The Star Fox ROM hacker SunlitSpace has recently revealed a huge, new update to one of their earliest hacks, incorporating new graphics, redesigning several levels, and ironing out a bunch of lingering issues.
Sunlit’s Untitled Star Fox Minihack was originally built over the course of two days back in 2022, using the UltraStarFox source code as a base, and was released across various ROM Hacking sites that very same year. It gave players the ability to play through a special, newly designed route that featured 6 levels (5 of which were remixes based on existing locations from the original game, while the last was described as an entirely new planet).
According to RealSunlitSpace, the reason why they have decided to revisit the hack now is in order "to make it feel a bit less lazy", as back when they first developed it, they were "limited" by what they knew at the time. In addition to this, there have also been a bunch of improvements to UltraStarFox's codebase since then, as well as new tools written for the game which makes modifying it much "less of a pain".
As a result, they have ported the hack to the latest version of the base UltraStarFox code, and took the opportunity to introduce several things "to freshen things up a bit", including a new title screen, dialogue changes, character graphics, level designs, and more.
Here is the complete list of changes:
- New title screen
- Map GFX have been touched up a bit
- Dialogue changes
- Characters' GFX have been changed to reflect their Star Fox 2 designs
- Applied Kando's RNG fix and made random teammate selection completely random
- Intro and Scramble sequences are now skipped
- Minor level design changes to fix some jankiness
- New level backgrounds for 1-1 and 1-4
- Stage 1-4 overhaul (no longer a Corneria duplicate)
- Barrel roll input window increased to 6 frames
- New credits sequence
- Pressing start on the 'THE END' screen reboots the game
If you want to download the hack, it is available now from the Romhack Plaza.