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Over several decades, romhacking and everything else related to it, like fan translation projects, mild graphical modifications to existing games and other significant changes, has been mostly centralized into the popular website of Romhacking.net (or RHDN as its also known), and while there are bound to be other hacking-related websites, most of them are franchise-centric instead of being a site for all kinds of consoles/games, with some examples of these being the famous SMW Central, MetroidConstruction, Zeldix, PokeCommunity and ProjectPokemon, to name a few.

For context, and as important side notes, it's worth mentioning that RHDN Staff has mentioned that they will no longer accept new submissions for Homebrew games, and while the Homebrew section will remain on site, only the existing homebrews will remain and they can only be updated by their author. Adding to this, RHDN seems to have been hit by scraping services, crippling the site resources and their bandwidth, which prompted a response by the staff to limit downloads at the moment, making downloading anything from the website unavailable currently until further notice. The scrapping was most likely done by people who wanted to download all of the available patches and homebrews, given the misunderstanding online that the Homebrew section would be removed, which has since been rectified by RHDN staff.

All of this, and other reasons, amounts up to possible factors and needs for several people to start the creation of a new romhacking website, and starting on 2023, this could change to give developers, players and avid romhacker enthusiasts alike another option.

A new website called Romhacks.org, which has been in development throughout the month of November of 2023, has opened to the public today, with the site opening hack submissions to the public on November 14th, 2023. Since then, the site has seen almost 50 new users being registered and around 40 romhacking projects (ranging from main hacks, translations, homebrews and tools) at the time of this writing, with the numbers growing steadily by the hour. The amount of projects and users registered almost doubled compared to Nov 14th, when it had around 20 users and 20 hacks uploaded compared to today, November 15th.

This new site aims to be a viable option for romhacking developers that seek to have their project readily available for fans to enjoy, and without some of the nuances that some people online have shared about other websites of the same vein, with one of the most prominent features of the site being that the uploads and entries are done without any kind of waiting time, as soon as the user creates the entry, it is available to the public instantly, instead of having to wait for an approval or queue of sorts.

Popular romhackers like "BillyTime! Games" (known for his SRAM hacks for 16-bit games) and "kandowontu" (known for his FastROM hacks of the SNES library) have started to upload their repertoire to this new romhacking website, with other romhackers following suit as well and mirroring all their projects into it for posterity's sake, and it's also a good way to have a second option where to download main hacks from in the dire case anything could happen to one of the other main websites. Some romhacks by yours truly have also been uplaoded to Romhacks.org, with the rest of following suit in the upcoming days.

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While the website is still in early stages of development, only recently opening to the public just some hours ago, we can only expect more features to polish it up and more people to be aware of it to make it grow.

It's worth mentioning and bringing up front that all of the romhacking websites listed above, including Romhacks.org, are all managed under the same premise of ONLY offering the modifications made to the base games (these ones being new custom code/patches themselves) and NO ROMs are offered in any of them. If a user uploads a ROM, be it purposefully or by mistake, the entry is either rejected or taken down.

Romhacks.org Website
Romhacks.org Twitter account
Romhacks.org Discord server

 

[LuigiXHero]

There was a smw romhack that was just a visual overhaul of the original game but removed multiplayer. I wrote a review with a no recommendation because of them removing a base game feature for what was just smw and it didn't get approved for "feature requesting"

This one https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7841/

 

[Lumstar]

The same gamebanana that is not accepting mods that are against their political agenda and the same gamebanana that rejected Fire Emblem Engage uncensored translation? This is supposed to be an alternative?

A free and open internet applies in both directions. Making websites host material they don't want, is ethically not unlike censorship.

 

[rsc-pl]

A free and open internet applies in both directions. Making websites host material they don't want, is ethically not unlike censorship.

That's exactly what I mean. Sites with mods that have some sick rules and sick "morals" allowing only the far left to speak are worth as little as nothing.

 

[SeventhSon7]

A free and open internet applies in both directions. Making websites host material they don't want, is ethically not unlike censorship.

Except the viewpoint involved not only refuses to host it, if you create your own site to host it, they will seek to have your DDOS protection and hosting banned.

 

[Lumstar]

The point is that selectively enforcing the law is unjust. If free expression is equal under the law, then sites possess the same right to choose what they want to host.

 

[MyNameIsEd]

The layout is kind of rough. Good luck to them.

 

[Metal64]

Ops