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 with an SD card formatted to FAT32 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 the Super FX 2 enhancement chip.

• If you're using a Super UFO pro 8 you will need to download the version of the practice hack that matches the version of your Yoshi's Island cartridge, otherwise it won't work. Check out the version differences page to determine what version you have.
• If you're using an SD2SNES, just download the Japanese version of the game (its slightly faster than English).
• Copy the practice hack ROM from your computer and place it onto your SD card.
• Insert your SD card into your flash cartridge.
• Play the game.

What Is The SD2SNES?

The SD2SNES is a flash cartridge that is modeled after Super Famicom and SNES carts and is not region locked. It is basically a powerful emulator that can run 99% of SNES games (including romhacks) on an actual SNES/SFC. It also supports a majority of enhancement chips [2], namely the Super FX 2 chip that Yoshi's Island uses. The firmware is free to download but the hardware is rather pricey (around $200 new). The trade-off is that its super reliable and fast, two things that the UFO lacks.

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.