Apply ROM Hacks and Patches
Make ROM patches stick to your game images.
Suppose you’ve gone to a web site
such as DeJap’s SNES Bahamut
Lagoon (http://www.dejap.com/bl.php) and downloaded
an English-language patch to apply to the related Japanese-language
ROM (
[Hack #70]
). If you examine
the patch, you’ll find that it comes in the form of
a mysterious .IPS
file, probably zipped up. What
the heck do you do to actually make this patch work? You have two
options, which are shown in the following sections.
Direct IPS File Patching
The traditional approach involves creating a new file from the ROM and the IPS patch. Use a utility such as IPSWin or JIPS (both available from http://zerosoft.zophar.net/), select the patch file and the ROM to patch, and let it do its job. You can also use the DOS version of IPS (http://www.zophar.net/utilities/patchutil.html) with the simple command:
C:\Roms\> IPS.EXE EXAMPLE.SMC EXAMPLE.IPS
Either way, you’ll end up with a combined file that includes the patched data. Make sure to keep a backup of your old master ROM in case something goes horribly wrong.
You also have to make sure that the checksum is correct on the ROM you’re patching and that it hasn’t changed from the original in any way. Do this using simple DOS utilities kindly hosted by The Whirlpool, such as SMC (http://donut.parodius.com/utilities/smc.com):
C:\Roms\> SMC.COM /S EXAMPLE.SMC
If the ROM is pristine, everything should be fine.
Emulator-Based IPS Autopatching
Many popular SNES emulators ...
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