SNES ROMhacks and Homebrews

It’s a simple fact that Nintendo are not making games for the SNES anymore. Shame, but…oh well? With amazing ROM hacks and homebrews like these, it shows that people can do what Nintendon’t. Hopefully someone can lower the Switch 2 prices soon though.

 

Fire Emblem Binary & Fire Emblem: New Theory Of Thracia 776

Fire Emblem: Binary and New Theory of Thracia 776 are more than just simple re-translation jobs for two Fire Emblem games that are, bafflingly, still locked to Japan, those being Genealogy of a Holy War and Thracia 776. If you’ve not played those two games before though, you should probably seek out those translations first before moving on to these admittedly more advanced ROMHacks.

While they offer the same game, in a sense, the gameplay mechanics and overhauls shown in these hacks give the game a bit more edge. Even still though, there’s a couple of changes to the story in terms of events and pacing that really make both experiences feel more complete, with New Theory of Thracia 776 being a bit more transformative in its execution.

For Binary, the changes range from Pursuit no longer being required to perform double hits, more of the game’s holy weapons are now obtainable and weapons on the whole have been rebalanced “so axe users are no longer completely left in the dust”. New Theory Of Thracia 776 is a bit of a different approach, restoring a lot of allegedly cut content while giving players more choice in how they want to progress through the story, leading to some brand new events and party members. According to the hack’s developer, fe5_ai, there’s over double the amount of original text added, and the hack is still being worked on today. It’s ambitious stuff, and we have to applaud them for it.

 

Zelda: Parallel Worlds

The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past would probably be considered the best Zelda game ever made if it wasn’t for the small fact of Ocarina of Time getting in the way. Or Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland obviously. Still, it’s a phenomenal game, so it’s not really a surprise that people wanted to extend that game’s lifespan in any way they could. A common way of doing so is via ROMHacks, and one of the most successful and notorious of them all is Zelda: Parallel Worlds. Like other examples on this list though, Parallel Worlds isn’t for those who haven’t played the original game, especially because Parallel Worlds is an entirely new experience with new dungeons and a new overworld to explore. Also, new music too.

Originally developed by Euclid and SePH and released in 2006, Parallel Worlds quickly became notorious as one of the toughest Zelda ROMHacks of all time, but over the years, it’s managed to stand the test of time and be considered a core pillar of Zelda ROMHacking. It’s also a ROMHack that’s been reiterated upon numerous times over the years, with 2012’s Parallel Remodel by PuzzleDude drastically rebalancing the difficulty to make it less diabolically taxing. There’s also the tenth anniversary update, with help from qwertymodo, which is more in line with the original in terms of difficulty yet still brings a host of new features. Don’t expect a breeze but definitely give this one a chance. I am pondering my orb for a segue.

 

New Super Mario World 1: The 12 Magic Orbs

How do you improve on a platformer that many would consider to be one of the single greatest contributions to the entire genre? The answer is that you kind of don’t, but instead, you can pull elements from both Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3 to create an all consuming goliath of a game that’s bigger than the original and filled with plenty of amazing levels and power-ups to discover.

That’s the approach that New Super Mario World 1: The 12 Magic Orbs took, which even adds more to the story of a Mario game, considering Bowser doesn’t even kidnap Peach in this ROMHack. He does abscond with the titular 12 Magic Orbs though in an attempt to seize ultimate power, so it’s not like Bowser isn’t being his usual dickhead self.

With 12 worlds and nearly 100 levels, New Super Mario World 1 offers an increased amount of content over the original, but if somehow that’s still not enough Super Mario World ROMHacking for you, the team behind NSMW 1 made a sequel, Around The World. If 12 unique worlds didn’t sound like it was ambitious enough, Around The World offers 16 different worlds and another 90+ levels, so between the two of these ROMHacks, you’ve got about 20 hours of premier platforming fun. The best part about Super Mario World ROMHacking though is that there’s always another choice, another version that’ll entertain you forever.

 

Chrono Trigger: Prophet’s Guile

ROMHacks of Chrono Trigger are a notoriously contentious part of the fangaming genre/hobby/industry or whatever you want to call it, as it’s the site of one of the biggest cease and desists in ROMHacking. A few weeks before Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, an ambitious fangame that attempted to use Chrono Trigger to bridge the gap to its sequel, Chrono Cross, Square Enix would send a cease and desist to the development team, Kajar Laboratories, forcing them to never release it.

To be fair to Square (I know, stop booing), Crimson Echoes was aimed to launch in 2009, about a year after the release of Chrono Trigger DS which added a new scenario that did bridge the gap between Trigger and Cross. Talk about stepping on toes.

Of course, builds of Crimson Echoes would sneak out years later, so it is out there and playable if you’re curious, but that cease and desist was certainly an “uh oh” moment. Before Square nuked Kajar though, they managed to release Prophet’s Guile two years earlier. Spoilers for the main game, but Prophet’s Guile focuses specifically on one character instead of the whole party, as Magus in the 12000 BC timeline tries to gain the trust of Queen Zeal so they can confront Lavos in the Ocean Palace. Even though it’s only an hour long, it’s been considered by a lot of Chrono Trigger fans to be a great addition to the Chrono Trigger timeline.  And it costs zero.

 

Mega Man X3 – Zero Project

Mega Man fans might genuinely prefer Zero to Mega Man/X/Blue Bomber or whatever he’s calling himself at this point, so when Mega Man X3 made Zero a playable character, you’d think it’d be the most popular game in the whole franchise, right? Not quite, and that might be because actually controlling Zero in X3 is the most limited experience you could imagine. No upgrades or new weapons, and he can’t be used in any boss fights? Like, what’s even the point? Naturally, that wasn’t going to sit well with ROMHackers, so enter Zero Project, developed by justin3009, who has made it their mission to make Zero an actually fully fledged part of the game.

This is more than just a simple “make Zero playable, enough said” ROMHack though, as justin3009 has gone through the painstaking effort to change the cutscenes and dialogue across the whole game to reflect whether or not you choose to play as X or Zero. If that’s not enough of a change for you, the password system has been completely removed and replaced with a proper save system, along with New Game+ as an extra treat. Compared to other ROMHacks featured in this video, Mega Man X3 – Zero Project might not be the most transformative game, but it’s a prime example of delivering something that people felt the original game didn’t capitalise on.

 

BS F-Zero Deluxe

Not all ROMHacks are about conjuring up new content out of thin air. Sometimes, they’re developed with a view to restore a bunch of cut or unfinished content, ideas that the original developers might’ve had but either didn’t have time to finish or were just left in the game’s code. That was the case with Chrono Trigger+, another ROMHack that fleshes out areas like 1999 based on cut content, but sometimes as well, ROMHacks can actually revitalise content thought lost to time. Take, for instance, F-Zero for the SNES. In Japan, players were able to enjoy BS F-Zero Grand Prix 1 & 2, which were available to download through the Satellaview modem peripheral. Those specific tracks weren’t archived, so when Satellaview servers were nuked, so were the BS F-Zero GP tracks.

ROMHacker Guy Perfect, along with the team who worked with them, just wasn’t having that though, so using VHS tape footage of all the tracks, they’ve managed to recreate every single Satellaview track in one handy ROM, BS F-Zero Deluxe. This is truly the definitive version of one of the SNES’ greatest racing games, including multiple versions of tracks depending on if the Satellaview version introduced changes, and even includes the four additional vehicles from BS. Just to add that extra special touch, the time trial ghosts from Satellaview have even been implemented. Sometimes ROMHacks manage to exceed the original work, and this is one of those times. Hopefully a new F-Zero is on the horizons.

 

Super Mario Kart Horizons

Considering it was the game that really kickstarted the gaming industry’s love affair with mascots in go-karts, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that there’s dozens of different ROMHacks for Super Mario Kart alone. Most of them offer new tracks, though a couple of them, like Hyper Street Kart or Super Spongebob Kart, reimagine the game as a Street Fighter or Spongebob Squarepants related kart racers. There’s even a Super Mario Kart 8, which as you might’ve guessed already is a demake for Mario Kart 8 in the SMK engine. All of this is to say that Super Mario Kart ROMHacking is practically a cottage industry in and of itself, so trying to pick just one to focus on is a bit tough.

Today, we’re spotlighting Super Mario Kart Horizons, an exhaustive overhaul of Super Mario Kart that’s all about aesthetics. If there was a competition for the most gorgeous looking ROMHack of all-time, Horizons might take the cake just based on the beautiful sunset on the title screen alone. What this ROMHack offers is 20 original tracks based on eight brand new themes, along with four new battle stages, updated character sprites, support for 50, 100 and 150cc and even an unlockable Mirror Mode and a harder difficulty setting for those hoping for more challenge. If that’s not enough to sell you on this ambitious as hell ROMHack, you should also know that this hack has been tested and will work on original hardware, not just an emulator, which is frankly astonishing.

 

Final Fantasy 6: Divergent Paths

If you thought the dozens of Super Mario Kart ROMHacks were impressive, Final Fantasy 6 nearly doubles that with 237 separate hacks just for this one game listed on ROMHacking.net at the time of writing. Every single one of these hacks changes something about the game, big or small, whether that’s something small like bug fixes, or something much bigger like a complete overhaul with new stories and characters. Depending on what you want from your enhanced Final Fantasy VI experience, ROMHacks should see your needs met, but in this instance, we’re choosing to talk about Divergent Paths, a hack that could be seen as a director’s cut for FFVI. Potentially, this is the one hack in this video that you could start your FFVI playthrough with.

Instead of offering a brand new experience, the over two dozen hackers credited on Divergent Paths aimed on telling a more complete version of Final Fantasy VI, with additional story cutscenes and some slight rearranging of events to help the game flow better. Perhaps most crucially though, Divergent Paths upgrades Leo’s involvement in the story, allowing him to become the proper 15th party member without replacing anyone. There’s even a 16th, secret party member to find, and at the end of the game, every named character gets their own individual epilogue, from the main cast to all the side characters too. On paper, it doesn’t sound like a huge ROMHack, but it offers substantial fundamental changes.  Sounds good to Samus.

 

Super Metroid Ascent

You know that the ROMHacking community for one series is pretty big when there’s a dedicated website just for them all. It’s called Metroid Construction, and there, you can find over 700 hacks across the early Metroid games, all the way up until Metroid Prime 3.

Just for Super Metroid alone, these run the gamut of functional upgrades to complete overhauls, along with a few memes along the way. We’re big fans of Super Metroid But A Bomb Chases You And You Die If You Touch It, which is just the kind of snappy yet informative naming conventions we can get behind. Still, if you want the best Super Metroid ROMHack, might we recommend Ascent? It even won awards on Metroid Construction, so you know the hardcore community thinks it’s pretty neat.

Ascent is a complete overhaul of the original Super Metroid, with a new set of areas to explore that focus on puzzles and discoverability over combat. Unlike most Metroidvanias, Ascent locks zones behind you after you leave, which might seem counter intuitive for a Metroid game, but each zone also has its own individual completion percentage displayed so you get the choice when to leave basically. It’s also a much bigger and slightly tougher game than the original, as even though there’s roughly the same amount of rooms, each room is way bigger and offers more for players to do. Also, it looks pretty good too, as the new areas use colour brilliantly. A top-notch hack all around, basically.

 

Star Fox EX

What are you going to do when it feels like Nintendo simply won’t make a new Star Fox game? Create a ROMHack about Nintendo trying to kill Star Fox, apparently. Unfortunately for us when writing this in April, rumours finally started circulating that a new Star Fox game could finally announced this month, and knowing our luck, it’ll finally have been announced in the time between writing, editing and publishing the video, so it might make this ROMHack feel a bit out of date. Just know that for the nearly four years since Star Fox Ex came out in 2022, and the five years beforehand, there hadn’t been any Star Fox games, and Star Fox EX used that series inactivity to its own advantage.

Instead of just fighting Andross, though he is also here, the plot of Star Fox EX sees the Mario Bros deciding that Star Fox simply doesn’t belong in the wider Nintendo universe, and therefore the Lylat System must be destroyed. Star Fox EX comes with a brand new map to explore with 17 levels to blast through, each with new layouts, bosses and even music. This ROMHack even comes with support for the SNES Mouse, Super Scope and the NTT Data Pad. There’s also Multi-Tap support, as up to five players can share a screen and shoot down enemies. Throw in a host of customisation options that allow you to truly tailor your experience, and you’ve got a contender for best Star Fox ROMHack of all time.

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