Editorials
Hacking Horror: Horror-Themed ROM Hacks for Classic Video Games
All the talk of BillyTime!Games‘ ROM hack of Ghostbusters on the Sega Genesis got us thinking of other horror-themed ROM hacks that you may not be aware of. Obviously, the topics of ROM hacking and video game emulation are reserved for a different website, but that shouldn’t stop us from touching on them for this specific purpose. After all, the creativity of fans is shown time and time again when it comes to modding on PC, so why not consoles?
Here are some reworkings of games by fans that either offer a whole new way of playing a game with a horror makeover, or just enhance the original game to add that something that was “missing” from the original release.
Just as a legal note, none of the links in this article lead to the actual ROM images. We are not hosting the ROM files. Google is your friend if you’re looking for more information on emulation, using these hacks, and so on.
EarthBound Halloween Hack – EarthBound (SNES)
Created by Toby Fox (of Undertale fame) back in 2008, this hack creates an entirely new story for the classic SNES RPG, EarthBound. Taking place in an alternate timeline several months after the end of EarthBound where Ness doesn’t return to Onett, you play as a bounty hunter named Varik (of Brandish fame). Varik is hired by ex-mayor B. H. Pirkle, now campaigning on a law & order platform, to track down a mysterious creature who mutilated and ate a little girl’s parents in Twoson. Along the way, Varik encounters increasingly horrible things.
Probably one of the more infamous ROM hacks, the EarthBound Halloween Hack plays much the same as in the original EarthBound, but with a decidedly darker tone in terms of the visuals, humour and story. For this hack, Fox created new enemies (including tentacle-faced dogs, reanimated Starmen corpses and zombies), new areas to explore, and new music. The song “MEGALOVANIA” eventually made its way into Undertale. The hack is also much more difficult than the original game, requiring you to grind quite a bit.
Castlevania: The Holy Relics – Castlevania (NES)
Taking place after the events of Castlevania, Lord Ghulash, a Necromancer and old acquaintance of Dracula, has retrieved six of seven relics of power from the ruins of Dracula’s castle. Using the power of the relics, Lord Ghulash has begun terrorizing the countryside, resurrecting the souls of vile creatures and wicked men. Simon Belmont, himself in possession of a seventh relic, must once again deliver his homeland from the forces of evil.
The Holy Relics hack revamps the original game, adding five new stages that you can visit in any order (a la Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge for the Game Boy), with new enemies, bosses, and reworked music. Alongside that are new subweapons and items, but the biggest gameplay change is the addition of the holy relics, with each one obtained by beating a boss. The relics each have their own unique abilities, including health restoration, temporary invincibility, and more. They also have their own set of charges, so you’ll have to be smart about using them.
Doom: PC Doom Total Conversion – Doom (Game Boy Advance)
As impressive as Doom on the GBA was (questionable music quality and cutbacks on some levels, notwithstanding), you knew that someone would try to tweak the game to bring it that much closer to the original PC experience. And lo and behold, that’s exactly what Kippykip‘s PC Doom Total Conversion hack does.
This patch completely converts the game from using the Jaguar Doom engine, and switches it over to a new homebrew port that’s based on doomhack’s PrBoom port for the Game Boy Advance. This literally gives the game much higher quality sounds, the full set of maps (no cut or scaled back levels here), a more consistent framerate, improved graphics and, thankfully, better music. Plus, all of the music now plays in the correct order. The only thing missing from this hack is the multiplayer, which was present in the original version.
Metroid: Spooky Mission – Metroid: Zero Mission (Game Boy Advance)
Created for the Metconst 2017 Fall Contest (which it won), Spooky Mission sees Samus up against Imago. Imago is threatening the very existence of Halloween, and it’s up to Samus to stop it. Getting to Imago is no simple task, however. It has infiltrated a massive space pumpkin and sealed off all entrances. Legend says that every Halloween, three holy beings appear in the physical realm. Samus will need their help in order to gain access to the pumpkin and save Halloween.
Admittedly a little on the lighter side rather than cranking up the pure horror aspect, it’s easy to see that Spooky Mission was a labour of love (if the readme for the hack is anything to go by). Featuring revamped graphics (including some ripped from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow), new gameplay mechanics such as implementing a tractor beam like in Prime series and new music, there’s also a surprising amount of non-linearity with this one. The creators even managed to include a hidden ending, though achieving it is “near impossible” unless you know the criteria. And no, they’re not telling you what it is.
Pokémon Snakewood – Pokémon: Ruby Version (Game Boy Advance)
Set a few years after the events of Ruby, you are the younger sibling of Ruby‘s protagonist. You awaken in a destroyed Littleroot Town with no memory of what has happened. It soon becomes apparent that the Hoenn region has become infested by zombies. Working with Professor Birch, you set off to find your brother Landon and Birch’s daughter, May, both of whom had set out to find the source of the plague, and have since gone missing.
Ruby has been overhauled to include a darker plot (obviously), new music, new areas, zombified versions of normal Pokémon (two of which are capturable), and “an indeterminate number” of fake Pokémon (known as Fakemon), and more. Snakewood also features a new classification of Pokémon known as the Denjuu with their own stats and moves, but they can talk. It’s certainly a darker take on Pokémon Ruby, but it still retains a “kid-friendly” tone, overall.
Eternal Champions – Special Edition – Eternal Champions (Sega Genesis)
In case you ‘re wondering, BillyTime!Games has been at this hacking thing for a while. With Eternal Champions, this hack overhauls the entire game, most notably its notorious difficulty to be a little bit more forgiving. For starters, the game’s Inner Strength System (which is the meter used to perform special moves) has been rebalanced so that most moves now require the metre, with some moves costing more than before (including taunts). The game’s timer has also been adjusted to count down slightly slower.
In addition, the game’s end boss, the Eternal Champion, is now playable in VS mode, whereas before you had to rely on a Game Genie code to unlock him. The only limitations are that as the Eternal Champion, you cannot resurrect in this mode, and you’re limited to 1 out of 1 win conditions. The hack also reintroduces a Hard Mode Contest Difficulty. Doing so will crank up the difficulty for your current playthrough all the way to Difficulty 7.
Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition – Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis)
As superior as the Sega Genesis port of Mortal Kombat was when compared to the Super Nintendo version, there was still room for improvement. Namely, the graphics and sound of the Genesis version fell short when compared to the SNES. That’s been remedied with Linkuei‘s hack, which not only adds sound samples directly from the arcade version, but also revamps the graphics. Those revamped graphics also includes new background animations for stages like the Courtyard, Shang Tsung’s Throne Room, as well as remade bio and ending screens.
Linkuei’s hack doesn’t stop there at the graphics and sound. The hack also add a new SRAM system to save the name list for the longest winning streaks (thanks to BillyTime!Games), as well as giving players the option to listen to the original Genesis soundtrack (which is still awesome), or the original arcade soundtrack. You also now have the option to play as Reptile in the game, complete with either Scorpion or Sub-Zero’s movesets. Finally, some of the timing for the moves has also been reworked, as well as removing delays. And yes, there’s still more to discover! There’s even an enhanced version that tweaks the graphics, sound and animation even more.
Sonic.Exe – Sonic The Hedgehog (Sega Genesis)
No set of Sega Genesis hacks would be complete without Sonic.Exe, also referred to as “Ordinary Sonic ROM Hack”. Created by Cinossu, this hack plays out like a normal game of Sonic The Hedgehog until you’re transported to an alternate dimension, complete with a different colour palette and “odd” music. In this dimension, some enemies can’t be hurt, and you can only escape back to the “normal” dimension by hitting an item box.
That might seem easy, but keep in mind that item boxes aren’t exactly in plentiful supply as you progress further. Not only that, in this alternate dimension, you’ll be chased by “creepypasta” Sonic, complete with the music that plays whenever you’re running out of air as he gets closer. To add even more “fun”, these dimension flips can also occur during boss fights. Luckily, an item box will spawn in these instances, but you’ll have to get to it while avoiding the boss.
Contra: Hard Corps Probotector – Contra: Hard Corps (Sega Genesis)
Longtime fans of the series know about the whole Contra/Probotector thing. For those who don’t know, Probotector is the European version of Contra that removes all of the human enemies and replaces them with robots. But what if you could have the characters from Probotector in Contra: Hard Corps, along with some new tweaks? That’s exactly what you get with this hack by IT.GAMER.
Along with an original story, this ROM hack now allows you to select from eight characters, with the Probotector characters having 3 HP, and the Hard Corps characters having 1 HP. You can also select the same character if you’re playing with two players. The hack also tweaks enemy health, as well as tweaks certain weapons for Brawny and Fang to be a little more balanced. Best of all, if you have the means, this hack will work on the Genesis/Mega Drive.
Zombies Ate My Roguelike – Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Sega Genesis)
Ever wondered what Zombies Ate My Neighbors would be like as a roguelike? BillyTime!Games did, and as a result, their hack changes the LucasArts classic into something inspired by The Binding of Isaac. The hack now randomizes the game’s 48 levels across five tiers before ending at the level “Monsters Among Us”. Starting you at a random level in Tier 1, the hack then chooses a random level from the next Tier each time you complete a level. To add to the challenge, you have to do it all on a single life.
There’s even more to the hack than just changing the structure of the levels. Boss health has been adjusted, as has the Purple Ants’ health in “Say it Ant So!” to make them slightly easier to kill. Your Squirtgun also has increased damage, and key pickups have been doubled. And in the latest patch, BillyTime!Games introduced a Mania Mode. This mode now randomizes the levels after completing the first Tier, as well as making the entire game an endless loop which ends only if you die.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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