KOF94TE is a ROM hack for the Neo Geo game King of Fighters '94
All King of Fighters games allow you to pick a custom team of three characters ... except King of Fighters '94. This hack adds in the team edit feature. Finally Choi, Mai and Heidern can fight together!
A full on character select screen modeled after KOF95, and with two types of random select.
The CPU can choose custom teams too.
Optional KOF94 style avatars.
Order select screen same as before
Custom teams in gameplay
Custom teams in cutscenes
Custom teams fighting Rugal
Win screens show the custom team that won
Continue screens show the custom team that lost
Custom team on the game over screen
Surprising new endings
Fixes a character colors bug when losing to Rugal.
Graphical glitches can occur when playing on real hardware with a NeoSD or the Darksoft multi. This is due to limitations in these carts. The original KOF94 game played on these carts has the same graphical glitches.
This can now be fixed with this patch. Thanks to paulb-nl for the fix.
Fixes a Rugal debug dip bug.
Graphical glitches can occur when playing on real hardware with a NeoSD or the Darksoft multi. This is due to limitations in these carts. The original KOF94 game played on these carts has the same graphical glitches.
This can now be fixed with this patch. Thanks to paulb-nl for the fix.
The original purpose of this release was to address the lagginess on the MiSTer. It also got a lot of bug fixes and a lot of polish. Even if you don't play on a MiSTer, this version is highly recommended.
This is the final planned release. There will be no more features added to the hack. The only way there will be more releases beyond this one is if a bug is found. Even then, a judgment call will be made on how bad the bug is.
Graphical glitches can occur when playing on real hardware with a NeoSD or the Darksoft multi. This is due to limitations in these carts. The original KOF94 game played on these carts has the same graphical glitches. There is no way to fix this.
This version brings in KOF94 style avatars, made by Bunny-Head. To get them, choose them in the optional add-ons section when building the ROM. Thanks to Bunny-Head for the great work!
Minor graphical glitching can happen on real hardware and the MiSTer. This has always been true since day one of the hack. More info at GitHub.
Fixes an obscure but pretty annoying bug.
No known issues.
One minor bug slipped through :(
No known issues.
A big release with lots of changes. Thanks to all who helped test this.
CPU custom teams really freshen up the single player experience!
No known issues.
Lots of bug fixes. I moved out of beta too quickly, sorry about that. But everything is looking much better.
Three very minor bugs fixed.
A minor versus mode bug was fixed. Thanks to Psycho RFG for finding it.
A cleaner and better looking character select screen. The globe and logo were removed, it now looks more like KOF95.
The hack is complete. The only exception is the new endings play in English when the game is set to Japanese. If anyone can help translate them, please let me know.
The ROM can be built at the Neo Rom Hack website.
Rugal is accessible via debug dip 1-4. This is almost identical to how the original game works.
First, turn on debug dip 1-4.
Then choose him as your character. You can get his alternate palette by choosing him with C or D.
To get regular Rugal, choose him with A in the order select screen. To get second form Rugal, push right or left until Rugal stops moving.
Once he is chosen, turn off debug dip 1-4, otherwise both characters will be invincible in the fight.
In a single player game, using Rugal will crash the game if you make it to the Rugal fight. This is true in the original game too.
In the original game, Rugal is only accessible via the same debug dip. I decided to take that route with the hack as well. It boils down to he's just the boss and missing things needed to be a full fledged character:
Like most KOF games, the CPU can now choose a custom team with this hack. That means the CPU's team can be formed out of any of the 24 characters, just like a player's team.
Here are the guidelines
I have put the hack onto a real cartridge. Here are tips if you want to do this too.
Disclaimer: I'm not very experienced with this. The info here was taken from this thread on the Neo Geo forum. Thanks to the forum members who helped with this.
It is easiest to alter a real KOF94 cart. That way only some of the chips need to be changed. You can alter an AES or MVS cart, that doesn't matter. These tips are assuming you are using a real KOF94 cart.
Build the ROM as normal at neorh. Choose the patches you want, and then download the MAME version of the ROM. Once downloaded, unzip the zip file and inside are the ROM files, ready to be programmed onto chips.
The ROM files are already byte swapped. So they can just be programmed straight, as-is. Not all ROM files need to be programmed, see the table below.
I don't know anything about EPROM programmers. I had buyicnow program my chips for me.
The slowdown fix patch is a bit tricky with real carts. Adding it won't cause any harm, but it likely won't have any benefit either.
KOF94 uses something called wait cycles. Wait cycles are a way to tell the Neo Geo's main CPU to slow down a little bit. This is needed to avoid graphical glitching in the game. The downside is this also causes some slowdown in the gameplay. When SNK ported KOF94 to the CD system, they fixed the game and removed the need for wait cycles. The slowdown fix patch is basically that fix, so the cart version no longer needs wait cycles either.
This is really beneficial on the MiSTer where wait cycles are easily turned off, or on the NeoSD or Darksoft Multi which never turn on wait cycles.
But wait cycles are turned on by a real cartridge by sending 5 volts to a few pins on the cartridge port. So even with this patch applied, a real KOF94 cart will still have wait cycles turned on and thus still be slow. To take advantage of this patch, you either need to hack the cart to turn off the 5 volts on those pins, something I don't believe anyone has ever tried. Or use an entirely different game as the donor cart and program all of the chips. Something I've not done nor know anything about.
The hack runs great on a real cart, except one very minor thing does have slowdown and sometimes, minor graphical issues.
When on the character select screen, if the other player joins in and "HERE COMES CHALLENGER" is shown, there is slowdown and that graphic is on the screen a bit longer than on vanilla KOF94. Sometimes you can see some very minor graphical garbage at the top of the screen during this too. This only happens if the other player joins while on the character select screen. Joining at any other time works just fine.
The slowdown goes away once "HERE COMES CHALLENGER" goes away. This slowdown is so minor you might not even notice it.
Other than that, the hack fully works on real carts. Everything runs at full speed and as expected.
These are the ROMs that need to be programmed. For Team Edit it does not matter if you choose the KOF95 or KOF94 portrait version, both are the same here.
ROM | (E)EPROM model | Needed by |
---|---|---|
055-c1.c1 | 29f1615 | Team Edit and clean font |
055-c2.c2 | 29f1615 | Team Edit |
055-c7.c7 | 29f1615 | Team Edit |
055-c8.c8 | 29f1615 | Team Edit |
055-p1.p1 | 29f1615 | All except clean font |
055-s1.s1 | 27c1000 | Team Edit |
In other words: If you are programming Team Edit onto a cart, then the C1,C2,C7,C8,P1 and S1 ROM chips all need to be changed. If you choose other add-ons like cheat sheet, they will all come along for the ride too.
When soldering in the new ROM chips, you can first only change the P1 chip as an initial test if you want.
If you do this and run the game, the character select screen will look like this:
That is fine. That is just because the added graphics in the C ROM chips are not present. The hack will still fully work. You should be able to choose a team and play the game. If so, great news, your P1 chip was programmed and installed correctly.
If you don't see this, or playing the game doesn't work, then something is wrong. Soldering in the other chips won't help.
Many people have been playing the hack now for many hours. At this point it is well tested and stable, suitable to be put onto a real cart like this.
But it is always possible a bug is found after you have made your cart. If so, the only way to get the bug fix is to redo the P1 chip again in your cart. So there is a small risk in making these carts.
Before you make a cart, check the issues on GitHub. If it says "There aren't any open issues", that means no bugs have been found that haven't been fixed yet. You should be good to go.
If there is a bug listed there, that means a bug has been found but it has not been fixed yet. In that case, email me. I can probably fix the bug and then you won't have it permanently on your cart.
These people helped make the hack possible: SieKensou, PsychoRFG, Ge Os, Jay Bee, leonardofmatheus, Alice愛麗絲, Bunny-Head