Closing Shop?
Hello everybody and happy December. We’re here with one final blog update, for now anyway.
ROMHack Heaven is closing its doors. This was alluded to in our previous blog, but going forward this site will only be used as a curated repository. Important hacks such as translations and major QoL patches (think of experiences that could displace the vanilla game for most players) will be mirrored here with local backup downloads. These will stay for at least the next two years. The main download buttons will direct to RomHack Plaza or GitHub project pages instead from now on.
I, Ryu, will continue to upload my upcoming translations and other hacks here as 1-week timed exclusives before releasing fully polished versions on the Plaza. We at RHH have been gradually reuploading our exclusive hacks there with the permission of all authors involved. Indeed, today I am thrilled to announce Naldrag and I are merging with RomHack Plaza and will be working as staff members there for the foreseeable future.
I would really like to thank everybody who believed in my vision and helped me with this site in any capacity. Going forward, that vision will live on. RHP will continue to host hacks with large file size limits to prevent link rot. Submission guidelines will continue to be lenient. Some people may still harbor doubts, but I would like to make a brief statement about the state of the scene now compared to this summer.
This summer was chaotic. I was under the impression RHDN would be completely offline by around the 20th of August. I scrambled to get this site up and running ASAP. There was controversy around the previous owner of RHP having piracy ties. However, the site has since rebranded and been under the ownership of Benjamin who is an amazing admin. He even helped me tremendously with this site out of his desire to support the scene, so believe me when I say RHP is in good hands. I’ve already provided a helping hand to RHP in many ways, which I will elaborate on below.
Regarding RHH, I bit off much more than I could chew. I focused on just getting as many translation/QoL patches online here as possible with the promise my workload would gradually be taken care of by a couple co-owners. Unfortunately, sometimes people disappear or become unexpectedly busy. I don’t hold that against them, and I never will. However, I am only one person.
Needing to take full responsibility for RHH’s queue, page transfers, communication, blog writing, game pages, search engine, guides, VPS hosting, forms, and of course all the HTML/PHP/CSS/SQL/JS functionality not provided by WordPress… needless to say? It wasn’t sustainable. Especially since I was working on translations and hacks of my own.
Truth be told, your first attempt at something big rarely works out the way you hoped for. ROMHack Heaven didn’t exactly pan out how I envisioned it would, but it was a great learning experiencing in figuring out which elements to prioritize for a community-driven site. Additionally, it will be kept around for light usage.
A big concern I had when this site opened was that I feared another RHDN situation. In the past year, it had gone offline for an entire month at one point. I did not want centralization to cause a scenario like this again. I still encourage everybody to host their hacks on GitHub as well as the Plaza. I will still keep hacks mirrored on this site for some time at least.
That being said? I am less worried about centralization now. The administration at RHP, including the owner, is plenty active. Want a new feature added to the site? Ask and it may just be taken care of swiftly. The queue is handled in a very timely manner. Hacks are rarely rejected for arbitrary reasons such as including too many features. It’s honestly everything I always wanted out of RHDN.
Instead, I now worry about causing fragmentation in the community if I leave ROMHack Heaven up as is. If I (directly or indirectly) encourage hack exclusivity, well that’s how lost media happens, and I want nothing to do with that.
Going forward, if you want to upload a major hack such as a translation here, feel free. However, I strongly encourage you to link a GitHub and/or RomHack Plaza page as your main project page. I’ll continue helping with RHP’s queue, polishing elements of the site’s UI, creating hacks there, providing content for the social media pages, and even assisting other hackers.
I recently made some documents for absolute beginners which I highly encourage checking out if you’ve had interest in joining the scene but found it too technically demanding.
Before I leave, I would like to give a few shoutouts to those who helped me with the site. Most notably, BenjaminCM for always offering advice, Naldrag for providing feedback at the drop of a hat, and Marcomix for assisting with the art assets and UI whenever he had free time.
And below are just some of the hacks I have planned for the next year. Stay tuned!
- Altered Beast CD English Translation
- Angelus: Akuma no Fukuin English Translation
- Castlevania: Dracula X Full Restoration
- Earthworm Jim 2 Complete Edition SNES
- Ecco Master System English Translation
- Festive Bobble SNES
- Ganbare Goemon Gaiden 2: Tenka no Zaihou 21st Century Edition
- Green Biker Dude Fangame using the X1 engine (collab with Skyro14x)
- Gunstar Heroes Ultimate Edition with 3DS features (collab with BillyTime! Games)
- Keio Flying Squadron 2 Restoration
- Mega Man X Project Zero 2
- Mega Man X3 Saturn Restoration
- Nekketsu Fighting Legend English Translation
- Parodius SGB Edition
- Saint Seiya English Translation
- Silent Hill 1 Definitive Edition
- Shockman 3 English Translation
- Star Parodier English Translation
- Strider CD English Translation
- Super Bomberman Restoration
- Umihara Kawase Restoration
See you all on the other side.
