WalesI'm looking at somewhere around December 18-20, just because that's when I'm off. I could also do 25-27, but that might not work as well for everyone else. I'm open to date/time suggestions!
This Sunday, 11/22/15, at 3 PM CST. Tell your friends! All the enemies and items are random, so it might be really easy, or it might be crazy hard!
CURRENT VERSION: 1.0.8, released Sept 25, 2015.
I know there was an old hard mode hack on the starmen.net forums that never quite got finished, and I remember the unfinished version having weird issues, lockups, NPCs with missing text, etc. So, I decided to slap this together.
Made using PK Hack in under a day, this hack changes enemy stats, movesets, AI, and item drops. BBRs and MBRs are removed from stores (but not entirely removed from the game). PSI Freeze is made to be less effective versus a majority of the game's enemies. Status effects will make many fights more manageable, and stat buffs/debuffs will be useful against some enemies and bosses. Item effects are almost entirely unchanged.
That being said, I haven't finished testing it yet, having finished it about an hour ago. I don't expect to have many issues, but I still recommend using save states at regular intervals. If you get a lock that wouldn't normally happen in EarthBound, I'd ask that you either save the video (if you were streaming) and/or describe what you did leading up to the lock.
There's still more that I would like to do to this hack, such as fine-tuning difficulty in certain sections of the game, custom enemies/bosses/items, etc. For now, though, enjoy!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q4n7e1v98mnrnhl/EBHardMode.zip?dl=0
