Shadowrun Defragged
More than 30 patches that clean up the Genesis Shadowrun's buggy combat, magic and interface while staying close to the original design, in a full and a strict bug-fix-only flavor.
What it fixes
Defragged is meant as a layer of polish rather than an overhaul. In combat, weapon attachments such as smartlinks, laser sights and gas vents now work as intended (the original read them wrongly, which also made shotguns too strong), cyberware bonuses are consistent, and melee no longer causes instant deaths for characters with Wired Reflexes. Spell glitches that made parties with more than one caster impractical are fixed, the Power Focus and Protection Talisman behave the way you would expect, and the final boss encounter no longer soft-locks or acts strangely. Various screen glitches and tooltips are cleaned up as well.
Two flavors
The recommended Defragged patch also makes a few balance changes: magic damage from Hell Hounds and Thon is a little easier to resist, and the Tar Pit intrusion countermeasure only disables your programs until the end of the run instead of deleting them. Defragged Core keeps strictly to unambiguous bug fixes. Saves work with both and with the original game.
Version 1.0.1 makes saving work on third-party cartridges that need it, stops Renraku strike teams from carrying attachments that became too deadly after the fix, and corrects two cyberdeck shop issues.
Playing it
Apply your chosen patch to your own copy of Shadowrun for the Genesis, following the instructions in benfoxworthy's repository, which also documents every change in detail.
The images show the original game, not the patch.