Fester's Quest: Fester's Quest - European Gameplay Changes

When Fester's Quest was released in Europe, Sunsoft made some key changes to the game, supposedly based on feedback made from the US release, thus creating a version of the game that felt less frustrating overall.

These patches bring those two gameplay changes to the NTSC-US version, plus a small extra addition, so they can be enjoyed with a version of the game that runs at full speed, instead of 50Hz.

Officially made changes:

* Your shots go through walls, no longer getting stuck and disappearing when colliding with the scenery.

* All your Gun and most of your Whip Levels do more damage, which is the approach Sunsoft take to reduce the "bullet Sponge" feeling of the enemies.

* Because the two points above make the game noticeably less hard, the Hot Dog prices got increased from 5$ to 10$.

You can apply a patch that includes all these changes, but you can also apply each one separately, with each change having its own patch, just in case.



Fester's Quest : PAL Changes ported to NTSC
-------------------------------------------


Installation:

The usual. Just get something like Lunar IPS, or another
IPS patcher, and apply these Patches to a clean US Rom.

This specific ROM:
Fester's Quest (U) [!].nes
ROM CRC32: DB0C7019 (With Header)
ROM CRC32: B6BF5137 (Without Header)
SHA-1: DF3AD62F4503170770FE36FB2BA8840E120F0896
ROM MD5: 4F2FB7724E7F69B4A5E651B1E43432AD


Explanation:

Fester's Quest is a decent licensed game for the NES made by
Sunsoft, which also made other cool games, and cooler OSTs.

It's a top-down shooter where you play as one of the members
of the Addams Family, the titular Fester, trying to save his
family from a... invasion of Aliens that... kinda look like
dinosaurs?

It's a weird game, but not a bad one. That said, there were
some annoying things in this game, and the developers must
had gotten the message pretty clearly, because they made
modifications when they released the game in Europe.

This collection of patches brings the two important differences
added to the European release, plus an extra one to try and
give it a bit more balance, as the changes made in that version
made the game noticeably less difficult.

Knowing that PAL games run at 50Hz, I thought it was useful
to bring them to a version that ran at full speed.

1:
The first change was being able to Shoot Through Walls.
In the original, most of your projectiles move in weird fashions,
in wavy patterns or just doing circles forward, and if they touched
any wall, they would disappear. This made specially early parts of
the game quite frustrating for many, and Sunsoft corrected it.

Apply "Fester's Quest - Shoot Thru Walls.ips" to "fix" this.

2:
Enemies, generally speaking, can be quite the Bullet Sponges in
this game, specially with some, like the frog-things, that come
in a variety of colors and some last much, much longer.

If you look around the net, you will find that people point out
that "enemies take less hits" to be defeated. This is actually
not what happens. Sunsoft tried to correct this annoyance making
your shots a lot stronger in the European release, specially
Levels 1 through 4.

Here's a quick view of both versions gun power:

L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 As you can see, L1 PAL is
PAL 4 4 5 5 6 7 8 8 x4 times as strong, and
NTSC 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 later on is x2 as strong.

The Whip also got some changes, but only to make it better on
lower Levels:

L1 L2 L3 L4
PAL 8 16 24 32
NTSC 4 8 16 32

Apply "Fester's Quest - Weapon Damage.ips" to "fix" this

Lastly, and this is not a change made by Sunsfot but by me, I
made the Hot Dog Stands cost 10 "Money" instead of 5. Because
you're a lot more powerful now, I thought making recovery a bit
harder (money still is very abundant) would help balance things.

Apply "Fester's Quest - Hot Dog Price.ips" to change this.


If you want all changes you also have a Patch that adds all of it
in a single move. Of course, the individual patches do the same
thing if you apply them one by one.


That's all.


Database match: Fester's Quest (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: DF91B37AABCF7742BB80EC2B7F5384DF7940BE58
File CRC32: DB0C7019
ROM SHA-1: DF3AD62F4503170770FE36FB2BA8840E120F0896
ROM CRC32: B6BF5137