EarthBound Reshuffler creates randomized hacks of the EarthBound ROM. You can then play these hacks in an emulator of your choice to experience EarthBound in new ways. If you're like me and you've played EarthBound to death, you might get a kick out of the random hacks this program produces!
Enemies can be given random names, graphics, actions, backgrounds, music, and more! Enemy stats are also randomized but based on the original game's values to keep the game relatively playable.
Random Items:
Item names can be randomized too! Their effects and stats remain unchanged to prevent items from becoming useless or overpowered.
Random NPC Sprites:
Townspeople and other characters can be given random sprites! To keep the game playable, their text and event flows remain unchanged.
Random Gift Boxes:
The contents of gift boxes and other treasure chests can be randomized! Important boxes are left untouched so you can progress through the game properly.
Random Hack Names:
Each randomly-generated hack you make is given a randomly-generated title!
Random Doors
Doors can be randomly reconnected to other doors, making the game completely crazy!
Random Music
You can also randomly change the music that plays in each area!
See It In Action!
I often stream randomzed EarthBound hacks with others - one time EarthBound's official localization director even stopped by to watch the chaos!
You can check out some sample fun here:
What's New:
Version 1.0
Initial release
Version 1.01
Made it so that the Clumsy Robot battle will end properly
Version 1.5
Overall, this version of the program makes random hacks that are easier
and less crazy than before. Although the original craziness is still
available through various options if you're a fan of that stuff, like me.
Added an option for randomized doors - use only if you're crazy!
Added an option for randomized gift boxes - important gift boxes don't get changed though, so don't worry!
Made randomized NPCs safer - giant sprites will no longer block your way. But if you want wacky-sized sprites, there's now an option for it.
Made an option to make randomized enemies make more sense outside of battle (by matching the outside sprites and movements with the in-battle sprites)
Made randomized enemies easier in general (compared to previous versions of this program), with an option to make them more challenging
Random enemy backgrounds now work properly and allow for thousands of new combinations never seen before!
Added an item to Ness' starting inventory that explains the current hack. I had intended this to also give info about new 1/128 items and other randomly-generated challenges, but never got around to it.
The final battle will progress properly
Various other in-game issues have been smoothed out to try to make each hack theoretically playable from beginning to end.
Added more terms to the program's dictionary to make even more interesting enemy and item names!
More stuff that I've probably forgotten
How to Use the Program
You'll need a version of Windows with the .NET runtime libraries
installed to run this program. Most versions of Windows in the past
few years come with this already, so for most folks this should work
fine. If not, check Microsoft's site for the .NET runtime libraries.
Once you've started the program, here are the steps to follow:
Load an EarthBound ROM. The ROM needs to be uncompressed
(meaning it can't be in a .zip file or anything like that) and it
needs to be "headered". Most EarthBound ROMs out there are headered,
but some aren't. If it turns out you have an unheadered ROM, try
getting the ROM from somewhere else, or look up SNES ROM header
programs like NSRT and manually add a header to the ROM.
Once you have a proper ROM loaded, select the things you want
randomized in your hack by checking the checkboxes.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Randomizing the NPCs with the "wacky sprites" option
makes the game a lot goofier, but it can also make the game
impossible to complete - sometimes a new NPC sprite might be so
big that it blocks a path. If you run into a situation like this,
see the tips sections below.
Once you've selected your options, hit the "Create Random Hack"
button. A new ROM with a randomized name will be created in the same
folder as the program.
You can now run the new ROM in a Super NES emulator of your choice!
The game will have a lot of new random elements to it, making it
a crazy and new experience!
Tips & Bugs
Obviously, randomizing stuff like this will have its quirks, so here are some useful pointers to know:
If you hit a part of the game that's just impossible to get past, you can always switch back to a clean version of the ROM, get past the trouble spot, and then switch back to your hacked version. Check your emulator's instructions on how to do this, but to switch saves between games usually just requires renaming the save file (which usually ends in .srm)
Enemy stats ARE randomized, but only in relation to their original stats. This means that you won't run into enemies right off the bat with eight million HP.
I recommend using challenging enemies if you want the best experience.
This is because enemy actions are randomized, and now you'll have to
learn entirely new enemy patterns. In my personal experience, it's a lot
like playing EarthBound for the first time - the same trouble spots a
lot of first-timers have will now be trouble spots to you. Basically,
USE YOUR CREATIVITY AND LUCK TO OVERCOME TROUBLESOME ENEMIES!
You'll notice that status effects have a bigger role in these hacks than in EarthBound. Keep in mind that enemies are now much more affected by status effects too, SO DEFINITELY EXPERIMENT WITH STATUS EFFECT PSI AND ITEMS!
Similarly, enemies will often have other weaknesses to Fire, Freeze, and the like. So experiment!
Don't randomize doors unless you just want to try it out for fun. For obvious reasons it makes the game insane, but it's good for laughs and such.
Future Versions & Bug Reports
I wrote this program mainly to teach myself the C# language, so I don't have plans to make too many new versions. At some point I'll probably release the source code, but for now, if you have any suggestions or bug reports, let me know at tomato@starmen.net or on EarthBound Central!
Sample Patches
For fun, here are some random patches in IPS format that you can try out if you don't feel like running this program yourself. I haven't tried these hacks out myself, so I have no idea what to expect from them!
Note: These patches from from version 1.0 of this program, and so are extra-crazy and possibly impossible to complete. But they're
good fun!
