oncemailtime
commented
2 months ago Above suggestion is for Link's Awakening GB/C? It's been lightly discussed at rhdn, but nothing much came of it afaik. https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=37024.0
It'd be nice if Gameboy allowed for more inputs than cheap 2x4 matrix. For nes redux though, it'd be cool to see it take advantage of snes controller. A few homebrew use it: Nova the Squirrel, Full Quiet and now Spook-o-Tron.
I don’t know much about rom hacking, so I will preface this by saying I don’t know if something like what I am proposing is even possible.
One of the major design flaws in the original game stems from having to use multiple items on any given screen. This forces you to pause and switch items at a high frequency. I know this is related to the limited number of inputs on the hardware.
I feel that some clever workarounds could be implemented to alleviate this problem. Something like making it to where power bracelet works without equipping as long as it is in your inventory. Think “a + dpad” in the direction of an object that can be picked up automatically allowing for pickup of that item. Or having select mapped to an item like shield permanently and then moving the map to “select + a”
I’m not claiming these are the definitive solutions, but I am sure with enough community input, some kind of consensus could be made about which item needs to be always available from a third or fourth input combination.