Practice Hack

What Is The Practice Hack?

Created by Arnethegreat, the practice hack is a modified version of Yoshi's Island that has save-states, slow down and many other useful tools for practicing/learning the game. More info: [1]

How Do I Use The Practice Hack?

You will need a flash cartridge to run it on hardware or simply an emulator. Currently, the only devices that can run the practice hack are the Super UFO Pro 8 and the SD2SNES (now known as the FXPAK). This is because no other flash cartridges support Super FX 2 enhancement chip.

• First, you will need to download the version of the practice hack that matches the version of your physical cartridge. If you're using the SD2SNES, you can skip this step and just download which ever version you want, though the Japanese version of the game is slightly faster than English. Check out the [version differences page] to determine what version you have. If you have the Japanese 1.0 cartridge, then only the Japanese 1.0 version of the hack will work. The same applies to the US and 1.1 versions.

What Is The Super UFO Pro 8?

The is a type of flash cartridge that can allow players to load and play ROMs on original hardware. Yoshi's Island is one of the few games on the SNES that uses an enhancement chip called the SuperFX 2. Rather than flood this section with technical information about the chip, we'll just include the link to the Wikipedia article that explains what the chip is, and how it works.

The Super UFO Pro 8 is shaped very similarly to original Super Famicom cartridges. It has a removable cap on the top that allows you to insert an SNES/SFC cartridge (physically identical to how the old Sonic and Knuckles cartridge worked on the Sega Genesis). The Super UFO Pro 8 also requires an SD card in order to function. Most sizes will work, depending how many ROMs you're planning on putting on it. If you're just planning on practicing Yoshi's Island, something as small as a 4GB SD card would be sufficient. Unfortunately the UFO is often unreliable and can crash at random, making it annoying to practice with.

What Is The SD2SNES?

SD2SNES is another type of flash cart. It comes in many shapes modeled after Super Famicom and SNES carts, and most are region free. It is basically a super powerful emulator inside a flash cart, and as of lately it can do Super FX2 and SA-1, two chip types that no other flash cart can do by themselves. The firmware itself is free to download, but the hardware is rather pricey, around $200 new. The payoff is that it is super reliable and is very fast, which are two things that the UFO lacks.