The best ROM hack website is shutting down after nearly 20 years

ROMhacking.net, a longtime resource for video game fan translations and homegrown fixes for classic games, is shutting down operations, the site’s administrator said Thursday. The site’s database, including all files and images, have been transferred to the Internet Archive for preservation.

The ROMhacking.net website is a rich resource for post-release hacks and patches for software, particularly for games that never received localizations outside of their native language. In recent years, we’ve written about fan translations for titles like Super Famicom role-playing game Sailor Moon: Another Story, the Neon Genesis Evangelion Tamagotchi-like for WonderSwan, and the Samurai Shodown RPG, all of which were only available in their original Japanese until fans stepped in.

The site is also a font of bug fixes for classic games; in 2020, a ROMhacking.net user uploaded a patch for a Super Mario 64 graphics bug that Nintendo itself never fixed. ROMhacking.net hosts thousands of such fixes, hacks, and tweaks that alter games to personal taste, letting players enjoy oft-improved versions of classic games. The site’s Data Crystal wiki is also a robust source of information on how to hack game ROMs for multiple platforms.

The site administrator, who goes by the alias Nightcrawler, said in a forum post on ROMhacking.net that all submissions of ROM hacks have been closed, and that the website will remain up in read-only format. The site’s forum will remain active as well, but with submissions closed and other operations shuttered, it’s likely that members of that forum will move on to other destinations.

“It’s been a good near 20 year run, but for various reasons it’s time to wind things down,” Nightcrawler wrote in a statement about ROMhacking.net’s closure. “The site achieved almost everything it set out to do, and far exceeded it. We joined hacking and translation communities together for the first time ever. We outlasted and eclipsed ROM hacking sites that came before us. We brought ROM hacking from niche and fragmented to global and centralized. […] No doubt, this site changed ROM hacking forever.”

Nightcrawler cited the challenge of sustaining ROMhacking.net as it grew “from an unknown fledgling site to an infinitely growing and globally known” one, and mounting copyright and takedown pressures.

They also acknowledged that “the need for the site has lessened over time. There are now many options for community discussions, open source projects, and file storage across the Internet.” Nightcrawler’s statement also accuses other unnamed persons, who they say volunteered to take over site operations, of doxxing and “deceitful plots […] to cut me out.”

Polygon has reached out to ROMhacking.net staff for comment on Nightcrawler’s statement.

One longtime ROMhacking.net member and veteran localizer, who goes by the alias Gideon Zhi, disputed Nightcrawler’s versions of the events that led to the site’s closure. In a lengthy thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gideon Zhi said that Nightcrawler stubbornly refused help in offloading the work and expense of running ROMhacking.net. Gideon Zhi also denied accusations that staff working for the site doxxed or threatened the site administrator.

Regardless of the reasons behind the site’s closure, it sounds like the ROM hacking and fan translation community has lost a massive resource, potentially forever.