Gameplay Tools
This page contains a selection of tools that you will need to play SM64 romhacks, alongside some others that aren't required, but are helpful in providing a better gameplay experience.
You will at the very least need an emulator, a romhack to play, and a patching tool.
If you're using Linux, you may need Wine to be able to run certain tools.
Emulators:
A fork of Project64 3.0 that contains all of the original's features and gets constant updates with the latest plugins, best configurations and additional features.
See the linked page for more info.
A launcher for ParallelN64 and Mupen64Plus-Next emulators.
It's natively cross-platform and intuitive to use, but its options can be quite limited, especially if you're not willing to dive into Retroarch's overcomplicated UI.
Update: Project64 1.6 is no longer supported due to a major vulnerability that was found within it. If you use it, please consider switching.
Sites to download romhacks:
A site with detailed information about each romhack, such as descriptions, comments, and user-voted difficulty and quality ratings.
The good ol' patching tool.
Click "Apply Patch" to patch a .bps file (<-- this is the option that you'll be using the most for playing hacks), or "Create Patch" to create one.
Make sure you pay attention to the instructions given at the top of the window.
Alternatively, you can click a .bps file, open with flips, and then you'll be able to select the vanilla SM64 ROM
An online patching tool that doesn't require you to download anything.
Follow the instructions given on the site and you're golden.
Doesn't support creating patches.
A tool that allows you to download romhacks from sm64romhacks.com, patches them for you and launches your emulator.
The first time you open it, you'll have to open a vanilla SM64 ROM.
After that, search for the romhack you want, click it to display all of its versions, and double click the version you want to download.
Find it on downloaded hacks, and click Launch Rom to play it.
A tool that displays your current progress in the romhack you're playing.
It also allows you to edit your save file and warp to any level, among other really useful features.
Just open StarDisplay, open your emulator, and have fun messing around with things!
A Linux compatible version is currently being worked on, but it's not yet ready for public release.
A practice tool for SM64 romhacks similar to Usamune.
It includes useful things such as an in-game timer for different actions, different variations of level reset, a music picker, and in-game savestates.
The recommended way to use it is dragging a ROM onto the .exe to patch it.
A site with a big list of useful gameshark codes.
It's mostly intended for vanilla SM64 speedrunning, but most codes apply to romhacks as well.
Many of the most useful codes are included in Hacktice though, so it's recommended to try that first if you want to mess around with a lot of these.
The timer tool most widely used for SM64 romhack speedruns.
It allows you to make your own splits, or to load them from a Speedrun.com category.
You can also pick from many different customization settings.
Autosplitter plugin is recommended to use for more accurate timing, though it's currently only compatible with Project64 1.6.
In order to install the autosplitter, follow the instructions shown in the linked page.
A free recording and streaming program that is widely used to record many games, including SM64 romhacks.
Input display tools:
An input display tool for Project64 that comes with multiple different skins. Mostly used for controller.
Also works in Parallel Launcher as of v3.0.
The most widely used one (shown in the image) is Tron-L+Dpad.
A cross-platform input display tool for controllers that doesn't depend on Project64 to run.
It's discontinued, and downloads for it are hard to find.
The main linked download is for Linux. Click the alternate download link for Windows.
An input display tool for keyboards. Has a pretty intuitive UI and comes with a big window size by default.
To use the layout shown, download the zip, put it in the "keyboards" folder, then extract all. After that, right click NohBoard, then set "Category" to Controller.
An alternative input display tool for keyboards. Default window size is smaller than NohBoard and it allows for more customization options, but it's also a little more confusing to use.
To use the layout shown, open settings, click load, and open Layouts\sigo\sm64.xml
A NohBoard clone designed to work on Linux.
git clone and checkout the extended branch for the most recent features.
This tool is X11 only and will not work on Wayland.