In a devastating turn for retro gaming enthusiasts, ROMhacking.net has announced that after twenty years of operation, it will no longer be self-hosting ROM hack-related files.
ROMhacking.net has been a cornerstone for fans of classic games, offering fan translations, fan-made games, and modified versions of beloved titles from the past.
ROMhacking.net has a comprehensive online community and serves as a resource hub for ROM hacking. It provides tools, guides, and a repository of ROM hacks for various classic video games supporting wide range of “consoles” and other systems that can be played today via emulation. Allowing enthusiasts to share their projects, collaborate, and learn from each other.
ROMhacking.net has long been a treasure trove for post-release hacks and patches, especially for games that never received localizations outside their native languages.
Notable fan translations for titles include the likes of Sailor Moon: Another Story for the Super Famicom, the Neon Genesis Evangelion Tamagotchi-like game for WonderSwan, and the Samurai Shodown RPG have made these games accessible in languages other than their original Japanese, thanks to dedicated fans hosted on ROMhacking.net
The site is also a hub for bug fixes in classic games. In 2020, a ROMhacking.net user uploaded a patch to fix a graphics bug in Super Mario 64. ROMhacking.net hosts thousands of such fixes, hacks, and tweaks, allowing players to enjoy improved versions of their favorite classic games such as the “My Neighbour Tororo: Mei is Missing” ROM Hack for the original Super Mario Bros.
Additionally, the site’s Data Crystal wiki offers extensive information on how to hack game ROMs for multiple platforms such as Nintendo’s NES, SNES, Game Boy and 64 home consoles alongside Sony’s original PlayStation.
However, in a recent forum post, the site administrator, known as Nightcrawler, announced that ROMhacking.net will no longer accept submissions of ROM hacks and will transition to a read-only format. The site’s forum will remain active, but with submissions closed, many member have no choice but to migrate elsewhere to submit their hacks.
Nightcrawler cited the difficulties of sustaining ROMhacking.net as it grew “from an unknown fledgling site to an infinitely growing and globally known” entity, as well as increasing copyright and takedown pressures.
Nintendo has made its stance clear on game preservation: they prefer to keep their extensive library of abandoned games inaccessible to consumers, leaving fans to deal with exorbitant prices from collectors. Recently, Nintendo targeted the team behind the Yuzu emulator for the Nintendo Switch, like due to profiteering of their IP and also took action against related Discord servers and archive links associated with forks of the emulator and archived repositories.
Vimm’s Lair, a longstanding platform for archiving game ROMs and ISOs, was recently hit by DMCA takedowns from Nintendo, SEGA, and the ESA. This forced the site to remove a significant number of games from its collection. ROMhacking.net’s decision to dump its assets on the Internet Archive seems like a kind gesture, but these repositories will likely face DMCA takedowns in the future, which Archive.org often complies with.
ROMhacking.net was the best resource available to find ROM hacks which will now being much harder to discover and share following the sites transition to a news only platform.
