 Sssshhhh, that's drunk? Hello and Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year and all that. Tis the season so let's take a look at some Christmas-themed romhacks! Now most of the time when I run through a list of romhacks like this they're usually pretty substantial projects that often feature some crazy difficulty. I'm talking about stuff like Super Metroid redesign or some Kaizo-Mario craziness or something like that. The Christmas-themed hacks in this video are a little more dialed back for the most part. A lot of work clearly went into these, but they're much more relaxed and less intensive to play through than the usual Romhack fare. And since we're talking Super Nintendo Christmas Romhacks, this is a niche within a niche within a niche, so yeah. Unfortunately, there's not going to be any Christmas themes for games like, I don't know, King of Dragons or Metal Warriors or Ken Griffey Jr. presents Major League Baseball or anything like that. We've got to stick with the usual stuff like Super Mario World and Super Metroid, since for the most part, that's all that's out there for this theme. So, let's start with... Mario Saves Christmas 2021, made by Elka Fermin. This is obviously a hack of Mario World, and Lemmy Koopa just ruined Christmas for Mushroom Kingdom, so it's up to Mario to save the day. This is a short playthrough, only about 25 or 30 minutes or so, and the difficulty is very normal. There isn't any crazy level design or crazy physics or anything like that, it's pretty standard stuff. There are a couple minor exceptions to that though, you're able to ground pound by holding down in mid-air, and you're able to wall kick, and you'll need to be adept at both of those abilities because the whole name of the game here is to collect as many Yoshi coins as possible to unlock the final showdown with Lemmy Koopa. As you can see, this one does a great job creating a cozy winter vibe with some nice looking custom graphics, so if you just want a short and easy Christmas themed playthrough, then you should definitely play this one. For the folks that love combining Christmas and Halloween, there's another Mario World hack called a Haunted Christmas, made by Team Haunted. This time around, the big bad is Big Boo, who stole all of the Christmas presents from Mario's house, so of course he's gotta get them all back. This is another short one with only one world and seven exits, but it's extremely charming. Elephant Mario has his own house here, plus there's new enemies, and some original enemies that have been edited to match the winter aesthetic, like Charge and Chuck here wearing a parka. That's great. The hack isn't as straightforward as you might think. Yeah, it starts with a typical snow scape, but eventually you go underground, underwater, you even visit Yoshi's Island for a bit, and of course you conclude at a ghost house where you fight Big Boo. Despite this one only being seven exits, this hack is pretty dang tough, and I highly recommend checking it out. If you're into the more traditional Super Mario World experience, then there's this hack simply titled Super Mario World Christmas Edition, made by Noaiso. Not too much craziness here, but the way it's laid out is reasonably consistent with the original game, with 28 total exits, and the difficulty not being too bad, although the final boss of this one is friggin' ridiculous. There's lots of custom winter-related sprites here, like these penguins you bounce off of, or whoever these guys are, and these weird statue things, or this thing you can ride in, what the heck is that? There's a lot to this hack though, there's castles, ghost houses, boss fights, there's even switch palaces here, so that's cool. Clearly a lot of work went into this one, and it fits this time of year perfectly, so this is another one I highly recommend. Moving on, when you think Christmas, you think Metroid, right? Okay, maybe that doesn't apply to very many people, but there are a couple really solid winter-themed Super Metroid ROM hacks, starting with Super Metroid Snow Globe, made by Cizer. Again, this is a short one that you can crank through in about 20 minutes or so, but it's a very pleasant playthrough, at least as far as Metroid-themed games go. All you gotta do is find eight Santa hats that are scattered around this custom-made map, no items, no missiles or upgrades or anything, just your morph ball and bombs and finding your way around. It's pretty cool for a quick and simple playthrough, and the ending is actually pretty dang funny. This one is very easy, but I still recommend it. At this point, we're gonna have to veer away from the Super Nintendo and take a look at some other platforms like the Game Boy Advance, where we've got a hack for Metroid Zero Mission called Spooky Mission 2 The Nightmare Before Christmas, made by Spooky Team, a follow-up to their previous effort from years earlier. I like including these in videos like this because the Game Boy Advance isn't too far removed from the Super Nintendo anyway, and Metroid Zero Mission is a really good game, and this hack really goes all out making use of everything that game had to offer and then some. With the theme here being another Christmas Halloween hybrid, where Samus has to stop the polar express from reaching its destination, or else it will be eternal Christmas. Okay, yeah, this one is way more Halloween themed than Christmas. You got skull monsters, you're walking across giant piles of skulls. You got this setting here, which looks like the last level in Contra. Still, I just wanted to point this one out because it's really good, and it's made clear right away that a ton of work went into this one. Definitely check out Spooky Mission 2. Of course, there's plenty of Sega Genesis Sonic ROM hacks out there, and sometimes simple is better. This one is just called Sonic Christmas 2011. It's three simple levels with the boss fight, with the rings replaced with stars, and just an overall more cheerful wintery theme. This one is so short and so small that you can actually play it on archive.org, which is pretty cool. If you want something that's more substantial, there's Sonic 2 Christmas Edition made by Potter and Matrix Fan, which features Sonic running around in a Santa hat and Tails as his red-nosed reindeer behind him. This one is much longer, featuring lots of tweaks to familiar Sonic 2 levels and settings, so it's well worth checking out. Let's quickly move on to the NES. There's two I want to mention. First is Toadette's Christmas Adventure, a ROM hack of the original Super Mario Brothers made by Dark Data. Again, this one is just a few levels, though it's short, but it's well done. Instead of chucking fireballs like Mario, you throw snowballs, which is pretty funny. This one's meant to be a platformer through and through, so while this one is short, there are some really difficult sections that can be tough to manage, and when you get to the final boss, you get rewarded with fighting, uh, this thing. But yeah, this is an otherwise laid-back and quick playthrough that's well worth your time. Another Super Mario Brothers hack is Luigi and the Christmas Quest made just last year by Dark Knight 13. This one takes the Luigi sprite from Mario 2 and has you go through eight worlds split up into four stages each, so if you want something more substantial, this is what you're looking for. All the levels of the original game are redesigned with all sorts of extra touches added here and there, like the Hammer Brothers that throw candy canes, you gotta love that. Before warned, though, this one is really tough, probably the toughest playthrough on this list, but it's a good time and there's a lot of content here. Finally, we'll end with one that isn't a hack but a cheat code for Donkey Kong Country 3 Dixie Kong's Double Trouble. You don't need any ROMs or patches to unlock this one, just highlight your old game save on this menu and press L-R-R, L-R-R, L-R-L-R, and you'll then be prompted to enter a word and just enter the word Merry, as in Merry Christmas, M-E-R-R-Y. You won't notice any changes at first, but once you visit a bonus game from the world map, you'll find that all the bananas and stars are now bells and presents, and the music has been replaced with a jolly Christmas jingle. It's pretty cool, and I low-key always thought the minigames in Donkey Kong Country 3 were some of the best in the entire series. But yeah, this is another one that's very simple but still fun to check out. Alright, that's all for now. I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.