Prof. 9

Prof. 9

@prof9.com

Occasional ROM hacker and Mega Man Battle Network / Star Force modder | Part of @therockmanexezone.com

337 followers113 following105 posts

It's really disheartening seeing what's happening in the romhacking & modding scene now. Social misfits devoid of talent & curiosity entering the community and disparagingly insisting the craft you've enjoyed refining for years doesn't matter, because a $200/month AI subscription can do it faster.

For modders, the journey is just as, if not more important than the destination. Delving into our favorite games, understanding how they work & gaining new skills in the process. And yes, recognition is a part of it. Mastering a craft takes effort & no one likes seeing their effort go unrecognized.

I've seen the argument AI doesn't necessarily make things easier, but rather allows to shift your thinking to a higher abstraction level, like you're managing junior devs. Instead of writing low level code, you're writing architecture, etc. As someone who does that IRL I'm somewhat open to it, but…

The problem is most AI bros don't (can't?) do that either. They have Claude design the architecture. Technical write-ups. Public announcement. Release notes. Hell, even ingame dialogue. Look in the average "AI assisted" repo & it's full of giant, token-consuming Markdown files full of AI rambling.

They don't (can't) review the commits either. So even though the code may be open source, it's unusable by any normal human. That's why seeing Claude at the top of the contributors list is such a red flag. It often indicates the only intelligence that was involved in the project, was artificial.

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Remember when King Neptune AI slopped his hundreds of awful burgers in seconds and SpongeBob painstakingly made one delicious burger by hand

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This is, I think, one of the best Metroidvanias of the last 15 years and you can EASILY finish it within this timeframe. Hell, you don't even need to feel bad about not paying Ubisoft, because they disbanded the team, anyway!! Also it runs at a (99% consistent) 60 FPS on Switch. Do it do it do it.

Wario64@wario64.bsky.social

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown game trial available for NSO members (Sept 24-Sept 30) buff.ly/lJqrlvf

From a consumer perspective, Enigma is probably better. It's completely offline, no online license check, no activation limit. From a mod developer perspective I'd much rather have Denuvo. Enigma has much harsher anti-debug protection. Denuvo really doesn't get in the way of mod development at all.

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Kirigirisō (PC) The final Kodaka story game I'd yet to play. Kyoko from Danganronpa & Kohei from Otogirisō explore a mysterious mansion in the woods. A decent bite-sized little mystery novel, but things devolve quickly after the first true ending & it's honestly not really worth playing past that.

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Shuten Order (NS2) A love letter to the mystery VN genre with some of the most ambitious world-building in any Too Kyo game. You will probably hate at least one route, but the payoff is worth it every time. It is quite the time commitment though, and does feel like it drags on a little sometimes.

It may seem like a pretty simple mod but bolting everything onto the existing GUI and audio systems and having it all work seamlessly took quite some effort. Hopefully the next mod will be something a little simpler, lol.

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Hero of Law (Emu) True labor of love & must play for any Ocarina of Time & Phoenix Wright fan. The references in text, music, animation are on-freaking-point & had me laughing out loud constantly, and there's even an awesome new mechanic. Connecting Link's Awakening unlocks something truly special.

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Dark Auction (PS5) The characters & plot are good, but man is the setting poorly handled. It's jarring to see a story based around Hitler have so little to say about WW2's atrocities; at best, it feels cowardly. Use of gen AI taints the game's visual identity even if some of it was patched later.

I've been working on a mod for Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection that lets you swap music to your liking. You can set separate playlists per type of BGM, selectively choose Original or Arranged mix per individual track, change the Main Menu music and even play the DLC music in-game.

This has been in the works for quite a while now because I wanted to fully integrate everything into the game's menus. It's been pretty fun learning the ins and outs of RE Engine (and not very fun having to use C++). It'll probably be a few more weeks before it'll be released.

This is nice but if I can't put the disc in my PC and play, it's not backwards compatibility, it's a rerelease.

Xbox Wire@wire.xbox.com

Introducing XBOX Backward Compatibility on PC 🎮🖥️ Play four original XBOX titles across supported PCs and handhelds today, with more on the way. Learn more: news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/0...

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World's End Club (NS2) What appears at first to be a cutesy puzzle platformer turns out to be an amalgamation of Kodaka and Uchikoshi's greatest hits. Many ideas from their previous works make an appearance here, and it does feel a little derivative as a result, but it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Digimon could, in fact, not pull this off

Prof. 9@prof9.com

I feel like if Digimon can pull this off, they'll have a huge edge over Pokémon. Pokémon is still lacking a mobile game that really captures the series' essence. Pokémon GO is a decent time-waster, but you just don't get that bond with your Pokémon, the experience of raising and training them.

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Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (NS2) I don't mind a linear Metroid, but MP4 purports to be an open world, yet is in fact even more handholdy than MP3. Not once did I feel challenged on navigational awareness because each level is a straight line. The GFX do be looking great though. 120 FPS is awesome.

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ReCore: Definitive Edition (XSX) This game feels like a vertical slice that was stretched out to full length. Movement & combat are fun & feel good to play, but story is thoroughly lacking. Its best moments come after the credits, where it really does shine; sadly only for a brief, fleeting moment.

I feel like when your soundtrack ends up being MORE expensive than the actual game, you've really goofed up your pricing.

I never really checked, but Shooting Star - Misora Live Version and Shooting Star - Sonia Live Version do have some slight differences in the melody to accommodate the Japanese/English lyrics. Only in the Arranged versions, of course. Maybe these never were meant to get vocal versions after all?

All my existing mods for Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection work out of the box on this new update. I was hoping they'd fix MMSF3 field music not resuming, but I guess not.

Boy I love when Nintendo announces a Direct during working hours one freaking day in advance