/vr/ - Retro Games

I've never dabbled in proper ROM hacking before, but wanted to try making a small improvement patch to the F-Zero GBA games.
Each of the games have flickering mini-maps that can cause screen burn-in on IPS displays, the goal is to remove the flickering by making the maps always solid.

I have mostly no idea what I'm doing so I managed to accomplish something in the stupidest way I could think of: corrupting the ROM files using Real-Time Corruptor and then isolating the changes with the desire effect.

So far, I've achieved this much:
>F-Zero - Maximum Velocity (USA, Europe)
Changing 8bit address 2E5B4 from 10 to 00.
This makes the minimap solid in all modes I checked with seemingly no side effects.

>F-Zero - GP Legend (USA)
Changing 16bit address 2518E from 0840 to 0841.
This makes the minimap solid during races and most modes, except for a brief minimal display before the race starts in training mode.
This change is also compatible with e+ Complete content restoration ROM hack at https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5366/

>F-Zero - Climax (Japan)
Changing 16 bit address 271FC from 0028 to 0029.
This makes the minimap solid during races, but not during the Course Edit mode's Watch Race mode.
This change is also compatible with the unfinished English translation at http://www.romhacking.net/translations/4564/

I realise that proper ROM hacking would most likely disassemble the ROM, locate the functions that control how the minimap is drawn, and then modify those functions to produce a clean patch.
What I've done could potentially have unexpected consequences on running the game, since it's messing with binary integrity.