There's been an active EB modding community for over twenty years, ever since the late 1990s. These days, we can do all sorts of things. There's no better way to learn how to mod EarthBound than to muck around with today's modern tools.

Documentation is a bit all over the place though, and nobody's really been writing comprehensive tutorials for quite a few years. Here I'll try to put mostly everything you need to know into once place. Fair warning: these tutorials will be VERY text-heavy. There are video tutorials on Youtube if that's more your style.

Tools of the trade

Head over to the downloads page to grab the programs you'll need.

Organisation is key

Keeping your stuff organised is very important. Here's an example of how to set up folders in your file system:

• 📁EarthBound Modding
  • 📁Programs - all executable files should go in here
  • 📁Projects - create more folders in here for each CoilSnake project
  • 📁Hacks - ROM files compiled with CoilSnake go here
  • 📁Completed - ROM files of completed hacks. These can be your own hacks, or ones you've downloaded and patched.
  • 📁Scripts - CCS files downloaded from the CCScript Library can go here
  • 📁Patches - Patch files (.ebp and .ips) can go here
  • 📁Vanilla
    • 🎮️EarthBound.sfc - A raw, unmodified, and unexpanded EB ROM. This can be used to make patches and as a backup.
    • 🎮️EarthBound expanded.sfc - An expanded but still unmodified ROM. This can be used as the base ROM for CoilSnake.
    • 📁Decompiled - An unmodified CoilSnake project decompiled right from the ROM. Make copies for new projects.
    • 📁Decompiled with script - An unmodified CoilSnake project decompiled and script-decompiled. Make copies for new projects with the game script.
  • 📁Music - if you get into music hacking, EBM files, music ROMs, samples, and whatever else can go in here.

Don't worry if you don't understand the purpose of some of these folders. It'll become clear later on. This might seem overwhelming, so it's OK to skip this step and create these folders as you need. Keeping your files organised will make hacking a looooooooot easier.

Whew! Got all that? Downloaded everything you think you'll need? Don't worry, you can always come back and grab something later if you've missed it. If you had any technical issues along the way, feel free to hop on over to the Discord server to ask for help. We won't bite!