u/JBhWDWJGhujnDY8sAZaP

Faxanadu: Hollow Tree, a soulslike remake of Faxanadu (NES), first public preview

I’ve been turning Faxanadu into a Dark Souls game. The World Tree is hollow: gold is souls, you drop them where you die, and the gurus are bonfires.

What’s in this preview:

pick a vow (difficulty), a class and a look at New Game

souls and bloodstains, Estus flasks, eight stats to level at the gurus

stamina, guard and backstep; every monster shows its attack before it hits

lords with a second phase, fog walls, bosses that stay dead

21 new weapons, armours, shields and spells, some sold, some hidden in the world

a new soundtrack, with a switch back to the original music

two endings and New Game+

It’s a work in progress, so expect rough edges. It’s a BPS patch for the USA ROM, and it needs an emulator that runs 512 KB MMC1 games with battery saves (I test in Mesen).

Patch and notes: https://github.com/malexe3169/faxanadu-atlas/tree/main/hollow-tree

Feedback welcome, especially on difficulty.

Ever look at Faxanadu and think "you know what this needs? A versus fighting mode." Me neither. But here we are.

It's a ROM hack called Faxanadu Battle, a little Smash-ish brawler built out of Faxanadu's own sprites and screens. Pick a fighter, pick an arena, beat up a friend or the CPU.

What's in it:

- Two modes: Crown Scramble (grab the crown and hold it 30 seconds total — get hit, you drop it) and Duel (99 HP, knock the other one out).

- Play 1v1, against the CPU, or sit back and let two CPUs fight it out. The CPUs have five personalities, plus a Random one that rerolls every round.

- Seven fighters; Hero, Sword Dwarf, Skeleton Knight, Wolfman, Giant Strider, Grimlock, and a secret one you'll have to find. Each with its own special (Blade Beam, Shoulder Rush, Skewer, Pounce, Ground Slam, Retreat Shot…).

- Nine arenas(some more functionnal than others) built from real Faxanadu screens; a cone wrap around Pac-Man style. There's a sudden-death boss if a match drags, breakable jars that cough up bread/potions/wing boots, and a bird that flies through now and then dropping snacks.

- The usual fighting-game kit: short hops, charged attacks, rising and aerial attacks, a guard, specials, fast fall.

It's a patch, not a ROM: grab the .bps or .ips, apply it to a clean US Faxanadu dump, and run it in an emulator like Mesen. Heads-up — it needs 8 KB of extra work RAM, so it's emulator-only, not real hardware.

Download: https://github.com/malexe3169/faxanadu-atlas (the fax-battle folder)

Big disclaimer: it's experimental and the balance is very much a work in progress. If you give it a go, I'd love to hear what feels broken, which fighter is stupidly overpowered, and anything else really :)