Hacking Classic Video Games: The Experts Speak Out

Summary

In this roundtable episode of Game Lif, two video game designers, Mike Mica and Greg Kasavin, discuss hacking classic video games. They talk about their personal experiences with video game hacking and share their ideas about the classic game they would most like to hack and what they would do to it. They also talk about the evolution of video games and how hacking has changed the industry.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Two expert game designers get together to talk about video game hacking.
• Hacking Classic Video Games: The designers discuss their personal experiences with hacking classic video games.
• Ideal Hacks: The designers share their ideas for the classic video games they’d most like to hack.
• Hacking and Video Game Evolution: The designers discuss how hacking has changed the video game industry.
• Conclusion: The experts invite readers to share their ideas for hacked games.

Introduction:

In this episode of Game Lif, we have Mike Mica and Greg Kasavin. They are both video game designers with years of experience. The two designers discuss video game hacking and their personal experiences with it.

Hacking Classic Video Games:

Mica starts the conversation by sharing his recent experience of hacking Donkey Kong so that his daughter could play as a female character. He adds that his first experience with programming was from hacking other games. Kasavin talks about hacking Team Fortress, where he made a team of Gordon Freemans take on some scouts and heavies. They discuss the scope for fun in hacking classic video games and share some of their experiences with game hacks.

Ideal Hacks:

The game designers then take the conversation to the classic games they’d most like to hack, and what changes they would make. Mica shares his dream hack, which involves hacking the Bioshock Infinite ending, while Kasavin talks about adding characters to Team Fortress to create a Super Smash Bros.-style game. Chris then shares his ideal hack: adding a save battery to every copy of Super Mario Bros. for an open-world experience.

Hacking and Video Game Evolution:

The designers discuss how hacking has impacted the video game industry, like the popularity of the hacked Street Fighter machines that prompted Capcom to release Street Fighter II Turbo. They also talk about how hacking has been used to create new games, like Ms. Pac-Man.

Conclusion:

The designers invite readers to share their ideas for hacked classic video games. They ask what classic game we would most like to hack and what we would do to it. From saving data to adding new characters, what do you think would improve classic video games?