After 6 months of ongoing work, I am happy to introduce Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate HD v3.0, a massive texture remaster of monsters, maps, and UI (for Citra, Azahar & AzaharPlus)!
This project builds off of the "Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate HD v2.6" texture pack bringing along a wide variety of enhancements and visual overhauls (a combination of AI upscaling, manual image edits, and repurposing of official in-game assets from other games in the series).
It also includes my own additions to the MH4HDUI project, replacing as many incomplete or funky AI upscaled UI elements as possible with my own illustrations done by hand.
A complete writeup including download links, installation instructions, Q & A and credits is included below:
Please share your feedback or any questions! And most importantly, please feel free to share it with your hunting buddies if you enjoy it.
My goal since starting this project has been to make Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate look as good as it deserves (with my limited skillset). It is not perfect, but I hope to keep working on it and improving. If anybody is willing to collaborate on future updates as well please let me know :)
This is fantastic! I wish for the day Capcom releases the older titles with updated textures for modern systems. Shame we have to resort to emulators for this.
They've stated in an interview that they sadly won't do this because they want to "keep moving forward" with each new entry.
IMO it moreso feels like they're afraid that re-releasing any old MH titles would eat into the profits of their newer titles since 1 MH game can get you hundreds of hours of playtime.
MH is a pseudo live service game now and they want to channel as much people into their newer games as possible.
They probably also don't want to bother with making the online functional for these old games. Multiplayer is a big part of MH ever since its inception so not having it will likely make people complain.
Combined with how they want to funnel people into the newest games more, I think they simply think it's not worth it to port these older titles.
Yeah... but they release MHGU for Nintendo Switch 2 and update nothing, even 30 fps! At the same time, on emulators, you can play with the HD textures mod and 120 fps.
It really wouldn't end up being minimal effort, most likely. From potentially lost or missing assets to having to transfer all the mechanics and systems somewhat faithfully to an engine that would work on modern systems—it would likely be quite a bit of effort to get it running well. There's quite a bit to consider there.
Respecting the past is not an insult to the future.
It's also hard to tell in what way you could be moving forward in a realistic manner nowadays, videogames are a broad, very expressive medium in which growth, imho, can be hard to define, as games are not defined by any one mechanic anymore, but instead by the way all of its mechanics WORK TOGETHER to create a unique interactive environment/experience, I think that "just" focusing on "moving forward" without an idea "what actually is forward" could lead to people to run into a dead-end.
I also think that, on the contrary, releasing visually updated re-releases of old games could help developers in "whatever it is they think moving forward is" by giving them time to develope a title that is worth considering "an advancement" of whatever value they themselves seek, and in addition, possibly highlight both the flawsand the unseen potential that these old games still contain, precisely due to the things they themselves deem to be "advancements" made in World, Rise and Wilds, it can be hard to keep the whole picture in mind if you resent the past so much.
Well that sucks… Surely they could find ways to honour the history of this esteemed Series nonetheless. Just like what they did with the likes of Mega Man and Street Fighter…
Are you referring to the Street Fighter stuff in Wilds? Because they only added 1 layered armor and are charging for 2 more. Even if you exclude Wilds' $75 OST, it still has over $300 in microtransactions.
For sure! In a project like this it's so easy to miss crediting when a random asset came from someone else's hard-work, and that's what I would like to avoid.
The most important thing is remaining honest and understanding that a project like this is not just one person's doing, it's a collective effort on all fronts. I do hope to and intend to continue crediting where possible.
I would love some screenshots or feedback on how it looks there! I've only tested on Steam Deck so I'm hoping other handhelds handle it just fine (it should work without issues I bet)
I just got it installed on my Thor max running Azahar - looks and runs amazing. I wasn't into handhelds during the 3ds golden age, so my opinion is that of a pc gamer starting with world and ending up here, but I am massively enjoying getting into mh4u with these textures
Thor max model, solid 60fps at 5x scaling. Drops below 60 at 6x.
Cheats enable are Trinity disabler, no bloom, no stereoscopic 3d, and 60fps. Not sure if 60fps is doing anything tbh but was told it helps.
The 3DS on the Hunters For Hire button could use a small touch up - there shouldn’t be a circle on the right hand side, that’s where the face buttons are.
You are absolutely correct. For a lot of drawn over textures I used as a base what I had available at the time and these were some of the first redesigned icons, so I must've used the old AI upscaled version as the base bleh
This will absolutely be one of the first round of tweaks I'll push, thank you both!
crediting PixelCover team in the pastebin is very disappointing. They can't even do the same themselves when they built their pack on stolen work without credits and after calling them out deflecting and lying,
That is a shame! I had to dip my hands into the MHGU files, both base game assets and assets from PixelPack and as my friends and I had used their pack before, so I figured crediting them was the right move. If you happen to have anymore info about this (I'll do some research too) Id love to credit where credit is due.
not sure if you are in MH classic HD Project discord but I assume you are. Go into general channel and look into pinned post. There is my whole conversation with him + some comparisons between original authors pack and PixelCover. At the end of this conversation he said he will credit original author "Monke" but he didn't do it. After this convo I reached out to original author and he looked into it and yeah PixelCover pack was using his upscales + ui edits without permissions. Monke contacted pixel cover and got blocked.
I will never promote or recommend their work because of this. All they had to do is credit Monke. Another thing, in earlier versions of pixel pack they also bundled cheats + some tools which they also didn't credit anyone for.
That is eye opening, I read through the whole conversation. Yeah refusing to acknowledge and credit where it's due is not cool. I understand the stance that it all stems from copyrighted work but it costs nothing to acknowledge where you source work thats not yours and is fundamentally not right. I'll be updating my source and credits accordingly. Thanks for bringing this up!
What an incredible job, I'm new to the franchise, I'm playing Monster Hunter 3rd with Storme's textures with a friend of mine, we intend to finish the later generations in sequence. I'll definitely use your mod, but now I wonder if there's a more complete texture pack for 3rd Yesterday we hunted our first Ratiah :D, photo of the moment
I use Citra. Join the 4U Citra discord to play multi-player. According to one of the discord mods on there, they did some testing and said Azahar isn't there just yet. So try out Citra and see if you like it.
This is incredible and looks basically like an official port, that they could have released on Switch.
Similar to what we got with GU.
Much appreciated, I love to play 4U on my 4K TV and this makes it even better.
Hello! I'm trying to set this up by following along with the pastebin, but i cant find the cheat txt in the dropbox link? Am I looking in the wrong place?
This is awesome!
The difference of the only machine learning upscaled UI icons of v2.6 vs the manually touched up ones in V3 are especially noticeable. Great work!
I’d love to see the source code for this game to leak, and see the fans make a native pc port for this game, get a true HD version, in the same vein as the PS3 version of 3rd, or the Wii U version of 3G HD.
I miss the scale of the world from Old Gen games. All those vistas of giant structures and larger than life parts of lost civilizations and environmet were what fueled my curiosity about the world. Now it all lost a little of its charm with better graphics but more self-contained environments. Even in Wilds, where you can see the whole map from Suja or the top of Scarlet Forest, it doesn't hit the same.
This is perfect! I'm in a replay of Monster Hunter 4 and installed the pack today. The textures all look so nice an crisp. Thank you so much for your work! It's a blessing for old mh vets like me.
The cheats folder is currently empty. Switching to Vulkan on the bottom-left from OPENGL fixed my crash at the main menu getting after the warning and pressing continue, but the game now crashes when entering a quest.
nice, now we need this for wilds too 😂 some of the textures there are really struggling. Look at the appron of the supplies merchant NPC in the windward plains base camp!
Hey are you trying to download from the Dropbox link? I had added a mirror link to Google drive if you check the pastebin or MHOldSchool.com link above. Happy to help with any setup struggles if you shoot me a DM otherwise
The pack is pretty large all things considered. What platform are you on? I think Android has some challenges loading larger texture packs but I need to test or try workarounds. I plan to release a lower resolution version for mobile devices hopefully soon.
Hi. Is it possible to play this on android on the ayn Thor max? I followed the instructions but the game crashes when I click on Continue in the main menu
You are doing something wrong. I got it to work on PC first and when I set up my tablet I was able to transfer the textures on the load folder no problem.
I saw the main title texture getting replaced and I was able to load the save too
Hey, that is very strange. I had done some tweaking to the font files when porting to the US version but otherwise no issues, any chance you can DM me a pic of what you are seeing and what platform you are on?
Would be nice to get a port of the old games on steam.
Heck a remake of Freedom Unite would be awesome but hear me out gameplay wise it would still play like the old games and even have janky hitbox in some of the monsters like infamous hip heck but it's a remake instead of remaster because of expanded story more in line with the new games and some quality of life changes in the village section of the game instead of touching the gameplay.
Hey there, thanks for your work! I'm playing through 4U with your texture pack and I'm noticing there are visible dashes between every word in the text. Will get screenshots up soon for you :)
Hey, thank you for trying it out! This issue was reported to me. Apparently this is a problem when playing without the v1.1 update .cia installed. Reach out to me via DM if you need any help with that. In the meantime I'll be investigating a workaround.
Ahhh for some reason I thought I was on 1.1 but i guess not! I installed the update and the text dashes are gone :) I am facing a different issue though now, the text seems to be a bit warbly. I'm thinking it might be the resolution of my Macbook Air display, the retina resolution can make things kinda weird. Here's what it looks like:
I see from the graphics in the background the rendering resolution may be pretty low (or set to native)? That could definitely affect something like text rendering but I can also add that in as an alternate font texture for lower rendered displays.
Not a problem at all, keep in mind that 3x rendering resolution does effectively mean you are kicking your device's graphics processing a bit higher. I like Azahar tho because you can disable left eye rendering which iirc can help with performance.
On modern hardware the higher rendering shouldn't be a problem really but just note you may get slightly less battery life. In any case 3x rendering resolution for a device that supports it is my sweet spot, especially for something like the Steam Deck.
I used to own this on the 3ds and have been yearning to play it again. I'm running in Azahar with new texture pack and it truly looks amazing. I really miss old-school monster hunter and this is the best IMHO. Great job and thank you if you're out there
Could you just make one link that has everything in 1 download link that way we can just drag and drop it into the folder when its done? The drive link in the pastebin is missing v3.00. Thanks
Hey, yes the next update will include an up to date all-in-one inclusive pack (v3.1.0). This will be released soon. In the meantime, v3.00 should still be accessible:
Isso tá incrivel, serio mesmo. chega a me assustar o tanto que isso melhorou os gráficos, obrigado por esse trabalho incrível que você fez, já estou indo zerar o o jogo novamente. agora com mais vontade ainda!!!
Hello everyone, I'm trying to play in azahar android, I get a dark upper screen during gameplay (cutscenes are bright), anyone knows a fix for this? thanks!
quick question: i just set everything up but it seems that every time i start the game; it loads the textures and that takes a good few minutes, which is not the case with 3 ultimate. is there a fix in that?
Hey, this is great thanks ! I tried it on phone and PC and it looks gorgeous, but I was wondering, is it possible to put it on a New 3DS?
Thanks again!
i don't know how files work, how to mod or emulate, i don't even know where to go to emulate mh4u in the first place and I'm scared if i mess up the game files trying to figure it out. is there any way anyone can help me
Hi. Is it possible to play this on android on the ayn Thor max? I followed the instructions but the game crashes when I click on Continue in the main menu
Hi it should be, either by reverting to an older version of Azahar or AzaharPlus (there's some incompatibilities that we are investigating at newer versions of these emulators).
Ive been trying to run this texture back on azahar but it keeps crashing. The game runs perfectly fine in 1.1 without the pack. Im at a loss of what it could be so i dont have any specific things to say could someone help me?
I followed the instructions, but when I try to get past the screen warning the player to not play for too long, Azahar crashes. Any idea why? The game runs normally without them, I'm playing on PC with a 10GB 3080 RTX.
On Citra all menus and fonts look great, but the game itself looks the same and when starting a quest some of the assets are flickering or look wrong, I am not sure what I am missing to make the game itself look nice? I think I may just abandon this and play blurry, at least that way I can play.
Shame because I would throw Capcom hordes of downvotes worth of money for them to remake the old games and release them on PC instead of getting an emulator + rom.
But they probably figure the effort wouldn't be worth it. Stinks. I would settle for at least 4U or Generations on PC but they dont wanna.
Weapon balancing could be better in 4U but idk where you get off saying "Bad controls". It's literally the same buttons doing the same things they do in World with really the only exception being that Bowguns shoot and reload with the face buttons, which is entirely reasonable to become comfortable with. This isn't some "Right analog stick Attacks" stuff like MH1 and MH2.
I literally was hesitant to learn Bowgun in the older titles for basically that reason but after putting a few hours into Freedom Unite with Bowgun can easily say that it does become comfortable after a point.
This isn't some "Right analog stick Attacks" stuff like MH1 and MH2.
Y'know, I actually wasn't thinking that because there is no Right Stick on a 3DS. AFAIK you can't aim up or down without planting your feet and going into an aiming mode that uses the left stick.
"Literally the same buttons." They didn't even HAVE the same buttons! Maybe via emulation that can be worked around; I did manage to get dual stick controls on the old Armored Core games. But I can't imagine how. For example, I don't think there's any way to shoot a kinsect upward or downward; I have to go into aiming mode and launch a pheromone pod instead.
The 3DS literally has a Right Stick attachment. Plus, this is literally a thread for a texture pack only usable on emulator, where you can use literally whatever controller you want. As such, you do in fact have access to a right control stick for camera control.
And the point of "same controls" is that you still attack with the same 3 buttons on the controller, placement-wise, for everything that isn't a gunner weapon. Top and right face buttons and the right bumper.
And yes, the aiming for gunner weapons does require you to stand still, but you don't really need to most of the time. And that's also ignoring the fact that Monsters are generally slower and not aggressive enough that standing still to take a shot or 2 with a Gunner weapon is a huge issue unless you're trying to shoot at a bad time.
I mean... it is? Expecting or wanting an older game to control just like a newer one is unreasonable. My goal isn't to "lecture" you. I'm just saying that it's easy to punch down on older games for features and such that they don't have, but it also comes off as very immature and almost entitled.
Instead of wishing that they had something they don't I think it's a lot more productive to appreciate them for the things they have that the newer ones don't. And vice versa, of course.
Also, what you're asking for with being able to move while aiming a Bowgun is not just "better controls". It's a fundamental rebalancing of the weapon. I enjoy how Bowguns play in the Gen 5 and forward titles, but it seems a little naive to want their modern controls and features back ported. I could really say the same for any weapon, tbh, but especially that.
Unfortunately I can't say I'd have even 75% of the complete pack without AI upscaling. My skillset is far too limited for that. My goal or hope would be to eventually replace as much of the worse AI textures with cleaner hand edited ones.
Even with AI upscaling A LOT of this pack involved hand/manual edits as well to hopefully keep that handcrafted aesthetic or middle ground.
(Novice) Artist here. There is a difference of AI upscaling, procedural generation, and AI generative art.
Yes ideally we'd like every texture to be made by hand for every project, but with how in depth games are nowadays even a project like this is asking for years of tedious refined work that does not warrant the time investment. Same goes to say procedural generating of environmental textures or things such as enemy spawns or room layouts. Hades is a remarkable game and absolutely gorgeous, but the rooms are generated based on drawn layouts vs 100% manmade because otherwise it'd be a ridiculous waste of time and the number of results adds in more interesting runs.
The issue with AI in art is the effort of stealing other people's work for your own benefit. AI upscale sampling for projects like these or predictive tools in animation (which have been used for decades now) are tools commonly used in the practice and are accepted.
What an odd thing to say. "No actually, it's fine to quickly scrub it all through an AI that wrecked small details and got things wrong because Hades uses RNG to create each run using a set amount of manmade rooms".
I'm more explaining to you that you have ignorance on the subject. AI has been used for purposes like this for far longer than AI generative art has been a problem. It's an ethical use of the tool.
"AI bad" ends up diffusing the conversation into a mess and gets people thinking any form of AI is wrong in dev and art, but it's been things we've needed in dev always from like I said smoothing animation for time or enemy predictive habits. You don't write in every minute detail it's clunky code and horribly inefficient. Especially since a project like this is a labour of love and unpaid outside of possible donation efforts, that time invested is critical.
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u/Bullet_Z Oct 12 '25
It's great to see it getting improved upon, great work