[pika132]

I have no knowledge of ROM hacking, but second-hand accounts have led me to believe that EarthBound is a hot mess under the hood. I know that after languishing for years as a fully-formed idea that couldn't be translated into a video game, the dev tools were thrown together in like a weekend by the greatest programmer of our time, Satoru Iwata himself, and even then it just barely works. I've heard that editing the music, in particular, is a Battle Against a Programming Hellscape, and the fact that Toby Fox managed to shape that madness into MEGALOVANIA is a coding achievement worthy of that incredible jam. This would explain why, after two decades, I still haven't finished JonBound, because I can't figure out which version of the ROM to source and patch.

With the recent release of EightBound I figured I'd give it another go. I've tried using Lunar IPS and the auto-patching function of both bsnes and SNES9x. When using the recommended 4MB no-header SFC, the game hangs on the first frame and I am forever stuck on a black screen. When using a SFC, regardless of whether I remove the header and/or Lunar Expand to 4MB, I always get a jacked-up color palette and myriad visual glitches, like so:



My issues with JonBound way, way back started small; the memories that Ness would experience at Sanctuaries were replaced by a blank space where text should be. More minor glitches accumulated throughout the game, culminating in a softlock in Lumine Hall that rendered the game unbeatable. What am I doing wrong here? Thanks in advance for any advice

-A Shameful Millennial

[Jorpho]

Since JonBound is pretty old, I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest you try an emulator of a similar vintage. It's quite possible it uses tricks that won't work on a more accurate emulator.

https://secure.fangamer.com/forum/Community/PKHack/48495 suggests ZSNES or SNES9x 1.51.