There’s lots of good options!First, you may be able to find a No-Intro ROMset at Archive.

There’s lots of good options!

First, you may be able to find a No-Intro ROMset at Archive. org.

Romhacks are often distributed as .IPS or other small files which are used to patch the original ROM using a program like Lunar IPS. You may also be able to play these natively if the ROM and Patch have the same filename. There are many at Romhacking.net.

Mesen and FCEUX are good NES emulators, which have features helpful to ROMhackers.

If you’re just playing the games, Mesen has savestates, rewind, cheats, and a history viewer which plays back your progress.

Mesen supports and creates HDPacks, which can alter the graphics of a game. It has a PPU viewer where you can look at the palettes, CHR graphics, and Nametables which make up the backgrounds.

I want to change some text in “A Week of Garfield,” so I’m looking at the CHR graphics in Mesen, and typing what I see into Oriton Table Viewer.

In the FCEUX emulator, I’ve opened up the Hex Editor, and selected View ROM File. I’ve loaded my TBL file. I can now read and edit the text in the game.

I’m going to go into Mesen’s Memory Tools and save the Nametable RAM for the title screen of “Penguin Land.”

I only need the first 400 bytes so everything from 400 on, I’ll delete in a hex editor, and save that as a .NAM. I’ll open this up in Shiru’s NES Screen Tool. Here, I can design a new title screen, although it’ll take more work to insert it accurately into the ROM. (You can use the same Tool for metasprite construction and save it as hex.)

I can convert an image into an NES file using Kasumi’s I-CHR.

YY-CHR.NET is a good tool for looking at and altering the graphics in a ROM file. I can copy and paste graphics, and paste in a 256-color image from Photoshop.