To the best of my knowledge there are no hacks for the GBA or DS that only run in emulators, most of the ones for older systems like the NES and SNES that are emulator only these days are unfortunate accidents or occasionally something that could work with hardware but would require some effort on the part of the flash cart maker, though there are legacy hacks that are emulator only (and worse sometimes specific emulator only).
This then leaves newer consoles and the N64.
Newer consoles are usually more along the lines of works or is a texture replacement so probably will not work in hardware for a lot of things. Some of the people doing texture replacements have some odd ideas -- several times now I have met "why spend two days learning basic text hacking when I can do image editing for 3 years, deal with a branching story, and ultimately make a 900 meg emulator only patch" but for the most part it works for me (actual textures where there were none, higher resolution than the hardware would support, maybe also sorting some of the model issues).
N64 then, a while back I was linked this rant http://sm64-hacks.square7.ch/?p=97 ... it falls short of earning the title glorious rant but it gets close at times. However I was shocked to find myself agreeing at some level -- the N64 was barely acceptable at the time and subsequent years have really not been kind. Several games have subsequently been remade without any fundamental changes in the nature of their gameplay and they were good, great even (XBLA perfect dark can still teach multiplayer lessons to just about any shooting game you care to point me at) but the N64 hardware and controller setup is awful so improve away. In basically all other instances that are not HD retexture* though I am all about the hardware support, even if I probably will be playing it on my nice emulator that does scaling and other good stuff.
*some of the HD retexture folks have some odd ideas as well, such things usually seeing me use words like overdesigned, but that is similar to people altering Tetris DS to play zelda theme rather than Korobeiniki -- I don't get it but I can at least write it off as a matter of (no) taste.
Thoughts of others.
This then leaves newer consoles and the N64.
Newer consoles are usually more along the lines of works or is a texture replacement so probably will not work in hardware for a lot of things. Some of the people doing texture replacements have some odd ideas -- several times now I have met "why spend two days learning basic text hacking when I can do image editing for 3 years, deal with a branching story, and ultimately make a 900 meg emulator only patch" but for the most part it works for me (actual textures where there were none, higher resolution than the hardware would support, maybe also sorting some of the model issues).
N64 then, a while back I was linked this rant http://sm64-hacks.square7.ch/?p=97 ... it falls short of earning the title glorious rant but it gets close at times. However I was shocked to find myself agreeing at some level -- the N64 was barely acceptable at the time and subsequent years have really not been kind. Several games have subsequently been remade without any fundamental changes in the nature of their gameplay and they were good, great even (XBLA perfect dark can still teach multiplayer lessons to just about any shooting game you care to point me at) but the N64 hardware and controller setup is awful so improve away. In basically all other instances that are not HD retexture* though I am all about the hardware support, even if I probably will be playing it on my nice emulator that does scaling and other good stuff.
*some of the HD retexture folks have some odd ideas as well, such things usually seeing me use words like overdesigned, but that is similar to people altering Tetris DS to play zelda theme rather than Korobeiniki -- I don't get it but I can at least write it off as a matter of (no) taste.
Thoughts of others.
