Improving the Current State of ROM Hacks

Hi Everyone,

I've always been fascinated with ROM hacks, especially translations. Translations enable games that stayed in Japan (or wherever they originated) to be played in new geographies. With translations, we essentially get a brand-new "official" game to play. Simply amazing.

However, one thing that always bothered me with hacks was the lack of an official database. Updates to hacks and translations are released all the time. How do I know my collection is up-to-date? Did I miss any releases? It's always been a labor-intensive, manual process that requires checking games one-by-one. Wouldn't it be nice to have a database that is maintained as new hacks are released to quickly check our collections against?

This is the idea and goal that started me down the path of RomhackDB, an attempt to create the database for hacks and simplify the patching process (who likes checking CRCs anyway?). One goal is to catalog and convert patches to use No-Intro as a base. It would be great to eliminate the need for any outdated "Good" sets. I know this will be a huge undertaking, so I want to take it slow and make sure the database is properly structured, listening to feedback to ensure I am not missing any important details.

This post is an invitation to try RomhackDB in it's alpha state: https://romhackdb.com
I'd love hear your feedback and build a community with a passion for hacks. Currently the software is Windows-only and fairly limited, though I hope to support Linux and have plenty of ideas and improvement plans. Your feedback would be very welcome!

If interested, try it out and join the discord here: https://discord.gg/vz4sgjE

-mibro

The complete SNES translation library (232 games to date) has been fully databased and converted to use a No-Intro base!

If you are interested in learning more, please see here: https://romhackdb.com/news.html