds all sorts of different stuff that saves the player time and aggravation. There's the aforementioned menu workaround, plus you can collect up to 99 bombs and arrows, and you can change direction while dashing, which is really a lot of fun. I love zooming around Hyrule like this. I just imagine Link screaming at the top of his lungs as he runs around out of control. The menu also has been cleaned up and reorganized a bit, and there's quite a bit of minor touches that have also been fixed to reflect the rest of the Zelda series, everything from changing the flute's name to an ocarina, to the color of Link's hair. This is a really fun way to play Link to the Past nowadays, so if you're a person that likes to crank through this game every so often, you should try it with this patch. Of course, no patch or hacking video is complete without Super Metroid, and not only is there a Link to the Past Redux patch, there's also one for Super Metroid made by the same person, Shadow 1333. Again, this one combines a lot of quality of life stuff from other patches and includes all sorts of other convenient stuff. For instance, you can hold down a shoulder button to use your secondary weapon while firing, instead of having to switch and switch back manually. Also, the map has been improved so it shows what weapon you need for certain doors. Blue doors are already opened, but green doors require a super missile, yellow doors need a super bomb, and so on. I really liked this touch. There's all sorts of little things here that help speed up the game too, like faster elevator sequences, faster transitions between rooms, that sort of thing. Again, just like the Link to the Past patch, if you're looking to replay Super Metroid anytime soon, I'd recommend doing so with this patch. It's a lot of fun. Here's another one for Super Metroid that keeps the game largely the same, only it's 16.9 widescreen. I should mention that this patch isn't finished and is still pretty buggy, but enough work has been done on it so far that you can see enemies ahead of and behind you as the game is scrolling and it's just really freaking cool to see. What's a really nice bonus about this patch is that it can also be applied to ROM hacks, like Hyper Metroid and Super Metroid redesign, and the ASM files for those two in particular are included in the zip file that I've linked in the description below. Yeah, this one may not be finished yet, but it's still really cool to see the kind of work folks are willing to do to make this kind of stuff possible. Secret of Mana also has a bunch of improvement patches, but none that are more comprehensive than Secret of Mana Turbo. The main thing this does is remove the stamina meter so you don't have to wait around between each attack. That might be the number one thing I hear people complain about when it comes to this game, so hey, you folks out there that hate that stamina meter, now you've got no more excuses, try playing Secret of Mana with this patch. But yeah, this patch not only includes that major aspect, but it also rebalances the game a bit when it comes to enemy damage, experience points, and the amount of gold you earn when defeating enemies. Plus, there's seriously just a ton of other improvements, like being able to hold the A button to pause your charge when waiting to level up your attack. You can actually attack diagonally instead of in just four directions, and even if you're already a big fan of Secret of Mana, this one is well worth checking out. Even games like Sekinden Setsu 3, otherwise known as Trials of Mana, that has an extensive patch that rebalances the game as well, called Sin of Mana. Each class, stat, and spell has been adjusted accordingly, so nothing's too overpowered, but it's still effective throughout the game. There's been changes made to certain bosses and how they attack and react. The number for certain items was increased from 9 all the way to 20, and there's five different difficulty settings to choose from. It's pretty dang cool to play this one on a harder difficulty, because it makes you approach battles a little differently instead of just mowing right through them. I will say the Sin of Mana patch plays much differently than the original, but again, if you've cranked through this game before and want a different take on it, you're not gonna do much better than this patch. Sometimes an improvement patch can be as simple as an updated translation, and that's what the War of the Goddess patch provides for the original Breath of Fire. I've always really dug this game, but I hated how bad the translation was, everything from the dialogue to the item and spell names, it was a mess. Thankfully, this patch updates everything big time, so you can, you know, actually understand what people are saying and what items do what and all that. In addition to that, this patch also lets you hold the B button to run, which makes this game much less grindy. If you're gonna play the original Breath of Fire nowadays, you gotta do it with this patch. It's a massive upgrade and makes the game a lot more fun. I love to see the work people put into games that are not nearly as popular as the usual stuff, so it's really cool to see a game like Arcana get such an extensive patch, this one being called Seal of Rimsala. Arcana is a 16-bit dungeon crawler, so in other words, it's really, really slow. This patch speeds the game way up though, cleans up the translation big time, and fixes a couple of the mazes so you don't have to backtrack as often. Fixes like these allow the game's strengths to really shine through, like the great soundtrack, and just the fact that it's actually a pretty dang good game for a 16-bit dungeon crawler. If you're interested in playing Arcana, don't play it without this patch. I'd go as far to say it's essential if you're gonna play this game today. Here's another very comprehensive patch for a game that should be getting more love these days. It's called the Intuitive Ranchmaster Patch for the original Harvest Moon. Anyone that's played Harvest Moon knows that game has some certain annoying flaws, like how you could softlock the game if you tried to sell an animal at the same time you tried to buy one, or the game penalizing you for shipping more than exactly 511 of any crop. This patch fixes all that stuff and adds a lot more too, like actually being able to buy more than one bag of seeds at once, and not being required to rewater stuff if the soil is already wet. Seriously, the list of bug fixes and improvements in this patch is like a mile long, and just like Arcana, if you're gonna play this game today, it's essential that you play it with this patch. Continuing with more obscure stuff, I'll finish up this video with two more Super Famicom games, the first being Macro Scramble Valkyrie, with the patch being called Overtek Edition. This one has your controller set up so you can transform into your mech form using the R button, and back to your regular ship as the L button. See, sometimes stuff like that is just so simple, it makes a difficult game like this that much more palatable. But this patch doesn't stop there, it also adds a new difficulty level for casual players, where you have more health, and it takes two hits to deplete your weapon power instead of just one. Yeah, I know, here's where all the shoot-'em-up professionals roll their eyes, but hey, anything that makes a great game like this more approachable for folks who aren't great at this genre, and I'm one of them, I welcome any and all patches like this, if nothing else, it's a good practice mode that allows you to get better at this game. Finally, Clock Tower has a patch simply called Clock Tower Deluxe, and yep, this is another patch where if you're gonna play this game today, you gotta play it with this patch because it fixes a lot of bugs, adds mouse support for the SNES mouse, and allows you to actually run up the freaking stairs, sheesh, that drove me nuts when I first played this. This patch even adds stuff from the PlayStation version of this game, which is very unexpected and really cool. This is a genuinely creepy and weird game that I get a big kick out of, especially since there wasn't a whole lot of 16-bit horror stuff, so this is another patch that comes highly recommended. Whew, okay, alright, that's all for now, and I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.