What does ROM Hacking mean to you?

[colcolstyles]

I'm being intentionally vague here because I want to see where people go with this.

So, what does ROM Hacking mean to you?

 

[Darthatron]

ROM Hacking is Understanding how something works, Understanding is Knowledge, Knowledge is Power.

ROM Hacking = Power.

Seriously though, I just like being able to say "Yeah, I understand how that works, and I can manipulate it any way I want."

 

[miksy91]

Hard to explain but I'd classify it in the same section with maths, physics etc.
It's a hobby in which you use your mind to do the stuff instead of your body, if you can put it that way :D

 

[Orinjmate]

Something to do in my spare time haha.
As well as nostalgia (I used to always design pokemon games when I was little, but was never be able to make them).

 

[altariaking]

What is it to me? Basically, it's like my life. I have no life outside the internet, and get picked on a lot at school, so I can come home, fire up my laptop, and have fun doing something I like to think I'm at least decent at, while getting away from all the things in life that reallyannoy me or make me feel angry and upset. So yeah, Rom hacking means a lot to me actually.

 

[giradialkia]

It's fun, for me.

I quite honestly don't think I have the brainpower to actually learn ASM or anything similar. At least, the few times I tried, it went right over my head. So I stick to the simple stuff, which most truly good hackers call "ROM editing". Are they right? Yeah. Do I care? Nah.

So, it's a hobby, something to do in my free time. Even if I only use tools, it's still sufficient enough for me to do what I want with a game.

Some people are excellent at it, others are good, some are average, others are downright terrible. It's still just a hobby at the end of the day, at least to me. It's not going to get me a job in Games Development in the real world, so its just a really, really fun way to whittle away some hours :) I'm quite passionate about it, but not to an obsessive extent... if that makes any sense.

 

[Binary]

To me, ROM hacking, is generally a way for me to express myself. Something that takes me away from my despondent side. I do it for fun. Nothing more. Nothing less. Heck, I can be serious at times about it too. But, that seriousness is also a part of the recreation.

It's also a way in which I can interpret my ideas. And how I can understand others too. It's like a cycle of knowledge. :D

 

[dragoniteuser]

Well first off, it's a chance to do something creative out of the box.
Sure it annoys you some times, but it also gives that great feeling of accomplishment once you do something right!
It also proves in a way that you're not just some brainless drone, controlled by others, but that you can actually take a stand at boredom and emptiness life trows at you every day!
Wow, that almost sounded poetic... :P

 

[Spherical Ice]

A time killer; a hobby; something for my enjoyment; a way to create my own world in a way that pleases me.

 

[Vrai]

What is hacking to me? ...huh.

"It's a way that I can make everything happen", "it's fun", "it's a way to waste time" are the biggest answers I expect most people to post in this thread. To me, I suppose, hacking is just another way to tell a story. It's a way for me to share my imagination, my world, with everyone else. And I don't think that there's a better way to do that than with a game. Nothing brings you into someone else's world like a game; not books, not movies, not anything.

ROM Hacking, to me, is my world.

 

[Kevin]

ROM hacking to me is fun. xD Um, ROM hacking is a way to show your creativity, your ideas, and imagination to each other thorough a game. ROM hacking, in my way, is to show your ideas that you have.

 

[Alice]

Rom hacking (mapping in particular) is more of an art form for me. I've always been an artist at heart, but I put drawing aside so I could play more video games, when I was a little kid. Mapping is as close as I can really get to drawing I suppose, without spending forever trying to learn to actually draw again.

 

[sab]

For me, I don't consider most of the people (including myself) in this forum to be rom hackers. I think that mostly the people here are game designers. The difference is that to be a good rom hacker you have to be able to hexedit, find images and manipulate them, be able to trace things back to their source and modify them to your liking, etc. I guess a good definition of what I think of as a hacker is a person who can discover new data and figure out how things work without useing anything but a hex editor and maybe some basic decompilers. This does not mean that they don't use tools made by people, it just means that if need arose they could do their hacking without any tools except a hexeditor (and, once again, maybe some basic decompilers). A game designer is a person who just designs a game useing the tools others have created. They can do some simple hexediting if they have a tut, and can maybe track down a few offsets, but are pretty much helpless without a tutorials and/or tools from others. They key part here is that a hacker finds out things for himself and applies his knowledge, while a game designer just designs a game without knowing how it works.

 

[miksy91]

For me, I don't consider most of the people (including myself) in this forum to be rom hackers. I think that mostly the people here are game designers. The difference is that to be a good rom hacker you have to be able to hexedit, find images and manipulate them, be able to trace things back to their source and modify them to your liking, etc. I guess a good definition of what I think of as a hacker is a person who can discover new data and figure out how things work without useing anything but a hex editor and maybe some basic decompilers. This does not mean that they don't use tools made by people, it just means that if need arose they could do their hacking without any tools except a hexeditor (and, once again, maybe some basic decompilers). A game designer is a person who just designs a game useing the tools others have created. They can do some simple hexediting if they have a tut, and can maybe track down a few offsets, but are pretty much helpless without a tutorials and/or tools from others. They key part here is that a hacker finds out things for himself and applies his knowledge, while a game designer just designs a game without knowing how it works.

If there was something such as "Like" button in this forum too, I'd definitely have pushed it.
A good definition indeed :D

 

[Usul]

ROM Hacking is Understanding how something works, Understanding is Knowledge, Knowledge is Power.

ROM Hacking = Power.

Seriously though, I just like being able to say "Yeah, I understand how that works, and I can manipulate it any way I want."

Bold line sound like Star Wars, lol.

OT: Creating something from orginality to something greatness from a base, to let other players enjoy the story-line, new pokémons, bigger challenge, etc.
I like to play the hack-visions more than just the orginal.

 

[Zeffy]

ROM Hacking is the thing making me want to go to the internet every now and then. Its like the butter of my bread, and the fingers of my hand, and the toes of my feet. Without it, my life isn't complete. Imagine a lame, tasteless bread, a fingerless hand, and a toe-less foot. That's how my life would be without ROM hacking.

 

[Perri Lightfoot]

ROM hacking - well, ROM modding; as I'm one of those less technologically gifted folks - is about story, fun, and discovery for me, personally. I've always thought that the Pokemon world had so much potential for great plots, though it's not until Platinum (and to a much greater extent, Black and White) that Game Freak really bothered to to do much in that department. My interest in ROM modding began as - and still is - just an extension of my fanfiction hobby: the medium's potential for telling interesting, compelling stories with fleshed-out characters (including protagonists with personality) is vast, and I wanted to give it a try XD When I boot up Advance Map and open my script editor I feel the creative juices flow; and I can just spend hours engaging my creativity. It's great fun :)

As for discovery, I've learned so many new things since I first got interested in this hobby; especially in the past two years or so. Of course, they're not skills that are exactly relevant to much beyond the ROM scene; but just pushing myself to pick up new skills at all gives my brain a workout of the likes it hasn't seen much of since graduating from college. When I look though my screenshot folder - from the first images from Pokemon: New Jersey Quest that were taken six years ago all the way to the latest Super Rising Thunder! screens - I can't help but feel a great deal of pride at how far I've come, and to look forward to how far still I can go. If I can keep getting better and improving - even if I ultimately can't figure out hex or "real" hacking - that's what I hope for. The fun of discovering new talent hidden within you - that, and coming up with new plots, is what makes this hobby so very enjoyable for me! :D

 

[Sawakita]

I don't understand why the non-hackers have to point out this fact: if you can't hack, nobody is criticizing you. In fact the actual topic isn't "why rom-hacking is higher than game-designing", it just says "what does rom hacking mean to you". To me it doesn't look like anyone said that there's "something wrong with being a game designer as opposed to a 'true' hacker". Simply they're different.
In any context, a person has nothing wrong, until he doesn't consider himself what he's not.

Anyway for me rom hacking is the expression of a curiosity in how a game works. In fact when you were a kid you played your games without minimally taking care on how they were built. But for some people, when growing up, curiosity in those old games mechanics grows, and they feel the need to figure out games' hidden side.
If you notice, even though this is not an axiom, most of the hackers hack NES, SNES, GB games, or any "vintage" stuff they played, when they were kids.​

 

[Shiny Quagsire]

What is it to me? Basically, it's like my life. I have no life outside the internet, and get picked on a lot at school, so I can come home, fire up my laptop, and have fun doing something I like to think I'm at least decent at, while getting away from all the things in life that reallyannoy me or make me feel angry and upset. So yeah, Rom hacking means a lot to me actually.

This is part of it to me, but it's also satisfying my curiosity and changing a ROM until it's no longer recognizable as it's original form. ROM Hacking allows me to think and solve problems, and also create whatever the heck I want at the same time.

 

[DoomLucario]

What is it to me? Basically, it's like my life. I have no life outside the internet, and get picked on a lot at school, so I can come home, fire up my laptop, and have fun doing something I like to think I'm at least decent at, while getting away from all the things in life that reallyannoy me or make me feel angry and upset. So yeah, Rom hacking means a lot to me actually.

I'm honestly almost exactly the same as this. Rom Hacking is my life. And since I found this forum, so is PokeCommunity.