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  • Response and Ban of Former Junior Developer ChaoZz of Retro Achievements [Mirror]

    To see ChaoZz’s developed sets on RA, click here.

    Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which was one of the aims of Moderator BahamutVoid in leaving his farewell letter not long after Administrator televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.

    Subheadings added during the editorial process.

    Original Post: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/33246

    November 15, 2025

    It Reminds Me of 1939

    Hey everyone,

    I just wanted to put this out there to get it off my chest. I know this statement isn’t “important” in the grand scheme of things, and I’m not pretending that I’m important either — but this whole situation has bothered me so deeply that I feel the need to say something publicly. Not to start drama, not to reopen old wounds, but simply to express how unfairly I felt treated and to offer this as constructive criticism.

    A bit of background: I’ve been a supporter of RetroAchievements. I created three sets — not many, but I was active, I cared about the site, and I genuinely loved being part of the community.

    The issue that started everything was the ban of the Pokémon Clover hack. Whenever people tried to have a constructive, meaningful discussion about the decision, the topics were shut down (like here : https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32785) — usually with explanations that felt weak or dismissive. Because of that, I opened my own thread to lay out my thoughts again. (Here : https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32808)

    That thread was then closed as well within minutes. And yes — I reopened it again (here : https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32810), 1:1, purely because I wanted the conversation to continue and because I felt my points hadn’t been heard at all. For doing that, I was muted for an entire month. No warning, no real explanation. Just silenced. Completely excessive and nothing more than a show of force. Especially since I have never done anything wrong and have never been muted — not even warned — before.

    And that hurt. Not because of the mute itself, but because it made me feel like my voice didn’t matter at all. I wrote the admin team a long message explaining why I reopened the topic, and I never received a response. It felt like my concerns — and the concerns of others who tried to discuss it — were simply swept aside. The inconsistency around what gets banned and what doesn’t was never addressed, and being shut down for trying to talk about it just felt incredibly unfair. I recently deleted that message because, out of pure disappointment, I had added that I wasn’t surprised there was no reply. But due to the previous events and the arbitrariness I experienced, I was afraid my account might get deleted. That’s how far it has come — that you stay silent out of fear of repercussions. It reminds me of 1939.

    It’s possible that, while I was involuntarily “absent” for over a month, things have changed, discussions have happened, and new rules have been implemented. Maybe the situation has calmed down. If so, great — genuinely. I’m not here to reignite conflict.

    I just needed to express what happened to me and how wrong the handling of the situation felt — both the way the topic was managed and the way I personally was treated. I love RetroAchievements, and that’s exactly why this whole thing hit me so hard. It just wasn’t okay, neither for me nor for others who were affected.

    Thanks for taking the time to read this.

    edit: Since I’m German, I used ChatGPT to translate, and I found the message I had sent to the admins. I’d like to include it here for the sake of completeness.

    Hello,

    I’d like to respectfully ask for a review of the one-month silence that was recently applied to my account. I genuinely don’t believe my behavior justified such a severe measure, and I’d like to explain what happened from my perspective.

    I started a topic to discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding the banned set for the Pokémon hack. The discussion wasn’t meant to question one single game’s removal, but to talk about the inconsistency of moderation decisions in general. Many users, not just me, have pointed out that if rules are applied to one title, those same standards should apply to others — otherwise, the reasoning behind such bans appears arbitrary and unclear.

    The point of my thread was simply to encourage an open, constructive discussion about this issue, because the same topic keeps resurfacing. Unfortunately, every time it comes up, the threads are locked before any meaningful exchange can happen. So I opened a new thread, hoping we could finally talk about the moderation policy itself rather than specific games.

    That thread, too, was closed shortly after I posted it — even though I took great care to remain polite, factual, and non-confrontational. Out of frustration, I re-posted the same text, because it felt absurd to have a calm and reasoned topic shut down for discussing the fact that topics get shut down.

    I fully understand that copy-pasting the post may have been seen as spam, but I assure you it came from a place of genuine disappointment, not hostility. I’ve been a long-time supporter of this site and really care about the community. Seeing important discussions repeatedly silenced is disheartening, and being muted for an entire month on top of that feels disproportionate.

    I’m not trying to start another argument — I simply ask to be unsilenced, or at least to have the duration reduced. I also hope that, moving forward, the community can have a space to openly discuss moderation standards and the reasoning behind such decisions. That kind of transparency would benefit everyone.

    Thank you for your time and consideration.
    I truly appreciate all the work you do for the site, and I hope we can clear this up fairly.

    Best regards,

    This post has been viewed 42 time(s).

  • Liberation Mod of Super Metroid Enters Closed Beta

    For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube or Twitter.

    The Liberation mod of Super Metroid on Super Nintendo is now in closed beta courtesy of clymax.

    This mod is unofficial and is unaffiliated with Nintendo.

    Like all of clymax’s rando mods, it’s a self-randomizer, so just simply reset the game to play a new randomization.

    [Editor’s note: this section was added on January 4, 2026.]

    Release Build: Features

    The release build can be found exclusively on our affiliate, Romhack Plaza, here.

    The opening cutscene is skipped. So is the intro sequence at Ceres Station.

    Red doors can now be opened with your beam shots.

    Same goes for yellow doors and green doors.

    Gray doors have not been made openable, due to instability issues on certain maps.

    You can now enter Tourian without having defeated any of the bosses.

    Development Build: Features

    Redeem early access to the dev build through participating in our community.

    Examples of participation include our Rando-Speedrun Pilot here, or any “Whirlwind Fiesta”-adjacent event we hold that includes this mod.

    Planet Zebes is preactivated.

    Missile Expansions give you twenty missiles instead of five missiles.

    Simple Baby Skip now possible, but the camera remains locked, and Samus wraps around the screen before finding the room exit.

    Mother Brain’s third phase is now skipped. So are any related cutscenes.

    Speed blocks are not yet breakable by the normal beam. Many other types of blocks are, however.

    Your jump height while submerged is no longer reduced.

    Demonstrating the open world in the dev build.

    Blue gates and green gates may be openable from both sides using beam shots.

    Demonstrating Plasma Beam plus Spazer Beam. For a far superior version of this feature, check out Spazer Plasma Mix here.

    Exclusive Interview with Spazer Plasma Mix‘s Author

    November 16, 2025

    clymax: I made a poor man’s version of your Plasma Spazer Mix. Took me a few hours yesterday.

    JAM: Why a poor man’s version?

    clymax: Because i had an idea recently and wanted to see if i could get it to work. This approach, basically. Damage boost is 2x.

    JAM: Oh, I see.

    clymax: I made two hack routines for it. One for normal (Plasma Spazer etc.) shot and one for charged (Plasma Spazer etc.) shot.

    JAM: For the actual damage or for multipliers for the each enemy?

    clymax: These two routines are 20 bytes each. They work by preventing the spacetime beam crash by making the vanilla game engine only see Plasma as ON if both Plasma and Spazer are ON.

    Actually, i have a third hack routine that handles the multiplier. That one is 16 bytes long. The hack multiplier changes the damage dealt, by doing the damage twice.

    JAM: That’s an interesting solution.

    Demonstrating random drops. Currently, duplicates can be rolled.

    Item locations are the same as in vanilla. Items at these locations are not randomized.

    All one-time collectible upgrades are in the pool of rando drops. Energy Tanks, Reserve Tanks, Missiles, Super Missiles, and Power Bombs are not.

    Incorporates the Kraid Hyper Beam crash fix in support of the new Plasma-Spazer beam combo.

    A new beam has been added to the pool of random items in a new update.

    So, what do you think? Which 2D entry is your favorite in the Metroid series? Comment below, or come check us out on Discord.

    Related Post

    Mod Showcase: Spazer Plasma Mix for Super Metroid

    This post has been viewed 122 time(s).

  • YoniArousement’s Romhacks

    Bishoujo Super Street Fighter II: Glamor Queen and the New Femme Fatales

    Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which was one of the aims of Moderator BahamutVoid in leaving his farewell letter not long after Administrator televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.

    A romhack for which RA denied achievements by the hack author for certain off-site behavior.

    See one of the related articles for details.

    Screenshots added during the editorial process.

    YoniArousement is a fan of Doraemon and Arcade games. He has created his own games in Game Maker, M.U.G.E.N and RPG Maker 2003. He produced several Streets of Rage romhacks throughout the years of 2012-2022. He still uses YouTube like he’s living in 2007.

    YoniArousement’s flagship romhack is Bishoujo Super Street Fighter II: Glamor Queen. It’s a combo and fighter replacement ROM Hack of the Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter II. It features tweaked move sets, edited sounds, juggles and adds dashes. The project came about when he was tweeting Game Genie codes for the game.

    You can follow YoniArousement on YouTube, Twitter, Game Jolt, RHDN, or his personal blog.

    Subheadings added during the editorial process.

    Related Posts:

    YoniArousement’s Romhacks
    Ban of Romhacker YoniArousement, 34th-Ranked Softcore Player on Retro Achievements

    Bishoujo SSF2: Glamor Queen

    Original Post: BHDN

    Game Blog | SRC | Discord

    August 9, 2025

    Bishoujo Super Street Fighter II: Glamor Queen and the New Femme Fatales is a Combo ROM Hack of the Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter II, where some of the fighters are replaced with female characters from various franchises. It could be one of the first of its kind, like the numerous ROM Hacks of Streets of Rage 2 & 3. An intent is to make the game easier to beat.

    The project started when I was tweeting Game Genie codes for MD SSF2. I wanted to see if I could make Old Sagat’s cancels possible. People were taking notice of my tweets in early 2023, so I experimented with editing the game further. I wasn’t expecting to grab people’s attention from editing the game. I put my blood, sweat and tears into making this.

    Early in the making, I wanted this to draw inspiration from a lot of Champion Edition bootlegs, but I later found that the MD SF2 games weren’t coded to have more than one projectile per player at once, so I decided to make juggles possible.

    The fighter replacements, in order that they were made: Blanka is changed to Roll from Mega Man, Dhalsim is changed to Mai Shiranui from Fatal Fury and King of Fighters, E. Honda is changed to Choi Jadoo from Hello Jadoo, Fei Long is changed to Emily from Unholy Night: The Darkness Hunter, Dee Jay is changed to Madonna from Makeruna! Makendou 2, Boxer is changed to Avra Yumeno and Belva Lina, both original creations, with the former being created for this ROM Hack. Jadoo and Avra’s sprites were not cheap, and the other characters were given several newly drawn sprites overall.

    Roll is a lethal joke character who is a one trick pony, Mai is a no brainer of a character choice with a relatively balanced moveset, Jadoo is given the Chibi Back Dash, can double jump and can cheese you with her Hundred Hand Slap and Headbutt, Emily can Air Dash and kill you from throws, Madonna is an insane combo character who can take you out quickly, Avra has high priority normals that do block damage, and Belva can use MvC2 Sentinel’s flight with no transitions.

    So is this ROM Hack fun to play? You can decide on it. The ROM Hack certainly spoils its players. I couldn’t find any other Street Fighter II ROM Hacks on Speedrun.com, excluding the Champion Edition bootlegs, of course. This ROM Hack is not to be taken seriously. Fingers crossed it gets added to Fightcade.

    Character Replacements

    • Blanka is replaced with Roll, from Mega Man.
    • Dhalsim is replaced with Mai Shiranui, from Fatal Fury and King of Fighters.
    • E. Honda is replaced with Choi Jadoo, from Hello Jadoo.
    • Fei Long is replaced with Emily, from Unholy Night: The Darkness Hunter.
    • Dee Jay is replaced with Madonna de Swan, from Makeruna! Makendou 2 and Makeruna! Makendou Z.
    • Boxer is replaced with Avra Yumeno, an original creation, and Belva Lina, another original creation.

    Features

    • Fighter Replacements
    • The special cancel window is increased by 2 frames.
    • Charge Times Disabled, Air Specials
    • Back Dashes and Forward Dashes. Emily can also Air Dash.
    • Guard Cancels into Dashes
    • Easier Arcade Mode (CPU no longer damage cheats)
    • New Moves, such as Zangief’s Coconut Thunder and Sagat’s Tiger Dive
    • Getting hit out of Empty Jumps by non-knockdown attacks makes you drop down
    • Stage Select in Arcade Mode with the Mode button
    • Easy Death Combos
    • Access Debug Menu by selecting Options, and holding the A or Mode Buttons
    • Refill Lifebars and Time Limit in Versus Mode by holding both Players’ Mode Buttons
    • Random CPU Colors in Arcade Mode, by holding Mode button
    • Switch to the character defeated with Down+A+B+C
    • Switch to the same character with Up+A+B+C
    • Activate V-ISM Normals/Belva/Nightmare Dictator with Back+X+Y+Z+B or Back+Y+Z+B+C
    • Access Boss Rush by holding B
    • Additional Colors can be chosen by holding the Mode Button.
    • Holding a player’s Mode button makes the computer control the respective player in Elimination Group Battles.
    • Stance sprites for Ryu, Ken, Sagat and Cammy are newly inserted.
    • Sagat and Cammy’s sprites are partially re-indexed to allow for more freedom in their colors.

    Play This Romhack If

    • You want a SF2 ROM Hack that changes up the roster.
    • You like infinites or death combos that are extremely easy to do.
    • You like mechanics outside of what SF2 normally has to offer.
    • You want to end rounds in a few seconds from one correct read.
    • You like fighters where knowledge checks play a large role.
    • You like ROM Hacks that take advantage of unused data.

    Don’t Play This Romhack If

    • You like spamming projectiles or doing fireball traps.
    • You don’t want ROM Hacks or fan games that teach you bad habits.
    • Random jank or bugs can get in the way of enjoying this.
    • You’re looking for good character balance.
    • You primarily use Ryu or Ken. They get shut down in this ROM Hack.
    • You dislike Lolis and/or the heavy emphasis on panty shots.

    This post has been viewed 46 time(s).

  • YoniArousement’s Romhacks

    Streets of Rage

    Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which was one of the aims of Moderator BahamutVoid in leaving his farewell letter not long after Administrator televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.

    Screenshots added during the editorial process.

    YoniArousement is a fan of Doraemon and Arcade games. He has created his own games in Game Maker, M.U.G.E.N and RPG Maker 2003. He produced several Streets of Rage romhacks throughout the years of 2012-2022. He still uses YouTube like he’s living in 2007.

    YoniArousement’s flagship romhack is Bishoujo Super Street Fighter II: Glamor Queen. It’s a combo and fighter replacement ROM Hack of the Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter II. It features tweaked move sets, edited sounds, juggles and adds dashes. The project came about when he was tweeting Game Genie codes for the game.

    You can follow YoniArousement on YouTube, Twitter, Game Jolt, RHDN, or his personal blog.

    Related Posts:

    YoniArousement’s Romhacks
    Ban of Romhacker YoniArousement, 34th-Ranked Softcore Player on Retro Achievements

    Streets of Rage 2 & 3 ROM Hacks, from someone who used to make a lot of them

    Original Post: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/31585

    Related Thread: BHDN

    July 13, 2025

    Hi. Under my previous usernames of Lorenzo The Comic and Candra Software, I used to produce a lot of ROM Hacks of Streets of Rage 2 & 3 over the years starting in 2012, when gsaurus made his ROM Hacking tools. I was once a moderator on the old Streets of Rage Online forums.

    Sometime after gsaurus released his Pancake tools, I started using them with little prior experience with ROM Hacking. It was a massive boon for me and a lot of other people who wanted to insert their own characters into SOR 2/3. Pancakes is really user friendly, as you can edit the animations and hitboxes with ease, and it generates the tile layouts for you without needing to manually define the tile maps. It’s part of the reason why so many SOR2&3 ROM Hacks were made. Pancakes was the tool that got me further interested in ROM Hacking.

    Later on in 2012, gsaurus released his Mega Drive Voice Editor tool that can replace PCM samples. gsaurus had shown previews of Streets of Rage 2: Syndicate Wars, a ROM Hack that Red Crimson and he has been working on where you get to play as all the enemies and bosses (barring Vehelits, as gsaurus later decided that it would make no sense playing as a floating head). All the enemies and bosses’ graphics were converted from compressed to uncompressed, so their graphics can be edited freely. SOR2SW added a Survival Mode, and was released around January of 2013 as far as I remember, and I would use v0.9 of the ROM Hack as the base for most of my SOR2 hacks.

    Editing enemies in SOR2SW can lead to all sorts of bugs that would need to be undone, such as the options menu not loading. Editing Blaze in a BKIII ROM would also cause problems, like the title screen crashing the game. I make lots of backups of my ROM Hacks in case problems happen.

    A thing that might set my SOR Hacks apart from others, is the enemies playing more death cries, or the bosses having their own death cries, like in SOR2: Mortal Kombat CX where the bosses play the fataility scream from Mortal Kombat II.

    As for the SOR ROM Hacks I made, SOR2: Puyo Wars was an experiment to see if I could change all the characters. Girls’ Paradise and Simpsons Edition were made during a time when the Unity Genesis Collection’s Steam Workshop was still new at the time. By 2018 or 2019, I was starting to get bored of making these. The ROM Hacks I made where the characters are more viable such as SOR2: Battletoads & Double Dragon would have the bare minimum when it comes to enemy replacements.

    As of this writing, only some of [Hacks – Streets of Rage 2] (Hubs) made it here onto RetroAchievements, and only 2 of them have achievement sets. The set for Streets of Rage 2: Syndicate Wars (Genesis/Mega Drive) Hack is based on its 0.9 version, and not the newer version that was first publicly available in 2016 that added Zan, Roo and a CPU partner. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Re-Revenge (Genesis/Mega Drive) Hack on the other hand, has 3 achievement sets. There’s a voice fix I made for that ROM Hack. Somehow, Heavy Nova (Genesis/Mega Drive) was eligible despite being relatively low effort among the hacks I made. Here’s hoping that more achievement sets would be made for Streets of Rage ROM Hacks, a la ROM Hacks of other franchises like Mario, Sonic, and Pokémon.

    2012

    Streets of Rage 2: Axel’s Ambition (SOR2)

    Streets of Rage 3: Punksure (SOR3)

    Bare Knuckle III CS (BKII_CS)

    2013

    Streets of Rage 3: Pokémon Edition (SOR3_Poke)

    Chocobo Knuckle III (CR)

    2014

    Streets of Rage 2: Cosmic Mix (SOR2_CM)

    Streets of Rage 2: Puyo Wars (SOR2_Puyo)

    Streets of Rage 2: Sonic Wars (SOR2_Sonic)

    2015

    Lorenzo Fighters 2/Streets of Rage 2: Kathy’s Quest (LF2, SOR2_KQ)

    2016

    Streets of Rage 2: Girls’ Paradise (SOR2_Girls)

    Streets of Rage 2: Simpsons Edition (SOR2_Simpsons)

    Streets of Rage 3: Dragon Ball Edition (DBOR3)

    Streets of Rage 2: Sonic and Miku (SOR2_SAM)

    Streets of Rage 2: Touhou Wars (SOR2_Touhou)

    Streets of Rage 3: Candra Returns (SOR3_Candra)

    2017

    Streets of Rage 2: Battletoads & Double Dragon (SOR2_BTDD)

    King of the Rage Streets 2 (KOTRS2)

    Streets of Rage 2: Loli Eyes/Diaper Girl Derby (SOR2_Loli, SOR2_DGD)

    Streets of Rage 2: Attack of the Rolls (SOR2_AOTR3)

    Fight ‘n Rage 3 (FNR3)

    2018

    Streets of Rage 2: Doraemon (SOR2_Doraemon)

    Streets of Rage 2: Mortal Kombat CX (SOR2_MK)

    Streets of Rage 2: Sailor Moon (SOR2_SailorMoon)

    Streets of Rage 2: Manko-chan (SOR2_MankoChan)

    Streets of Rage 2 Minus (SOR2_Minus)

    Streets of Rage 3: DarksydePhil (SOR3_DSP)

    2019

    Streets of Rage 2: Girls’ Revenge (SOR2_GirlsRevenge)

    Streets of Rage 2: Peach DX (SOR2_PeachDX)

    2020

    Streets of Rage 2: Doraemon vs. Roll (SOR2_Doraemon_vs_Roll)

    2022

    Streets of Rage 2: Among Us (SOR2_AmongUs)

    This post has been viewed 49 time(s).