The Process of Arcade ROM Hacking - Part 1

Описание: The first video in our series on arcade ROM hacking covers the tools and techniques involved with finding out where to modify to a game platform that has not been hacked before. The next video will discuss how to make the desired edits once you've found the correct ROM to edit, as discussed here. Subsequent videos will cover additional topics.

Timeline:
Beginning: What is this, and why?
1:55 - Introduction of the talk
3:48 - Tools to use while reverse-engineering arcade games
5:44 - Trouble-free use of MAME
8:12 - Finding which ROM files are graphics ROMs through modification
10:51 - Finding the purpose of any of the ROM files through MAME source code on GitHub
12:12 - Recap and teaser for next videos in the series

Why hack an arcade ROM? By modifying the code in console and arcade games, whether at a system level such as Sega Genesis, NES, Bally Midway MCR-3, Williams 6809 Rev 1, various NAMCO systems, or for specific games such as Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros, or Streets of Rage, you can:
Edit graphics appearing in the game
Add language translations to games never imported to your country
Fix bugs, such as glitches in an introductory sequence
Modify game rules and scoring
There is a lot of flexibility for modifying pixel art in many console systems using pre-existing tools. We will cover these graphics tools later, plus a toolchain for pixelating and importing modern graphics into 8-bit systems. The initial videos in our series cover the tools and mindset required to reverse engineer a game from scratch, as if there were no convenient tools for manipulating the graphics. It's stuff that would be fairly obvious, but probably still tedious to work through, for someone working in the fields of computer engineering or computer science. Many arcade systems don't have convenient tools for modifying them, and frankly the same is true for many Genesis games since some graphics on Genesis are procedurally generated. We know how to hack those too, so as we cover topics starting from very technical and specific and ending up with very user-friendly and generic, be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell for when we post additional videos in this series!