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Can original SNES hardware play ROMs somehow?


Yes! These are called flash carts (short for cartridge). Here is a popular one for SNES: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052URJKM

Many people who stream older console games on twitch seem to use them as well as people who like to play romhacks.


Back when SNES was still current and flash memory chips were still relatively small and expensive, there were "copiers", which a few SNES enthusiasts still collect just like other vintage peripherals. These are larger devices that contain a floppy drive, DRAM, save RAM, and the necessary logic to provide the most common cartridge mappings. You would dump a cartridge to floppies and then load it into the DRAM to play it. Well-known models include the Game Doctor SF7 and Super Wild Card DX2.


Also nintendo just straight up sold people carts you could flash with new games at Seven-Eleven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Power_(cartridge)


If you’ve gone to a pop culture convention in the past few years you will also see reproduction cartridges (repro carts). The first one I saw was a legend of zelda ocarina of time master quest N64 cart, but there are new NES and SNES games that are being written from scratch and sold on repro carts.

This wasn’t possible for N64 titles until relatively recently[1]. Interestingly, the method of cracking N64’s boot security sounds rather standard when compared to the 3DS and switch glitching[2][3].

1. https://youtu.be/z5uOK0nR934

2. https://youtu.be/CzVZgdkzBn8

3. https://youtu.be/Ec4NgWRE8ik


Yes. Nowadays, you'd use an Everdrive.

https://gamesconnection.co.uk/blogs/games-connection/what-is...

In the past, even when the console was still on sale, there were game backup devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_backup_device





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