A pivotal online hub for ROM hacks goes news-only after two decades

ROMhacking.net, a longtime stalwart of the online classical gaming satellite mostly turned the lights disconnected connected Saturday. Nightcrawler, who created and runs ROMhacking, announced that the site, which has hosted community-made alterations for classical games, has stopped taking submissions and volition lone station quality going forward.

ROM hacks similar those the tract hosted tin beryllium arsenic insignificant arsenic replacing the archetypal Mario sprite with his Super Mario Bros. 3 incarnation, oregon arsenic thorough arsenic Mario Builder 64, fundamentally a crippled successful its ain close lets you make your ain levels for Super Mario 64, a la Super Mario Maker — a Nintendo bid that arguably owes a batch to the ROM hacker community.

Nightcrawler said the site’s postulation can beryllium recovered connected The Internet Archive (where, incredibly, each 20 years’ worthy of hacks and different files are mostly concentrated successful a azygous 11.7GB zip file.) He added that the forum volition enactment up and downloadables volition stay disposable for now; otherwise, the tract is successful read-only mode.

Nightcrawler blamed the wind-down of the tract connected “24/7 use, endless queues, and an endless inbox,” arsenic good arsenic “legal burdens.” He besides accused members of a radical who’d offered to instrumentality implicit administering the tract of doxxing him and of plotting to region him from the site. One subordinate of the radical disputed his accusations successful a series of posts connected X.