Some guy made a modloader inside an unmodified SMW cartridge

[rainwarrior]

When and why does the guy hotswap his cartridge anyway, though? I think I missed that.

He doesn't do it in the video, but it's a method for transfering the jailbreak from one cartridge to another (takes seconds vs the hour or so it takes to do it from scratch).

[FrankenGraphics]

He also reappropriated a controller for faster hexnumerical manual input. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Bu815G5FE&t=6s

[MottZilla]

With the number of SNESes that seem to be suffering sudden CPU/PPU failure in recent years, encouraging a cartridge hot-swapping fad seems like the height of irresponsibility...

I agree. It seems like a bad idea to me. But I don't think too many people will be trying to copy from one SMW cart to another. Especially when you could very easily use another device to upload whatever you want to SRAM.

But excluding that hotswap copy part, it's a cool project. But with so little room to work with I can't imagine too many possibilities. The most obvious would be some kind of "trainer" to cheat or alter game state in various ways.

[FrankenGraphics]

Tangent question: Is there any risk at all hotswapping carts in a NES?

[rainwarrior]

Tangent question: Is there any risk at all hotswapping carts in a NES?

I've done it hundreds of times. I don't think the risk is zero but it in my view it's pretty low.

[8bitMicroGuy]

A nice mod would be to have Fire Mario and Yoshi as two players. Player 1 would control Yoshi and player 2 would control Mario's shooting direction. Imagine if you also had a healthbar and could climb the ladder with Yoshi and do spinjumps. I think that for that, there would need to be some slight changes to the game's variables in order for it to work. The controls for aiming would be the only special part. Mario would never get off of Yoshi.

[tepples]

A nice mod would be to have Fire Mario and Yoshi as two players. Player 1 would control Yoshi and player 2 would control Mario's shooting direction.

Like with Wheelie Rider in Kirby Super Star?

[8bitMicroGuy]

A nice mod would be to have Fire Mario and Yoshi as two players. Player 1 would control Yoshi and player 2 would control Mario's shooting direction.

Like with Wheelie Rider in Kirby Super Star?

I'm not sure how that is. Can you embed a video of it?

[tepples]

I have a Super NES and Kirby Super Star but lack appropriate capture equipment. My Philips DVD recorder works well with my NES, but with my Super NES, color cuts in and out.

Google video search results for kirby super star wheelie rider

[MottZilla]

Tangent question: Is there any risk at all hotswapping carts in a NES?

I've done it hundreds of times. I don't think the risk is zero but it in my view it's pretty low.

I thought I read somewhere that one thing that enables or helps with hot swapping is by having the power connection pins longer than the signal pins. But I'd imagine the design of both the cartridges and the system would play some role in how things behave with hot swaps. And also would be how fast you remove and connect cartridges. The cartridge going in crooked or removed that way might also have an effect.

So just because the NES might tolerate hot swapping doesn't mean the SNES will be as kind.

[infiniteneslives]

My favorite part about this is that you can get a smw cart to dump itself to the screen with some convoluted controller inputs. With Nintendo's view that coping devices are illegal, logically they would consider the TV, SNES, controllers, multitaps, SMW cart itself, and the keyboard-PC-hexeditor "an illegal device". Guess we all need to turn in those items to the authorities because they're illegal to own...

[MottZilla]

My favorite part about this is that you can get a smw cart to dump itself to the screen with some convoluted controller inputs. With Nintendo's view that coping devices are illegal, logically they would consider the TV, SNES, controllers, multitaps, SMW cart itself, and the keyboard-PC-hexeditor "an illegal device". Guess we all need to turn in those items to the authorities because they're illegal to own...

It is pretty cool but oh how painful it would be to manually go through and dump 512KB of ROM data by hand. But the fact that it's possible with only licensed hardware is amusing.

[calima]

Webcam + ocr?

[tepples]

Capture card + 1bpp output.

[Revenant]

Or, you could use the mod loader to insert a memory dumping tool like the one built into Dezaemon SFC and just shove ROM data out one of the controller ports instead of to the screen. But then you wouldn't really be doing it using only licensed hardware anymore...