Redesign The Classics With Tile Molester

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the recent release of Tile Molester, which the author describes as "..a multi-format, user-extensible graphics data editor that lets you create, view and edit graphics in arbitrary binary files, with a particular focus on binaries for game consoles." It's written in Java, so "can be run on any platform that has a Java Runtime Environment installed", and the site gallery has some example graphics rips, including the often-ripped Zelda, and the less often hacked-with classic Deluxe Paint - other platforms thought to have editable data include Amiga, N64, and even Playstation.

Comments

Left-over tiles?

[Bagels]

Interesting - in their gallery of shots, I noticed that some of the text tidbits for Zelda 2 had been left as Japanese - would that suggest that there was something in the Japanese version that didn't carry over to the US? I know that on many of the old cartridge-based games, certain things on the cartridge never got used - for example, the old classic Chrono Trigger has a quite nice song in it called "Singing Mountains" that never got used in the game - so maybe they're just leftovers that never got used in either the Japanese or the American editions of the game.

No offense, but...

[Man In Black]

Hacked roms are generally lame. I mean, there's enough garbage NES roms out there without all these Super Mario hacks that give Mario an afro, or turn him into Luigi or other lame effects. And I can do without Ikari Warriors turned into some Afghanistan conflict.

If you really want to make a game, then make something new. If you lack coding abilities, then instead of just changing the graphics, use a level editor or something. I'd have a lot more fun playing a SMB hack that changed the levels instead of one where the Goomba's were turned into Saddam Husseins.