I've gotten a lot of comments from people both publicly and privately saying it's either worked or not worked for them so I let me just say this here and now in the future: This trick may not work for everyone, it varies from PC to PC as far as I know, so please just keep this in mind before continuing. If the fix itself makes the game less stable, just follow the same steps from the guide and set it back to your normal compatibility settings. If you're still willing to try, follow the guide steps below and START THE GAME!

To (possibly) prevent the game from crashing (or at least from crashing less), try running the game in Windows 7 Compatability Mode with the nmh.exe executable wherever you have No More Heroes 1 saved to.

So, as I just mentioned in the description, No More Heroes 1 (and 2 especially) have the tendency to crash every so often...aaaaaaaaand it's REALLY REALLY annoying. So, with some messing around (and also looking at other peoples; guides, thank you YAR Oracool for your No More Heroes 2 crash fix guide as well), I've (perhaps) found one way to fix some of the annoying crashes...and it's actually quite simple.

Believe it or not, simply running the game in Compatibility Mode COMPLETELY fixed my crashing issues I was having throughout my playthrough of the game and here's how you can fix your game too!:

Here's how to get there:

1. Open up your Steam (duh.)
2. Go to "Libary" (also duh.)
3. Right click on " No More Heroes "
5. Hover your mouse over "Manage" in the right click menu of the game.
6. Left click on "Browse local files", this will take you to your directory of where No More Heroes is installed.

Now to actually enable Compatibility Mode:

1. Right click on "nmh.exe" in the folder.
2. Left click "Properties" in the right click menu.

Okay, almost done!:

1. Left click on the "Compatibility" tab.
2. Left click on the check box where it says "Compatibility mode" in the section of the tab
3. There should now be a drop-down menu right under the check box that's now on, left click it to see the different operating system options.
4. From the options in that drop down menu, we want Windows 7, as it seems to be the most stable, I haven't tested any of the other operating systems, I'd imagine they'd be a mixed bag between working, being broken but launchable, or just unplayable, let me know what you guys find in the comments below. Anyways, just left click on "Windows 7."
5. After you're done setting that up, below the "Properties" window, click "OK" to exit out of the menu.

Aaaaaaaand that's it, you're done! Boot up the game and give it a go and see how well (or maybe not well depending on your PC, I've heard it this method doesn't work on every system, so keep that in mind) it works!

Look, I LOOOOOOOVE these games to bits...and I've only JUST NOW gotten around to finally playing them...but let's face it. These ports just aren't that great. They're capped at 60 FPS (in 2021, mind you. Nocturne HD Remaster's even worse with 30 FPS in 2021 as well which is granted 15 times more insulting than this[www.dsogaming.com] but the fact that NMH can't be uncapped is...weird. Probably another case of tying the physics to the framerate or something like that), they crash for no reason and too frequently (again, apparently this is a WAAAAAAAY bigger issue for 2's case, but is still annoying here, at times), and there's annoying little gameplay and visual bugs that annoy the heck out of players. As fans of the series, we deserved better ports, especially considering that these games are literally Nintendo Wii (technically Switch Ports, which is ironic considering I've been using a Switch Pro-Controller throughout my playthrough of the game) for crying out loud, it shouldn't be this hard to port these games. It's made even worse by the fact that the Devs haven't fixed ANY of the issues with these games asides from controller issues with the second game as far as I know. I'm just holding out for the Devs to please just listen to what people are asking for and FIX THESE GAMES. If they want a chance for these games to sell better on PC, it'd probably be in their best interests to do so....buuut I'm not a Dev for whoever ported these games, so I have no right to say anything. I'm just a Travis ID at the end of the day.

Hopefully, this guide helps some of you guys out there having these annoying issues. Special thanks again to YAR Oracool for inspiring me to make this guide for NMH1, be sure to check out their guide on how to fix crashes for No More Heroes 2 if you're (more than likely) experiencing crashes in THAT game too. Link their guide here.

I know I'm late in updating this but XSeed finally listened to people and got someone to fix this port to where its actually enjoyable. From what I've heard, the game's relatively stable now and you should only need to use this trick just in case the game's still not stable for you for whatever reason. They've fixed some of the bugs, there's button prompts now for all controllers as well as remapping and mouse & keyboard support (though I don't know why in god's name you would use it for a game like this), the achievements have been fixed (which means you can properly display it on your profile as a 100%'ed game like me. Hooray!), so this port's actually a viable way to play the game now.

And, as of 04/29/2025: No More Heroes 2 has also gotten the same treatment and I can proudly recommend these ports as a proper way to experience these the FULL series on PC. Took us long enough to get here, but better late than never.
Moe~ (Plush made PunchTig3r. It's sold out unfortunately, but here's the original link to it from where I bought it[punchtig3r.bigcartel.com].)