SMW Central
SMW Central is a community dedicated to ROM Hacking of Mario games, most notably Super Mario World. The site includes a forum, and many sections to download hacks, tools and items for Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Super Mario 64
History
SMW Central was created in January 1st 2005 by Kieran Menor (then Boom.dk) and Smallhacker who wanted to have a common gathering place for Super Mario World hackers as well as an organised database of hacks and hacking tools.
The great wipe
In August 2007, Kieran and Smallhacker decided to give all non-banned regular users moderation powers as an experiment, this included the ability to move and close threads in the forum as well as ban users. The idea, however, backfired and in a few hours, the forum turned into chaos. The administration decided to shut down the forums entirely and deleted all the information, including user accounts, this event is known as "The great wipe". The forums came back on August 20th 2007.
Arbe hacks SMWC
In November 2008, user Arbewhat hacked a moderator's account and deleted all the Super Mario World hacks in the site. He also gave his own account administrator powers (changing his name to "Arbeministrator" in the process) and banned almost every staff member at the time, including Kieran himself. The details of how this was acheived are unknown.
Arbe did a second attack in March 2009, this time he gained access to an administrator's account via a cookie-stealing script and used it to unban his old account and once again give himself administrator powers. He later used those powers to give staff powers to other users. Arbe was asked to perform this attack by the same people who later got staff powers, who were dissatisfied about how things were being handled.
Both attacks were halted by Kieran and no other hacking attempts have happened since.
Contributions
SMW Central is responsible for the creation of the following tools:
AddMusicK - Music Inserter for Super Mario World
Asar - ASM Inserter for Super Mario World
Uber ASM Tool - ASM Inserter for Super Mario World
Floating IPS - IPS patch applier
Gopher Popcorn Stew - Block inserter for Super Mario World
PIXI - Sprite inserter for Super Mario World
Notable Hacks
An SMW Central Production - First collaborative hack created by SMW Central.
Vanilla Level Design Contest collaborations - These are compilations of the entries in some iterations of the Vanilla Level Design Contest (VLDC) held in SMW Central. Currently only the first, seventh, eighth and ninth iterations have compilations hacks.
SMW Central Production 2 - Second and long awaited collaborative hack created by SMW Central.