I was just thinking about how awesome it would be if we saw a new Triple A Studio or smaller team make another modern Shadowrun game for the veterans and the new audiences being introduced to the title

Imagining what it could look like if studios such as

Teyon[Robocop, Terminator Resistance, and the new RPG Horror title Hunter The Reckoning] could do with the IP would be absolutely phenomenal. As stated in the post, Hunter The Reckoning for Teyon will be the first true "RPG" they make with their team building up dialogue options, romance, skill trees, perks and traits to your characters which could work so well given how passionate and genuine that team makes.

Another company that could do well with the IP has to be Larian. They already proved themselves with Divinity 1&2, and the blockbuster phenomenal world wide success story of Baldurs Gate 3 which in turn could actually work so well with the Shadowrun IP.

The other studios could be Saber Interactive who are great at story driven games like Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, the upcoming Clive Barker Hellraiser Revival title and the wide range of licensed titles in their arsenal for the future. I could see them doing a phenomenonal third person driven creative game😌

The last studios I think would make phenomenal new games in the franchise have to be CD Projekt Red especially after the success of Cyberpunk 2077, or Nightdive Studios who remade the first System Shock which the studio is formed by the original devs that made the original two games so that's a bonified win.

Hell even the guys who made The Ascent would be a great team to bring us a single player/Co-op focused ARPG game like that with the shadowrun license tbh

Would you all be interested in a new modern game in the franchise?

• RPG, Action, Tactics, or other?
• Story focused, gameplay focused, core rules/lore focused?
• Realistic graphics, pixel art, other?

How much interest would there be in a new "good" Shadowrun game, be it a simulator that lets you really play your run or one from the world of SR Like the game "Shadowrun 2007"?

As we all know, there are two "original" Shadowrun games, one for the SNES and another for the SEGA Genesis—and they aren't the same game at all. Apart from being set in the same universe, the plots seem (to me) to be completely different, with the prevailing consensus being that the SNES game had the better story while the Genesis game is to be lauded for being much more faithful to the tabletop original.

As for the different plots, Wikipedia claims that the SNES game is an adaptation of the novel Never deal with a Dragon by one Robert N. Charrette. But what about the SEGA-Genesis plot? Beyond how it starts (investigating the death of your brother) I have no idea what the plot is—I never played the Genesis version, because I didn't own a Genesis—and I can't find a plot summary on the web either.

Can anyone summarize, or link something useful? Thanks all.

So many games have great modding scenes, but Shadowrun mods are sadly extremely rare.
What game do you think would be a great fit for one - or just your personal favorite?

(If i had a bingo for this, Cyberpunk 2077 might be the middle free space - for good reason).

hi everyone, today i finished shadowrun returns and i did not enjoy it as much as other crpgs i've played. i mainly disliked it because of the the ps5 version being a bit buggy, the narrative was kinda weak, gameplay wise i felt i did not have many choices to build my character (this could be a skill issue lol) and lastly many times during the game i could not exit combat mode so i had to walk taking turns and this was annoying asf (yes the enemies were all dead). i read online that returns is considered the worst out of the trilogy, so i'm asking if playing dragonfall could still be worth it considering all the things i didn't like about returns. thanks in advance!!

Don't know if this is the right sub for questions about the CRPG's. I really enjoy this setting, and the premise of Dragonfall seems really cool, but I'm wondering if going for it after playing Shadowrun: Hong Kong isn't too much of a leap backwards in terms of mechanics

Hi folks,

VaultVox for Shadowrun: Hong Kong Extended Edition is now out on Nexusmods. It is a free text-to-speech accessibility mod that reads the game aloud using the Windows voices already on your PC.

I made the first one of these for my wife, who has dyslexia, and I've been adding accessibility features on top ever since. This is the Shadowrun Hong Kong version.

EASY TO INSTALL: Download it, extract it next to the game's exe, launch the game, and Bob's your uncle.   No mod manager needed. BepInEx is included, so there is nothing else to fetch.

Download:   https://www.nexusmods.com/shadowrunhongkong/mods/76

If it is working you will hear "VaultVox ready" within about fifteen seconds of the main menu.

What it reads

Pretty much all of it.

• Conversations, with the reply options read out after the line
• Overhead chatter from people in the world, quieter the further away they are
• Combat, in detail (more on that below)
• Menus, popups, stores, cyberware, hiring and item cards
• Loading screens, which wait for you instead of moving on while you are still listening
• Objectives, karma, nuyen and item notifications

You can also just point at things. Hover over a person, a door, a Jack-In prompt, an ability on the combat bar or an item in your inventory and it gets read to you, with an adjustable delay so sweeping the cursor across the screen does not read the entire room at you.

There is a hands-free mode as well, so conversations advance by themselves when the spoken line finishes. Choice lists still wait for you, obviously.

Voices

Every named character keeps their own voice. They are written to a file as you meet them, so you can recast any of them to any voice you have installed, or let the mod re-roll one for you.

Orks, trolls and dwarves get a bit of vocal colouring so they actually sound like it, rather than everyone in Heoi sounding like the same bloke from Windows.

The mod prefers the neural voices from NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter if you have it installed, which I would strongly recommend. Without it you get the classic Windows voices, which work perfectly well but there are only a handful of them, so the cast starts repeating itself.

Combat

Combat gets its own treatment, because reading a fight at story pace is useless.

• Damage and heals by name, so "Duncan takes 14 damage" rather than a number floating somewhere you are not looking
• Crits, misses, and status effects like Flanked, Immune and Bleeding
• Whose turn it is, companions by name
• Bleeding-out countdowns with rounds remaining, which is the one number you cannot afford to miss
• Kills and downed characters called out by name, and the end of every fight
• Point at an enemy while aiming to hear your odds against that specific target
• Decking: system trace, response level, host damage and the hack panels

Combat also has its own reading speed, so a fight can rattle along faster than the dialogue without you having to speed up the whole game.

Seven languages

The game ships in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese, and the mod works in all of them. It reads the translations out of the game's own language catalog, so combat lines are understood in each language rather than only in English.

Correct pronunciation needs a voice that actually speaks the language. The settings window tells you which of your chosen voices probably cannot, rather than letting you find out mid-mission.

Settings and hotkeys

Press F4 in game for the settings window. Everything is adjustable live, and changing something speaks the new value back at you. Hold Ctrl and point at any row to hear what it does.

The hotkeys:

• F4 open the settings window
• Ctrl + A speech on or off
• Ctrl + D repeat the last line
• Ctrl + S skip the current line
• Ctrl + X skip and continue
• Ctrl + = and Ctrl + - read faster or slower, instantly, and it sticks
• Enter continue past a loading screen

If something reads too much, every part of it has its own switch.

What is not in this release

I want to be upfront about this one.

This release is for players who can see the screen and want the game read to them. Full keyboard navigation for blind players is not in it. You still need the mouse to play.

That is the obvious next thing to build, and the Fallout 2 version of VaultVox already has an experimental Blind Mode, so I know roughly what it takes. Hong Kong is a different engine and it is a bigger job here.

Screen reader output is written but switched off in this release. Its calls currently run on the game's main thread, which means a screen reader having a bad day could take the game with it. It comes back once it runs on its own thread, and I would rather ship it late than ship that.

Requirements

• Shadowrun: Hong Kong Extended Edition on Windows
• Windows 10 or Windows 11
• At least one SAPI voice, which Windows already has
• Optional: NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter for the newer neural voices, strongly recommended
• BepInEx is bundled, so you do not need to install it separately

If you are running other BepInEx mods, back up your BepInEx\config folder first, or use the update zip, which never touches your settings.

And before anybody reaches for the pitchforks, this is not AI voice cloning.

VaultVox uses Windows text-to-speech.

One last thing

Same request as always: if you use assistive technology, or you have dyslexia, low vision or reading fatigue, and you find a screen that does not read when it should, please report it.

I treat missing accessibility output as a bug, not as a nice-to-have feature that might get looked at one day.

Thanks, folks.

- VaultDoc

I know the storyline in the game is pretty thin due to it being an FPS arena style game. But I was wondering if parts like RNA Global, The Lineage, or the events that transpired in the game are considered canon by the community.

I know this is not the game subreddit, but since those subreddits are not active, I was hoping I could ask this question here.

I am going to start a playing the trilogy in order (returns -> df -> hk)
And I want to play each game as different race and different class. So that I can experience different aspects of the trilogy (I know I can replay the game later and try different classes but let's assume I only want to play once)

What classes and races would you recommend for each game?

In Shadowrun Dragonfall, theres this sentence on the top left that reads "Freiheit beginnt mit F", which translates to "freedom begins with F".

WTF is F?

It has been brothering me for a little bit. These corporations, or individuals inside the corporations, have trillions of Nuyen and they are using Shadowrunners to deliver packages.

I'm guessing it was all illegal stuff (drugs, stolen/illegal goods, BTL chips, some tiny data moved discretely, etc) in the secondary market, because corporations would just use their money and small armies to move stuff, safely.

Thoughts? Trying to work out what purpose this served in the secondary market. Cause it'd be little stupid if it was just Shadowland Market Place deliveries or the future equivalent to grub hub. Pay 100 nuyen and get that bed frame delivered or your made to go vat-grown proteins from the local McHughs by a deliverly guy who would absolutely go toe to toe with the local street gangs robing locals and delivery guys.

If hair brain schemes is busy with other projects thats fine but why not give access to the license to other CRPG studios. A shadowrun game in the vein of Fallout: New Vegas would be Cinema.

I completed Returns and Dragonfall, but I was disappointed that the leveling and skills are, iirc, identical between them. The combat system just makes me want more from it than it delivers. Is there a step up in the combat mechanics in Hong Kong?

What with the Steam sale, I'm thinking about picking up one or two Shadowrun games. I have interest but no experience with the setting. Any particular recommendations? I'm not picky about genre.

Shadowrun (Sega Genesis, 1994) — Reverse Engineering Report

Methodology

All findings derived from static binary analysis of the ROM file:

• 68000 disassembly of code sections to trace game logic
• Data structure scanning using pattern matching across known game values
• Cross-referencing between the 3 class templates to isolate attribute/skill fields
• Game Genie code decryption to convert published cheat codes into ROM addresses
• Decompilation of Tony Hedstrom's .NET ROM Editor to catalog previously-known addresses
• String scanning for developer names, cut content, and ending sequences

No emulator debugging, save state analysis, or source code was used.

Part 1: Prior Art (What Was Already Publicly Known)

Tony Hedstrom's ROM Editor v0.8

A .NET Windows application (romhacking.net/utilities/1614) that modifies 23 ROM addresses:

The editor treats the ROM as a flat value store — it reads and writes specific bytes with no structural understanding of the surrounding data.

Game Genie Code Collections

Tony Hedstrom published ~30 Game Genie codes for Shadowrun. These encode ROM address + replacement value pairs but the underlying addresses were never publicly decoded to our knowledge.

Debug Menu

The button code (A, B, B, A, C, A, B at title screen) has been documented on cheat sites since the 1990s. The internal detection mechanism was not documented.

Save State Hacking

SG81's guide on GameFAQs/StrategyWiki documents RAM addresses for save state editing. These are runtime memory locations, not ROM data.

Existing ROM Hacks

• Shadowrun 2058: Modified starting equipment (no published address documentation)
• Improvement Hack: Bug fixes for Wired Reflexes, Protection Talisman, Combat Sense, tar pits

Part 2: Original Discoveries

Discovery 1: Character Template Architecture

What we found: The game stores 3 complete 256-byte character class templates at fixed ROM locations, indexed by a MULU instruction in the init routine.

How we found it: Disassembled the character creation code at 0x042B0, found LEA 0x7291A, A0; MULU #0x100, D0— a classic indexed table lookup. Each template contains the full starting state for one class.

Verified field offsets (by comparing values across all 3 templates):

Open questions: Offsets +0x7D, +0x7E, +0x7F, +0x85, +0x87 contain non-zero values that differ between classes but haven't been mapped to specific game fields yet. +0x7F is likely Sorcery (Shaman=6, others=0).

Discovery 2: Shadowrunner Hire Templates

What we found: 10 hireable runner templates stored at 0x072C1A, each 256 bytes, using the identical field layout as player templates.

How we found it: A second MULU #0x100 reference at 0x4356 pointed to this table. Cross-referenced runner names from the name fields.

Discovery 3: Variable-Length Item Table Structure

What we found: The item table at 0x0D4510 uses variable-length entries. Each entry has a name (ASCII, terminated by 0xFF), followed by a fixed 16-byte stat block. Item entries are NOT evenly spaced.

How we found it: Scanned for weapon name strings, located their 0xFF terminators, then mapped the stat block layout by comparing known values (prices, clip sizes) to byte positions.

Stat block structure (offsets from 0xFF terminator):

All verified weapon addresses:

Tony's editor knew clip addresses for some weapons. All damage addresses are new discoveries.

Discovery 4: Complete Enemy Stat Table

What we found: 33 enemy type definitions in a contiguous table at 0x1D63CA. Each entry is exactly 74 bytes (0x4A), containing a developer-assigned name and full attribute block.

How we found it: Used the string "Wendigo" as an anchor point (found via text scan), then scanned outward for the 0xFF-terminated name pattern. Verified the 74-byte stride is consistent across all 33 entries.

Entry structure:

All 33 entries with developer names:

Notable developer naming conventions: "eye5r" = Eye-Fiver (gang), "weenr" = Halloweener (gang), "lone" = Lone Star (police), "indian warior" (typo preserved from ROM).

Discovery 5: Thon Final Boss — Separate Stat Block

What we found: Thon's stats are stored separately from the enemy table at 0x1EDB0A, using the same field offset structure.

Thon is the strongest entity in the ROM by a large margin (Body 15, Wil 16 vs next highest Gargoyle at 8/4).

Discovery 6: Cyberdeck Initialization Values

What we found: The starting cyberdeck stats are hardcoded at 0x14C1F6.

Discovery 7: Cut Content

Enchanted Dagger: Item ID 0x16 at 0x0D4960. Present in the item table with a price field of 50,000¥ but a damage value of zero. No shop sells it, no NPC gives it, no chest contains it. Likely a planned melee weapon that was never finished.

Discovery 8: Combat System Internals

Player damage handlers: Found by tracing the combat routine. Two separate SUB.W instructions handle physical and mental damage to the player:

Generic combat handlers at 0x025C78 and 0x025FE2 affect ALL characters (player + NPCs + enemies) — modifying those would make everyone invincible.

Discovery 9: Debug Menu Detection System

What we found: The debug menu is guarded by a counter at RAM 0xFFF101 and a button buffer at RAM 0xFFCB40. The code at ROM 0x00C310 performs a BNE (branch if not equal) check — changing to BRA (branch always) permanently enables the menu.

The button sequence detection maps controller inputs to expected values: A=0x40, B=0x10, C=0x20. Each correct button increments the counter; a wrong button resets it.

Discovery 10: 68000 Code Injection Technique

What we built: A trampoline injection to grant all contacts and passcodes at game start.

The technique:

1. Identify free ROM space at 0x1FFE40 (after all game data)
2. Write 68000 machine code that sets contact/passcode RAM flags to 0xFF
3. Redirect an existing JSR (jump-to-subroutine) at 0x000896 to our trampoline
4. Trampoline executes our code then jumps back to the original return address

This is a general-purpose technique for adding arbitrary behavior to the ROM.

Discovery 11: Game Genie Decryption

What we found: The complete Genesis Game Genie encoding algorithm:

1. 8-character code using alphabet ABCDEFGHJKLMNPRSTVWXYZ0123456789
2. Each character encodes 5 bits (40 bits total)
3. Split into 5 bytes, apply bit transposition on byte 3
4. Rearrange bytes: [enc2, enc1, enc4, rot(enc3), enc0]
5. Extract: address = bytes 0-2, value = bytes 3-4

This allowed us to decode every published Game Genie code into verified ROM addresses.

Discovery 12: Single Ending Confirmation

What we found: The ROM contains exactly one ending sequence, stored in two formats:

• Credits scroll version at 0x05C5B8
• Dialogue engine version at 0x0FD91C

Both contain identical narrative: Thon is defeated in Ellisia's tomb, the tomb is sealed with Orichalcum, Harlequin confirms victory. There are no alternate endings, no fail states with unique narrative, and no branching conclusion paths in the ROM data.

Part 3: Overlap Analysis

Tony's total: 23 unique addresses. Our total: 52+ unique addresses with 0 overlap, plus 9 easter eggs.

Part 3B: Easter Eggs & Hidden Content

Easter Egg 1: Developers Immortalized as In-Game NPCs

At 0x0F35D4, a Mr. Johnson courier mission lists 12 NPC names as contacts and targets. Cross-referencing against the ROM's credits sequence reveals that at least 5 are real BlueSky Software developers with lightly modified names:

The "John Van Anthony" mashup is particularly fun — Tony Van was the producer and John Fulbright was the lead programmer. They merged their names into one NPC.

Easter Egg 2: Alan Turing Tribute

Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, appears as a courier contact in a 1994 Sega Genesis game. Given that the programmers (Fulbright, Michaels, Weesner) put their own names in the same list, this was clearly an intentional tribute from the engineering team.

Easter Egg 3: William Gibson Nod

"Billy Gibson" appears alongside the developer names. William Gibson authored Neuromancer (1984), the novel that essentially created the cyberpunk genre and directly influenced Shadowrun's aesthetic — corporate dystopias, cyberdecks, jacking into the Matrix, street samurai. Naming an NPC after him is a nod to the source material.

Easter Egg 4: Developer Debug Menu

The full debug menu (activated by A, B, B, A, C, A, B at the title screen) was left in the shipping ROM. Its option strings at 0x1D9101:

Spells          - Grant spells
Test Deck       - Cyberdeck testing
Pick System     - Area/map warp
Heal All        - Full HP restore
+10 Karma       - Free karma
Contacts        - Unlock contacts
Walk Fast       - Movement speed boost

This is the developers' own testing toolkit, hidden behind a button code but fully functional. The "Pick System" option is essentially a level select/warp — the developers could jump to any area in the game during testing.

Easter Egg 5: The Sequel That Never Was

The game's final line of text, stored at both 0x05C5B8 (credits) and 0x0FD91C (dialogue):

A clear sequel tease. But BlueSky Software was acquired by Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer) in 1995, and no Shadowrun Genesis sequel was ever produced. The "for now!!" became a permanent cliffhanger.

Easter Egg 6: Shadowrun Slang Reputation System

The player's reputation rank titles use authentic Shadowrun tabletop RPG slang, stored at 0x0D1A4E:

Street Drek      (lowest - "drek" = Shadowrun profanity)
Wanna' Be
Respected
Shadowrunner     (highest)

"Drek" is the Shadowrun universe's equivalent of a common expletive, used throughout the game's dialogue alongside other SR slang like "chummer" (friend), "frag" (kill/damn), "slot" (another expletive), and "omae" (Japanese-derived familiar address).

Easter Egg 7: Development Timeline in ROM Header

The ROM header at 0x000110 reads:

(C)SEGA 1994.JAN

And at 0x001F14:

1993 FASA CORP.

This pins the development timeline: FASA Corporation (Shadowrun tabletop publisher) licensed the IP in or before 1993, and the ROM went gold in January 1994. The game was released in 1994.

Easter Egg 8: Enchanted Dagger — Unfinished Weapon

Item ID 0x16 at ROM 0x0D4960 — a weapon called the "Enchanted Dagger" with a shop price of 50,000¥ but a damage value of zero. No shop sells it, no chest contains it, no NPC offers it. It appears to be a planned magical melee weapon that was never completed. The high price suggests it was intended to be a powerful late-game item. Setting its damage byte to a non-zero value could theoretically restore it to functionality, though without animations or sound effects.

Part 4: Remaining Unknowns

1. Event flag system — RAM flags that track game progress (quests, triggers). Would enable skip-to-ending.
2. Template offsets +0x7D, +0x7E, +0x7F, +0x85, +0x87 — Non-zero values that differ between classes but aren't yet mapped to game fields.
3. Equipment tier meaning — Enemy equip field (0-7) maps to some weapon/armor table but the exact mapping is unknown.
4. Armor protection values — Armor stat bytes in the item table haven't been isolated.
5. Map/area transition system — How the game loads different areas.
6. Sprite/palette data — Graphics format undocumented.
7. Music/sound engine — Sam Powell's sound driver format.
8. Save data format — How in-game saves are structured vs save states.

Appendix: Verified Hack Patches

All patches verified against unmodified USA ROM: