What are ROM hacks?
ROM hacks are just fan made games that use the original ROM or game as a base, with whatever changes they’ve made. New storylines, new characters, completely new game – they’re “hacking” the ROM to apply their changes to it so you can experience something new.
Where do you find ROM hacks?
There’s so many different websites with different ROM hacks depending on the game, but here’s a few of the most popular ones:
- https://www.smwcentral.net
- https://www.romhacking.net
- https://www.pokecommunity.com
- https://feuniverse.us
I found a ROM hack, now what?
For every ROM hack out there, they are providing a patch file to you, never the full ROM. That means that you need this file, with the original ROM, and you have to patch that original ROM with that file.
In every ROM hack thread, you’ll be able to see what original ROM you need. For example, on romhacking.net, you’ll see the following on every ROM hack page:
This is telling you that you need that specific Pokemon Fire Red ROM as the base before applying the patch file.
I have my ROM and my ROM hack patch file, now what?
Awesome, you’re ready to go. You want to head to the following website:
https://www.romhacking.net/patch/
Should be pretty self explanatory here, but next to ROM file, select Choose file and navigate to your ROM file (Pokemon Fire Red…)
Then, next to Patch file, select Choose file and navigate to your Patch file (which you downloaded from the ROM hack page…)
One of a few things will happen when you do so. You may get an error that says Invalid patch file, and that means that either your base ROM is wrong (and you’ll need to check again that your ROM is correct for that specific ROM hack) or you selected the wrong Patch file.
You may get an error that says Source ROM checksum mismatch, and that means that you have the right Patch file, but your ROM is incorrect. You need to use the right version of the ROM.
If you see no errors and just a green checkmark next to your CRC32, you’re all set and can select Apply patch. You’ll get a download of your new patched ROM hack.
What do I do with this now?
And this is where the guide can go a hundred different ways. At this point, you just have to transfer your ROM to your device, into wherever you ROM folder is and the specific system folder, so if it’s a Pokemon Fire Red ROM hack, you need to put this ROM hack with all of your other GBA games. Wherever that might be.
A lot of times, it’s literally just in the Roms folder, GBA folder.
That’s it for this guide, happy ROM hacking!
