SnesLab:About

Who are we?

SnesLab is a web community of people with a passion for retrogaming, particularly for the SNES. If you are interested in creating content, making ROM hacks or just discussing your favorite old school games, this is the place for you!

Goals

Our main goal is to create a common gathering place for all ROM hackers, and ROM hack fans of the SNES. For this, we must collect as much data as we can on all the games in the platform, including technical information, source codes, and hacking tools.

This wiki serves as a repository for all this information and we aim to make it the number one place for anyone looking to know more about the SNES, either for ROM hacking, creating homebrew games, learn ASM or just geeks who want to know how the system works.

Last but not least, we strive to build a friendly community were we can chill, talk about our favorite games, share our creations and have a good time.

History

SnesLab was not always a community; in fact, it was not always called SnesLab. Everything started on September 2, 2018, when former SMW Central administrator Vitor Vilela was joking with his Brazilian friends about how often he needed lab rats for his to help him test his ASM. Some people reacted saying they wanted to learn ASM, so Vitor told them he wanted to make a place for teaching it.

Vitor decided to make a Brazilian discord sever which he named "VileLab" for this purpose; the name is a portmanteau of Vilela, his last name and lab, for laboratory. Later, he invited most of his friends to join the server which he used for hosting custom ASM challenges for people interested in learning the code. There were many different challenges for different skills.

After several weeks, Vitor had an initial insight about the future Lunar Magic 3.00 release. He created a couple of private channels on the server for sharing his findings to a set of chosen people (lab rats) and testing together what FuSoYa had started. At this point, VileLab had almost 90 users; however, with the release of Lunar Magic 3.0, Vitor decided that it would be better to make it a public server for everyone interested in the SNES and ROM hacking in general.

At this point, a new name was in due since "VileLab" was too personal for a public place. Two names were considered: RetroLab (for general retrogaming "laboratory" or development) and SnesLab... The latter was chosen because it was clear, easy to remember and did not have any similar brand on the internet, unlike RetroLab and VileLab.

Eventually, a Discord server was not enough to store all the information. SnesLab hosted ASM challenges and documentation, so it needed a place for organizing all the information. After reaching almost 80 channels, Vitor decided it was time to expand it further, so this website was created.

SnesLab Projects:

• Lunar Magic 3.0 a Super Mario World level editor that revolutionized its hacking scene by adding grid shaped levels.
• SPC Studio a DAW Editor, Addmusic and Audio Reverse Engineer Tool
• Fixed several bugs from PIXI (originally developed by Jackthespades), a tool for inserting custom sprites in Super Mario World