For a long time my favorite was Excite Mario Bros.
Excitebike riders, Kirby, and Samus are trying to stop you at every turn from reaching the end of the levels! Here is a full game hack which changes all the levels and graphics. Also the music has been slightly altered to give the original music some change.
Recently though my favorite has become Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash!.
A hastily done minihack (with levels designed within 2 months) that features Celeste-styled gameplay.
It adds dash and wall jump mechanics. I haven’t beaten it yet but I am really enjoying the level design.
What about you? Any favorites or recommendations?
Can’t say I’ve ever tried an SMB rom hack, but Zap & Dash sounds amazing! Can’t wait to try it out
Zap&Dash is incredible and it’s amazing it can even be done as a romhack of SMB. 100% worth checking out.
Nice try, Nintendo.
Mario adventure and Mario 3 mix are my favs. Highly recommend trying. Mario adventure has a ton of new things, game mechanics and power ups.
Mario 3 mix takes a lot of maps / music from all Mario 3 platforms and stuffs it into the Mario 3 engine. Tons of fun
Not a ROM hack, but Redigit, before going on to make Terraria, made something called SMB X, remixing SMB 1, 2, 3, World, and Zelda 1 and 2. It also had its own level editor. Totally fun.
Mario Crossover was also hours and hours of fun, but I’m not sure if it’s playable anymore. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._Crossover
Play classic NES Mario levels as a bunch of other characters. Really great!
I don’t remember the name of it, but it was just a super troll hack where you’re presented with the normal game for Mario 1, but then every obstacle had a hidden obstacle that would kill you when you attempted to play it as if it was the normal game.
There was another game made around the same time that was built entirely on that premise, but I’m pretty sure the Mario hack came first. I at least played it before I ever heard about I Wanna Be The Guy.
Other game: Syobon Action? 🙀
Fap & Dash?
Kaizo Mario! I’m trash at it, but I get tremendous satisfaction when I eventually nail the tricks.
The two player hack.
