Improve my life. Or at least my games. With romhacks.

[Lyrai]

So I got myself a nice everdrive and a RetroPi (That I should improve, it's a bit old now) and elsewhere, someone showed me Maternalbound Redux, an improvement hack for Earthbound, focused not on remaking or converting the game, but increasing its quality and fidelity, and I thought "I should take advantage of my everdrive and load it up with improvement hacks" and so I turn to the tyrants to ask what other improvement hacks for SNES (or any system, really) that they know of that I should play.

 

[ArugulaZ]

Wilford Brimley Battle!

Uh, not really. There are a lot of Sega Genesis game mods that offer audiovisual touch ups to the original releases. For instance, there's a Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition that cleans up the voices while making the colors pop. Another mod makes Raiden more faithful to the arcade game, with such added details as flowing rivers. On the Super NES side you've got games like Gradius III and Axelay which were enhanced with a DSP chip, making them run more smoothly.

It'd probably be easier to point you to ROMhacking.net, which has tons and tons of goodies like this.

 

[nosimpleway]

there's a Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition that cleans up the voices while making the colors pop. Another mod makes Raiden more faithful to the arcade game,

Raiden wasn't in Street Fighter until Capcom vs SNK 2, since he's from Fatal Fuohhhhhhh never mind

 

[Fyonn]

Lyrai, you're in luck, I love looking for this stuff. Almost more than playing the games themselves. Watch this space because I finished my work for the weekend on Friday, and need to stay awake.

Here we go:

Nintendo Entertainment System
Castlevania II English Retranslation + Map
This is not Redacted. This translation maintains faithfulness to the original script, including the liars. Everything anyone says is exactly as comprehensible as intended, though, so the actual hints are actually useful. Also has some very cool quality of life stuff like real-time day/night transitions and an extremely cool cinematic intro based on the instruction booklet's prologue.
Final Fantasy Restored
Final Fantasy 1, but with bug fixes and just generally nicer to play. Similar to the FF1 Randomizer's fixes, sans randomizer. INT and Magic Evasion fixes are in separate patches because they're so broken it's not clear how they were even meant to work.
Metroid + Saving 0.3 OR Metroid + Saving 0.4 Unofficial Update
Both these hacks add a scrollable complete world map, and in-game saves. 0.3 is more true to the original experience, where 0.4 Unofficial Update adds cool stuff like a mini-map, wall jumping (only while already ascending), and cheaper missile doors.
Mother 25th Anniversary Edition
Massive, sweeping graphical changes and EXP, encounter rate, and character starting level rebalances under the hood. Uses a retranslation by Tomato, who you may remember from the only way to play Mother 3.
Zelda 2 Redux
What if literally everything about Zelda 2 was better? This changes so many small things that it's impossible to list them all, but the result is an experience that is much more forgiving and with less rough edges. The respawning at a temple if you game over in it alone is worth getting this hack. It also includes a bunch of optional hacks that turn off its changes individually so you can opt out of anything you think is too much.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Mega Man X 3 Zero Project 4.4
It's Mega Man X 3 with in-game saving and completely revamped mechanics for Zero, including the ability to play as Zero for the whole game. Zero is an absolute boss destroying machine, but his best moves leave him open to taking tons of damage very quickly, so fights end quick. I played an older version, though, so I can't directly vouch for this one.

Gameboy Advance
Castlevania Curse of the Moon Card Mode
The cards that grant you abilities are placed in the world instead of being dropped by monsters. Monsters that used to drop cards now drop Meat, a welcome additional source of frequently scarce healing in Curse of the Moon.
Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance: Aesthetic Animation
What if you were playing Harmony of Dissonance and Juste didn't look like ass?
Final Fantasy IV Sound Restoration and Final Fantasy V Sound Restoration + No Framerate Drop and Final Fantasy VI Sound Restoration + Reduced Framerate Drops and Final Fantasy VI Color Restoration
All these do exactly what they say on the tin. In my opinion, they're mandatory. Both FFVI ones will work together, you don't have to decide.
Final Fantasy V Custom Advance
Just for fun, every ability slot on every character can be swapped out for something else. You can even remove Fight. Also you get the new classes from V Advance much earlier so you can play with them more. Apparently in the newest version abilities provide stat bonuses ala Materia from FF7? Wild.
Mother 1 + 2 Retranslation
What if instead of "better" you just want "in a different aspect ratio". This patch is for you. The GBA release of Mother 1 + 2, both games intact other than their complete translations. Be aware, this is a buggier and solidly worse version of Mother 2 than any other - the bugs in the GBA release were left intact, too.

Playstation 1
Mega Man X6 Tweaks
Massive quality-of-life fixes for Mega Man X6. The game's still an asshole, but in a manageable, reasonable way instead of being an absolute nightmare barely holding itself together. The best parts are the quicker ramp into being able to equip Parts, shared upgrades, all Reploids that don't give you something being removed from the game, and infinite chances to save Reploids. Also that one miniboss you fight a billion times has like 25% as much HP.

Addendum
Un-Worked Designs Patches
Working Designs fucked with every game they touched. These patches unfuck the gameplay of the English releases of those games.
Example Working Designs change:

All regular enemies have their stats restored to their original levels from the Japanese version. (In general, the US version reduced enemy HP by 10%, increased Attack by 20-40%, reduced EXP payout by 15%, and reduced Silver payout by 11%.)

 

[ShakeWell]

FWIW, there is a general thread about ROMhacks, but I would say the recent Resident Evil True Director's Cut is one to check out. Also, he's done a couple more since, but I did a video on Vitor's SA-1 hacks for a variety of SNES games.

 

[SpoonyBard]

I can recommend the Castlevania II patch, and the sound restorations for the GBA FF games. I don't play the FF5 Four Job Fiesta on anything other than the patched rom anymore.

I'd also like to mention Maeson's Breath of Fire II patch which makes the game less grindy and stupid overall. Some might think it's an overcorrection and it ends up too easy, but these days I ain't got time for vanilla BoFII's BS.

Related, there's Ryuusei's Breath of Fire II Retranslation which makes the script much easier to follow, but it does lose some of that quirky charm. It also might not be your cup of tea since the patch also messes with things like the intro and the menu screen. On the plus side, it is compatible with Maeson's patch so if you'd like what feels like a new BoFII experience it might be worth a shot. (I've never been able to get the combined patches to work on my SNES Classic, though, it would only accept either one or the other)

 

[Fyonn]

kicks down thread door
Final Fantasy IX ATB Speed Up!
kicks down a different thread door and leaves through it