Fan Made SNES Games: Six Fan Translations and Fan Editions Worth Playing

Some of the most interesting Super Nintendo games you have never played were not made by Square or Nintendo. They were made by players who loved a game so much they built more of it. New worlds inside Super Mario World. English scripts for RPGs that never left Japan. Whole new stories for casts whose adventures officially ended in the mid 90s.

All of these are fan made projects, not official releases, and that is the whole charm. Here are six worth knowing about, and a suggestion for where to start if you have never tried one.

First, What Counts as a Fan Made Version

Two different things usually get lumped together here, and it helps to keep them apart.

• Fan translations. A game that only ever shipped in Japanese gets an English script written by a community team, so you can finally understand what everyone has been shouting at you for 40 hours.
• Fan editions and fan sequels. These go further and build new levels, new maps, new characters or a whole new story on top of a game you already know.

Neither kind is official. No publisher signed off on them, the credits belong to community teams rather than studios, and the quality swings from rough to genuinely brilliant. The six below sit at the good end.

Secret of Mana 2: The Sequel That Skipped the West

Square released Seiken Densetsu 3 for the Super Famicom in 1995. It is the direct follow up to the game we got as Secret of Mana, and it never came out in English on the system. Players outside Japan waited until 2000, when a fan team finished a complete English script for it.

It is a bigger game than Secret of Mana in almost every direction. Six heroes, you choose three, and that choice changes your party, your villain and your ending. Combat is real time, the ring menu is back, and the class change system lets each hero branch toward light or dark as they level. Replaying with a different trio genuinely feels like a different game.

Square later put out an official English version of this story under a different name, so the fan translation is no longer the only option. It is still the one that let a generation of SNES owners finish the Mana trilogy on real hardware. We stock the fan translated English version of Seiken Densetsu 3 on a SNES cartridge.

Return to Dinosaur Land: A Second Super Mario World

Super Mario World launched the Super Nintendo, gave Mario the cape and introduced Yoshi, and it has been taken apart and rebuilt by fans more than almost any other game on the system. Return to Dinosaur Land is the fan made project we would hand to someone who has never played one.

It is a full length new adventure with its own overworld map and its own set of levels, built on the original's physics. Mario still runs and flies exactly the way your thumbs remember, which means the new levels can get clever without ever feeling unfair. If your copy of Super Mario World is worn out from replays, this is the closest thing to getting it new again.

Grab the fan made Return to Dinosaur Land cartridge if that sounds like your kind of weekend.

Equestriabound: EarthBound Meets My Little Pony

EarthBound arrived in North America in 1995, sold modestly, and then spent 30 years becoming one of the most beloved RPGs ever made. Its fans are relentless, and Equestriabound is proof. It takes EarthBound's structure and swaps in characters and art drawn from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

On paper that sounds like a joke. In practice it works because EarthBound was already a game about ordinary places turning strange, and the ponies slot into that world more comfortably than you would expect. It is fan made, not a Nintendo release, and it lands best if you have already finished the original and can spot what has been changed. Here is the Equestriabound fan edition for SNES.

The Rat Race: A Smaller EarthBound Detour

The EarthBound community has produced dozens of projects, and not all of them try to be 25 hour epics. The Rat Race is another fan made EarthBound edition, and it is one for players who already know Onett and Twoson by heart. We will not spoil what it does with Ness's world, because finding that out is the point.

Same rule as the rest: fan made, not official, and much better after you have played the real thing. You can find the Rat Race fan edition on cartridge here.

Final Fantasy V: The Fan Translation That Started It All

Final Fantasy V came out for the Super Famicom in 1992 with the best job system in the series, and English speaking players were simply not invited. In 1997 a community team released a full English translation of it, and it is widely remembered as one of the first complete fan translations of a Japanese RPG. A lot of the people who later translated other games got the idea from this one.

We do not stock that fan translation, so we are naming it rather than selling it. We do carry Final Fantasy V for SNES itself, and region and version can vary on our carts, so check the listing before you order.

Fire Emblem's Lost Super Famicom Chapters

Two Fire Emblem games stayed in Japan and became legends anyway. Genealogy of the Holy War arrived in 1996 from Intelligent Systems, with maps so large that a single chapter can eat an evening, and a story that jumps forward a generation partway through so the children of your first army fight the rest of the war. Thracia 776 followed in 1999 and still has a reputation as the meanest game in the series.

English speaking strategy fans know both of them because community translators spent years on them. We do not sell those fan translations, so take this as a recommendation to read about them rather than a product pitch.

Where to Start

If you want a brand new game, start with Return to Dinosaur Land. If you want a great RPG you somehow missed, start with Seiken Densetsu 3. If you are already an EarthBound person, you knew which two you were picking before you finished reading.

SillyJoystick Score: 9 out of 10 for the SNES fan scene. We take off a point only because nobody has made the one you are about to email us about.

Press Start on Fan Made SNES Games

Ready to add something new to a 30 year old console? We carry Return to Dinosaur Land, the English fan translation of Seiken Densetsu 3, Equestriabound and the Rat Race, along with the originals that inspired them, including Super Mario World and EarthBound. Every cartridge is tested before it ships. Blowing on it optional.

Is there a fan made version you would love to own on a real cartridge? Email us at support@sillyjoystick.com and tell us which one. We cannot promise we will be able to get any particular project, but we are gamers too, and we always want to hear what you are playing.