How hard is it to replace a character sprite?

I've never hacked anything before. I've never taken a programing languange class and I don't know how to program genesis games. I'm asking how hard it would be to do this:



Inspired by the Dankey Kang nes carts, I thought of an idea: a genesis game called Dankey Kang Kountry. I'm thinking of something very simple. Sonic 3, but with Sonic's sprite replaced with a blue Donkey Kong sprite. Controls would remain the same, only other things to be changed would be the title screen and some lines of text.



How hard would it be to learn how to do something like this?

Comments

  • Depends on how much work you're willing to put into it. There are game editors out there for specific games, but you'll have to do some searches. Sprite replacing can be tricky, especially Sonic games since some parts of the sprite frames are used in other sprite frames.



    Everything's hard at first since you've never had any experience on the subject, but just keep researching and playing around with different programs and stuff.



    You could start off with YY-CHR and go from there, but I'm not sure how well it works for Sega games. Again, you might have to look for a game-specific utility for something like this.
  • Step 1. Get TileMolester

    Step 2. Load the NES game in TileMolester

    Step 3. Find the graphics

    Step 4. Hack 'em

    Step 5. ???????????

    Step 6. PROFIT!



    In all seriousness though, I wrote an E-zine article about how to do it.



    EDIT: Oops, I didn't see that you wanted to hack Sonic 3. My strategy probably won't work on a Sega Genesis. But you should first get some experience in NES hacking. However, if you really want to hack a Sonic game, I'm sure there are some game-specific editors for the first one at least.
  • i would be interested in a cart if you make it, man.
  • I've used Tile Layer Pro for NES games. Pretty easy to use, but can take a while and a lot of trial and error - especially when it comes to multiple frames of animation. It may work for Sega, too?
  • I would ask SonicRetro.org, but they have some stupid "noob cage" where you have to impress the mods first before you can post elsewhere.
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