After the death of Tales of the Evil Dead life got kind of hectic for a few years. I spent some time going to school while also working on some writing, art and video projects on the side. Once things settled, and I had a steady job, the bug of wanting to make games started to hit me again.

So I started off easy with rom hacking. Rockman Kenk is mod of a mod of the original Rockman (Mega Man) game. People are fine with hacking the original games so why not hack a hack? The original mod was called Rockman Kai created by ________. What started this was when I was playing through various rom hacks and getting annoyed by the absurd difficulty present in almost all of them. When I eventually played Rockman Kai I was ecstatic to find a mod that almost attempts to keep the balance of design closer to the original games… almost.

There were still a lot of flaws present: Floors with hidden gaps in them that led to the player’s death; some questionable enemy placements, and other glitches. So I decided to give this what I called the “Enk run through”. I ended up reworking a good portion of the game by the end, trying to take careful consideration of enemy and platform placements, and also adjusting bosses to change them up a bit from the original layouts. I gave a few of the stages a bit of a visual makeover as well adding new sections and reworking some of the color palettes. Unfortunately there were some things hard coded into the original hack that I was unable to change on my end. Things like music for certain levels that repeat several times and Elec Man’s unorthodox stage design. Still, I was pleased with the outcome.

I was able to finish the hack in time of Mega Man 9’s release and considered it as a tribute game that attempt to create a balanced hack in line with the originals’. Some players took to it kindly and one Mega Man Youtuber did not. It seemed he was more upset that I attempted to hack and hack than create something original which was a bit of a silly criticism. Going back to it recently I am still somewhat pleased with the outcome, but there were a few things that maybe I should’ve changed, mainly a particular puzzle segment on the last Wily stage. I worked on this mainly to start getting my feet wet again, and with the following projects I was ready to get full on soaked.