SNES Classic Hacking Is Moving Rapidly

The Super Nintendo Classic has been out only a week and already there are videos circulating about how to add your own games. Like the NES Classic before it, this new retro device seems prime for emulation, and progress is moving very fast.

There’s no way to officially add new Super Nintendo games to the SNES Classic, an $80 box that comes with 20 old games and the previously unreleased Star Fox II. While people would certainly be willing to dish out extra cash for games like Chrono Trigger or Illusion of Gaia, Nintendo hasn’t made it an option. So if you want a beefier library, you’ll need to get hacking.

Last week, Digital Foundrydiscovered that the SNES Classic’s guts are very similar to the NES Classic’s, which means it’s got a lot of hacking potential. Back when the NES Classic launched, modders created a popular tool called Hakchi2 that allowed tech-savvy users to load their system up with ROMs. Because the SNES Classic is so similar, those modders are already making huge progress on a new version of Hakchi2 for the mini-Super Nintendo.

There’s already an unofficial build of Hakchi2 floating around, but savvy modders recommend staying away unless you have a good grasp on Python and the SNES Classic’s hardware. If you’re feeling dangerous, YouTuber Skullator has a video walkthrough of how to use this build. Just be warned: You might brick your console.

Cluster, the developer of Hakchi2, says the official SNES version is almost ready for beta testing, so it shouldn’t be long before there’s a safer, more reliable way to hack SNES Classics. (Although of course there’s always some risk when it comes to modding hardware like this.)

It’s really too bad Nintendo didn’t add a store to this thing, because I’d love to support and officially buy games like Actraiser and Lufia 2. Since that’s not even an option, I might just wind up playing around with mods. (Cut to: two weeks from now. New Kotaku article by Jason Schreier: “Oops, I Somehow Bricked My SNES Classic.”)