A new Rom Hack for Super Mario Kart has massively expanded the game 32 years after it originally launched on the SNES.
Created by gridatttack, Super Mario Kart Horizons offers eight new themed worlds, delivering 20 new circuits to race around. It also has four new Battle Tracks, new music, enhanced sprites, new modes and much, much more – and the best thing is, it all runs on original hardware if you own a flash cart.
"Race across new courses in brand new custom locations," reads the Horizons' page on romhacks.org. "Drive along serene grassy plains, treacherous abandoned mines, forgotten jungle ruins, against the sunrise from a mountaintop and more! These beautiful themes and tracks have been crafted with an emphasis on aesthetics and ambience along a custom soundtrack to set the mood just right."
Here's the full list of features:
- 8 custom themes. These breathtaking locations take place across the mushroom kingdom and neighboring lands!
- 20 well designed race tracks. Tracks have been made to be unique as possible, as well as being completely drive-able with any character at 150cc!
- 4 battle tracks. Enjoy a friendly competition in new battle maps that take advantage of new themes and new ideas!
- Unique Ambience. All tracks each have their own color in their respective themes, meaning no tracks look entirely the same!
- Brand new soundtrack. Enjoy catchy compositions for the main course themes, menu themes, credits, character victory tunes & more!
- Modified Menu Screens. Featuring a new Title Screen, Cup Selection, Driver Select, Results, Podium & Credits sequence.
- Revamped Sprites. Drivers, items, obstacles and more have been updated with a more modern look.
- Unlock new content. Mirror Mode is available to be unlocked for all difficulties, Time Trials and Vs Mode. Think the game is too easy? Try out the unlockable hard mode to enhance your experience!
- Modified Mechanics. Advance to the next round by placing 7th or higher! Points distribution have been updated as well.
- Works on original hardware.
- Extra Assets Available. Main Artwork created to represent the hack. Enjoy an official release of the new soundtrack to listen on your platform of choice, check out the custom instruction booklet, or print and build out a custom box & cart label
You can grab the ROM hack here.
[source romhacks.org]
Comments 16
I was just looking at a fan translation patch last night, and I saw Super Mario Kart Horizons being advertised. I thought about clicking on it, but ultimately decided not to. Really regretting that now, I thought this would just be some palette swaps or an incomplete mod!
This is looking very nice.
It's hard to get too excited about mode 7 style racing games, but I'm intrigued by their confidence that they did a good job.
This looks awesome. I'm guessing it'll work fine on the jailbroken Super NT since the original didn't use any special chips, can't wait to check it out.
Would this work on the snes mini I missed then? That would be absolutely brilliant! 😁
This looks awesome! I like the updated graphics and new tracks have a good look and feel to them. Unfortunately my flash cart doesn't support games enhanced with chips, so I'll have to look out for this on eBay
Wow. The color in this hack. Gorgeous stuff.
@garfreek
Probably, seeing as it works fine on NEW 3DS.
Thanks for the highlight! Hope people enjoy it! Just released a patch to version 1.1 that addresses some issues reported. If you see any other ones that might require fixing, send them my way 🙏
@Nua I don't blame you. Part of this goal of this mod that I set out to accomplish is to provide a good mod to the game, since most existing hacks are just lame color palette changes or tracks that havent been put too much thought into them.
@garfreek it should. I used to test this hack on a snes mini at one point to play with a friend to test the battle mode tracks.
@Coalescence SMK Uses the DSP-1 Chip, so It might not work.
The last SMK hack I played (years back) altered the track layouts but didn't change the CPU pathfinding from the original track layouts so that was fun 😂 definitely gonna give this a try when I get home later!
Got it loaded onto my Pocket ready to play next week. Looks great!
@Gridatttack
Yeah, this is even better than the main game. It's gorgeous on my RGB30 (I've yet to try it on my new RG35XXSP), the course design is truly excellent (lots of flow) the music is awesome and I'm in love <3
@Gridatttack WOW! i just played through the turnip cup and had a blast. this feels like a true sequel to super mario kart. excellent work!
Hopefully this will be readily available. I might do me some Mario Karting on my commute
@Gridatttack So cool, can't wait to play! 🥰
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