It's recently come to my attention how outclassed ROM Hacks appear to be, graphically and story-wise, to fangames.
I disagree entirely. I have seen hacks with amazing story lines, such as Super Rising Thunder, and Identity. I have yet to see any fangames with better stories than those two. Also, as for the graphics, I've noticed that a lot of games use the same tiles and such that I am using in my hack.
Honestly, there aren't many fangames that really interest me. Why? Because so far I only know of one completed game. There may not even be any more completed games, ever. Hacks, however, whereas many of them also may not reach completion, they do genuinely go a lot further than most games do.
Another thing to take into account, is that games can do a lot more. They have a lot more possibilities, however, people are not using those to their advantage, whereas hackers are starting to use a lot more of what they have to their advantage. Over the course of this year and last, hackers have discovered a lot of things that they can use to their advantage, such as Colcolstyles finding the three layer blocks, Shiny Quagsire discovering a way to manipulate the RTC to allow seasons; and idk if a post can be long enough to allow me to state everything Knizz has done. So yeah, if a hacker is willing to step into the realms of a hex editor, as opposed to using a tool for every single thing in their hack, and simply not adding things if there isn't a tool to do it, then yes, hacks can be pretty awesome.
However, that is not to say that games are worse, no. A few games, albeit a lot less than hacks, are starting to look really amazing, and
if they were to be released, they could definitely be up to par with a few hacks out there, or even better.
Tl;dr, neither are better, both have positives, both have negatives.
