ROM Hack Ranma 1/2: Chougi Ranbu Hen SNES Patch Fixes Game's "Catastrophic" Frame Rate

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A new patch has just been released for Atelier Double and Shogakukan's 1994 fighting game Ranma 1/2: Chougi Ranbu Hen, which reportedly sets out to fix the Super Famicom game's "catastrophic" frame rate.

Ranma 1/2: Chougi Ranbu Hen is the third fighting game released for the Super Famicom based on the Ranma ½ anime and manga series about a cursed teenager named Ranma who is training in martial arts, and her father who has been transformed into a panda. It is also the only one for the system that wasn't given a Western release in some form, with Ranma ½: Chōnai Gekitōhen being localized by Irem as Street Combat, while Ranma ½: Bakuretsu Rantōhen was released in the US as Ranma ½: Hard Battle and in Europe as Ranma ½.

The game has a reputation for being a pretty competent fighter but is also known to suffer from a lot of noticeable slowdown with the frame rate never quite being able to maintain a steady 60 frames per second. So, as a result, a ROM hacker named upsilandre has just released a new hack to try to raise its performance and provide a smoother experience for new and existing players.

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Something important to note is that the hack isn't SA1 or FastROM-related, with upsilandre instead optimizing the code of some of the game's most "expensive tasks" such as the sprite and collision management, among other things. They have fixed four known collision bugs, further improving the game's precision.

The patch is now available to download from Romhacking.net, but unfortunately seems to currently be incompatible with Dynamic-Design's translation patch for the game.