Digging deep into this WCW ROM hack project. This is another technical entry – You’ve been warned!
I started Monday by organizing the base roster. In the default game, there are 63 wrestler slots and 16 “manager” slots. These manager slots include unused or dropped characters like “James Bandenberg” (Vandenberg) and “Jackreen” (Jacqueline). The problem is that if you overwrite these manager slots with custom wrestlers, the game will not save them properly.
That raised an immediate design question. Who gets stuck in an unsavable slot? Fujinami? Dusty Rhodes? Making that call felt arbitrary and, honestly, a little unfair. Rather than compromise the roster, I decided to tackle the underlying issue instead. The goal became unlocking proper save functionality for every character slot in the game.
For context, I have not done any truly advanced hacking since around 2013. That was when I was actively posting deeper dives into menu hacking, including recreating a version of WWE ’12’s Attitude Era menu inside WWF No Mercy. I gradually stepped away from the scene after that and more or less retired around 2016 while tinkering with texture mods. I was definitely rusty, but this was one of those problems that needed a real solution.
After plenty of trial and error, editing, testing, repeating, and more than a little frustration, I finally got it working. All wrestlers can now be saved properly, which increases the default usable roster from 63 to 79 characters. I also confirmed that it works with the twelve previously inaccessible characters, pushing the theoretical total up to 91.
Below is a short video showing the differences between the default game, older ROM hacks, and this updated build.
That completes two of the major ROM hacking features I wanted to tackle for this project:
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Multicolored ropes
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Fully savable roster
The third major goal will be editing the music files. That will likely serve as the dividing line between a Version 1 and Version 2 release. If I can develop a clean, repeatable method for rewriting music in Revenge, it would open the door for much more flexible updates going forward.
Figuring out the saving mechanics left me drained for a day or two, and I wasn’t eager to dive into building the roster right away. This section alone is about 6,000 bytes of data, and a single wrong value can prevent the game from loading.
While working through it manually, I discovered a useful trick: I didn’t need to retype height and weight for every entry. I could simply reuse the pointer from a previous entry as I went along, which helped save space and keep the data more compact.
This screenshot shows an example of the layout. Ron Simmons’ height points to Sting’s height. Lex Luger’s weight points to Ron Simmons’ weight.
Another thing I learned was how to handle characters with dual names. In the default game, this only occurs for Kanyon/Mortis and AKI Man/THQ Man.
The core idea is straightforward. By changing the ID1 and pointing to a new location in the ASM, you can repurpose these blocks for other wrestlers. For example, Hollywood Hogan 0201 can be split into two entries: Hollywood Hogan and Hulk Hogan. This technique makes dual-name handling much more flexible and opens up additional roster possibilities.
I finished all the planned “replacements” in the coding. I thought it was funny that my El Gigante (Replacing Default Dr. Frank), was the only one with its default attire on.
I’m still not completely settled on the roster, and I really do not want to rely on the replacement method. I am considering writing my own roster code instead and assigning my own character IDs as I go. At this point, so much of the game is being rewritten that relying on replacements makes it feel less like my own work and more like just another ROM hack.
Christmas is coming, which means travel, cooking, visiting, gifting, and stress. I may not have any new updates until the New Year. Click the image below to be transported back in time to the WCW Magazine Christmas 1991 Issue (Released February 1992).
