TMNT 1 Hack for Nes

[GK Punk]

The Technodrome level is the only leve i've ever really had problems with in that game. I've only beat Shredder a handfull of times.

[Dan]

Are you gonna change Shredder to match his old toon counterpart?

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

Oh yeah! You really improved on the intro images.
Did you redraw those images yourself?

It's too bad you've been burned out, because those ending images seriously need an overhaul. Splinter and April have seen better days for sure!

Thank you and yeah, the ones from the intro I modified by hand from the original version.

To Dan: as oldmanwinters said, I'm a little burned out at the moment so I'm not thinking of making more changes. Anyway, I didn't change the Shredder already as it would require some HEAVY reprogramming, as you'd have to add some entirely new tiles to the game (for the cape.) That would be a task for someone with the most advenced hacker level. I think It's level 67. Actually I made that up but yeah, adding a cape would a major task. It would be easier to modify the levels layout and that says a lot.

And because no one demanded it, new comparison pics:

[Wes]

Originally Posted by The Ninjinister

Could be worse....

My video! I was just playing that game the other day, actually... I play it often.

I'd love to see Nelson mod the PC version so that it's actually possible to beat the game.

[Dan]

Perhaps someone could just make Shredder's outfit grey. (Heck that could be done for the other NES games as well.) Other ideas would be to make the Foot soldiers look like the cartoon version. And to make the inside of the Technodrome look like the cartoon. (Perhaps just make it grey?)

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by Wes

I'd love to see Nelson mod the PC version so that it's actually possible to beat the game.

You know, I have never played that version. I should check it out.

Originally Posted by Dan

Perhaps someone could just make Shredder's outfit grey. (Heck that could be done for the other NES games as well.) Other ideas would be to make the Foot soldiers look like the cartoon version. And to make the inside of the Technodrome look like the cartoon. (Perhaps just make it grey?)

Changing the colors of teh Technodrome is easy, the hard part would be to reach that level to the apply the changes. I have gotten to the Technodrome only once in my life. :S

As for not making the Shredder's outfit gray it was a personal choice. I personally think that if Shredder loses his cape he would look a little dull with only gray colors.

[Dan]

I don't understand I thought you just had to hack the game files. You mean you actually have to make it to that point in the game before you can change it?

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Nelson

You know, I have never played that version. I should check it out.

Scary-Crayon did a memorable review of that game a while back, infamously claiming that it is impossible to get past a certain jump in one of the level 3 building/sewer levels. It looks so bad it makes the also infamous NES level 2 hop look like a cake walk!
http://www.scary-crayon.com/games/tmnt12pc/
Also features download link!

Originally Posted by Nelson

Changing the colors of teh Technodrome is easy, the hard part would be to reach that level to the apply the changes. I have gotten to the Technodrome only once in my life. :S

Regarding hacking... do you actually have to reach the levels in order to hack them? I just imagined you could have full access to every portion of the game off the bat. Could you inform me of some hacking 101?

[GodzFire]

I could never make some of those jumps in the sewer for TMNT 1 when I was little either. I would literally sit there and try and try and eventually just start to cry because no matter how hard I tried I'd always miss and get swept away.

To this day I never did make it past that spot. Maybe that, along with that damn underwater level, is why I never liked TMNT1. At all....

[Tuxedo Moroboshi]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

Regarding hacking... do you actually have to reach the levels in order to hack them? I just imagined you could have full access to every portion of the game off the bat. Could you inform me of some hacking 101?

You don't have to reach the level to hack anything from it, but you DO have to reach it to see your results. Otherwise, it's like painting on a canvas while wearing a blindfold.

[Nelson]

Well the way I do it, I have to reach the level first to know the address of that level in the rom, so I can change its color. Later when I do my hacking 101 I'll explain in detail.

[Roland]

I still have TMNT 1 on my nes. But i once looked for cheats for the game, i've found cheats but they don't work. Can you hack cheats as well? The damn level last jump i've used this mentallity to never fail the jump. Walk and when your toes are past the platform ,low jump. It never fails. Never lose don!

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by Roland

I still have TMNT 1 on my nes. But i once looked for cheats for the game, i've found cheats but they don't work. Can you hack cheats as well?

You mean to create new cheats or to include the cheats (like invincibility) into the game so you don't have to imput the codes everytime you play? I have accomplished neither, but both are possible.

OK people, in response to oldmanwinters’ request, I present you…

HACKING NES GRAPHICS 101

First we are going to need some tools:
- A NES emulator that lets you see the palette used in the game. I use and recommend Nesten.
- A tile editor. Grab Tile Layer Pro.
- A Hex editor. Grab Translhextion.

You can get them from either Zophar’s Domain (zophar.net) or romhacking.net. You are also going to need a nes ROM. Any title will work, but if you want to follow the examples I’m going to give you, you should use the first TMNT game for the NES.

OK, let’s begin!

Say you want to give the turtles a hat. For that kind of graphics modifications we will use Tile Layer Pro, wich is a program that lets you see and modify the “tiles” of the game. A tile is a square of 8 by 8 pixels that combined form the various letters, sprites and backgrounds that a game uses.

Let’s open Tile Layer, and then lets open the rom file. You sould see something like this:



As you can see, there’s four windows. The one on the left shows the tiles of the game. If you scroll down, you’ll see everything, even the profile pictures and the ending of the game. It’s not in order, and because of that it’s not always easy to find the part of the game that we want to change.

Let’s click on the sixth tile (from left to right) in the top row. That’s the top of the turtle’s head. In this game, the four turtles share the same sprites. Once you click on it, you will see a magnified version of the tile in the Tile Editor window, and here you can paint over it. The colors you have at your disposal are the ones that can be see in the Palette Editor window. This window shows four different colors, You can manually change the palette to make the selected tile look closer to what it looks like during the game. This will not affect the palette of the game, it’s only for making our hacking job easier. Also note that each tile has a maximum of four colors, and one of them is the transparent color (by default it is black). I modified the palette for this example, you can see the color difference in the tiles between the first screenshot and the second.

So as we said let’s give the turtles a hat. Use the Tile Editor window to do this. After you’re done, save your progress and use the emulator to see if it worked.





Phase two: Changing colors

Let’s say we want to change the color of the water of the map of the first level of the game. Let’s open the rom with Nesten and arrive to that point in the game. Then go to Vid / Palette Console in the top menu. You’ll se this:



The Palette Editor window shows the complete color palette that the NES has, and below it, it shows the current palette, wich is the palette that is loaded for the level we are playing. The top row shows the colors of the background elements and the bottom row shows the colors of the sprites. There is a maximum of five color combinations for backgrounds and five combinations for sprites at the same time. Each combination consists of four colors.

Looking at the still from the game we can see that the first four colors of the top row, that are black, dark grey, light grey and white correspond to the tiles that conform the streets and the building ceilings. After that, we see a combination of black, dark blue, light blue and an even lighter blue. This is used for the water and the walls of some buildings. The next combination of reds are for other building’s walls. The final four colors are unused. Each combination starts with black, only it’s not really black but a transparent color. It ends up looking like black in the game but it’s because the default color of the background in the NES is black. As we can see, each color shows some numbers. For example the first color, black, says 15 and 0F. Don’t bother with the first number that is shown, what is important to us is the one below that (0F in case of black), as it gives us the value of that color in hexadecimal.

So let’s change the second color combination so we can have red water in this level. Let’s write down the hexadecimal code that the colors show, wich are in this case 01, 11 and 21. Do not include the black color in this. Now let’s open Translhextion, and inside it let’s open the TMNT rom.

What we see is something only Neo could understand. This is why we cannot just go and change the colors of the Technodrome. But what we are going to do right now is pretty easy. Let’s do a search and look for 011121, the code for the water colors. Remember to check the circle that says “hexadecimal” instead of “text”, just as the pic shows:



Translhextion will find various instances in the game in wich it utilizes the 011121 code. So which one should we change? Well, let’s go back to Nesten and its Palette Viewer. Lets take note of the colors that come after 01 11 21 (not including the transparent black color). In this case the colors that are to the right are 06 26 37. So let’s find in Translhextion the instance of 01 11 21 that is followed by 06 26 37. That is the one we want to change, so if we want red water, let’s replace 01 with 06, 11 with 16 and 21 with 26.



Save the changes and load the rom again in Nesten. We should see something like this:



Voila!

[oldmanwinters]

This is all pretty cool, Nelson. Thanks for providing the 101 guide. I downloaded the programs and have been able to follow along. I'm looking forward to your next installment of Hacking 102.

P.S. Are you missing some screenshots in your recent post?

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

This is all pretty cool, Nelson. Thanks for providing the 101 guide. I downloaded the programs and have been able to follow along. I'm looking forward to your next installment of Hacking 102.

P.S. Are you missing some screenshots in your recent post?

For some reason not all the pics are showing. But they are there! You could maybe open them in a new window, or copy/paste the url... bah.

[Lord Nightwalker]

Damn. That's interesting, and I like some of the tweaks, but I always thought this game was in some hybrid universe all its own. Why it had elemnts of the cartoon and the comics..
This was my favorite out of the old nes games. Always wished Konami/Ultra would have revisited this one like they did MetalGear...
You've done some realy cool work though..

[Raphael_]

Originally Posted by Clown Prince of Crime

Sometimes I think I may be the only person alive that actually likes the first NES TMNT game.

I'll agree that the DOS port is a total piece of crap, though.

Hey, at least the DOS port of the first game is playable, I spent awhile playing it, unlike the Arcade Game *shudder*...now THAT was really terrible!

[Ninjinister]

Originally Posted by Raphael_

Hey, at least the DOS port of the first game is playable, I spent awhile playing it, unlike the Arcade Game *shudder*...now THAT was really terrible!

Whew. For a second there, I thought you were referring to the arcade game itself, not the DOS port of the arcade game. Must be not enough coffee in my system yet to comprehend.

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by Lord Nightwalker

Damn. That's interesting, and I like some of the tweaks, but I always thought this game was in some hybrid universe all its own. Why it had elemnts of the cartoon and the comics..
This was my favorite out of the old nes games. Always wished Konami/Ultra would have revisited this one like they did MetalGear...
You've done some realy cool work though..

Thank you.

[Ninja Tiptup]

Nice tweaks, especially on the pause screen.