I feel like I say the same things every time this thread comes up. But I guess we have a lot of newfags now, so I'll repeat myself.
>Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (Re-translation + Map)
Like the aforementioned Zelda example, this game came with a physical map. Unlike Zelda, it only came with a map in Japan. The same map was in Nintendo Power for the American version, but that downplays it, as if it's not an intended part of the game. It is. The game is immediately much better once you have the map. This mod doesn't just include a map, it includes a digitized (8-bit low-res, but still pretty good looking) version of this original map that you were supposed to have the whole time. Press Select to pull it up at any time. Super useful. It also re-translates everything to be accurate to the Japanese version. There was a previous mod called Castlevania II: Redacted that changed dialogue just to make it easier, but this is better because it's fully about accuracy. That does make it easier, but it doesn't just tell you what to do like Redacted sometimes does. There are also optional things you can choose when downloading the mod, like an opening cutscene based very closely on the intro text in the manual, and things like being able to drop through stairs or turn off disappearing blocks. I don't do those last few, because it's making the game easier in ways the devs didn't intend, even though those disappearing blocks are now the worst part of the game.
Also, to be clear, the Japanese version of Dracula II sucks too, because it was on the Disk System, and you had to flip the disk all the time and wait for it to load. When you first boot up the game, you need to flip the disk as soon as you walk off the first screen of the game and onto the second. Since this mod I'm saying is for the NES version, you don't have to deal with that nonsense. And oh yeah they added the save system from the Japanese version, so you get the best of both worlds. With this, Castlevania II becomes a very good game, with only minimal flaws, instead of a game with a lot of potential held back by several significant flaws.
>retranslation mods in general. Special mention goes to...
>Castlevania III
Not only did they make this harder by nerfing Grant and making it so dying at Dracula sends you all the way back to the beginning of the level (instead of counting Dracula as his own level like every other Castlevania game), but they also censored the 8-bit titties on the statues. Unforgivable. And oh yeah the Japanese version has better music.
>ActRaiser
>Soul Blazer
These games are literally about God fighting Satan, so of course that was censored outside Japan. Get the uncensored version. It's cooler. I assume Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma the same, since everyone tells me it's basically the third and fourth entries in this series (I don't count ActRaiser 2 because I don't like that one). I gotta play those two.
>Sonic 3D Blast: Director's Cut
This mod is actually made by the original director of the game, Jon Burton, head of Traveller's Tales. It makes the game so much better. He tweaks Sonic's physics a bit and improves the Flicky AI (the game is about collecting birds that all have rudimentary AI), but more importantly, he adds a bunch of stuff that simply makes the game feel more substantial.
>Level select screen/basic world map so you can replay levels for completion and high scores
>collecting all the Sonic tokens in a level now counts toward completion instead of just giving you a free life or something
>You can now only get one Chaos Emerald per zone. Special Stages always depended on where you entered them, so it used to be trivially easy to get all the Emeralds without ever having to interact with the harder Special Stages.
>Once you do get all the Emeralds, you unlock Super Sonic. You can't get all the Emeralds until later, but since you can now go back to old levels for completion, it's still worth it.
>There's a Time Attack challenge in every level. You don't need to collect Flickies in these challenges, so it caters to those people who say the game would be better without them. I think this mode proves you really do need them to fill out the game, but doing Time Attack challenges without them is pretty fun.
>There's also a Score Attack challenge. IIRC you don't unlock it until you 100% everything else, but it's a neat little extra challenge in each level.
>Password saves have been added. Not quite sure why he didn't just make it a regular save, since people do that on mods all the time, but whatever. Passwords probably are what they would have used if they were going to have anything like this in the game back in the day.
>And oh yeah he added back in an enemy that wasn't quite finished and didn't make it to the final game originally.
>>1279310
That mod makes the emerald stages too easy. That said, this is still my favorite game of all time, and I'd give it a 9/10 easy. All the mods I'd say are really needed here are just ones to make the HD version more like the Dreamcast version. And to replace the English subtitles so that they're more accurate to the Japanese dialogue instead of just transcribing the English dub. Sonic Adventure 1 has good mods for this, too.
And oh yeah, there's a mod to remove Amy's pantsu so you can see everything when she's doing flips. It's still a low-res texture, but I'll take it.
There's also a bunch of mods for the PC version of Sonic R that make it the definitive version. Adds a bunch of graphical effects that the PC version previous lacked, but makes it HD and widescreen, which the other versions don't have. I think the Gamecube version had four player, so that might still be one advantage of that version, but good luck getting three other people to play Sonic R with you.
And oh yeah, anyone who plays Tomb Raider without a Nude Raider mod is a faggot. That's basically mandatory.