Sega Opens ROM Hacking Pandora’s Box with Genesis Mods on Steam

When publishers allow modders to tinker with their games through Steam's Workshop, a community hub for mods and goofs, they're taking a bit of a risk. In the cases of Half-Life 2, Fallout and Cities: Skylines, it breathes new life into the games, enthusiasm kept going by players tweaking the worlds to suit their often chaotically entertaining vision. But opening up your doors doesn't guarantee that everyone will take their shoes off. Sega will quickly discover that the practice can be a real conundrum. Its Genesis & Mega Drive Collection, a platform for classics like Golden Axe, Gunstar Heroes and Shinobi, enabled mods on Steam this week.

Many of the available mods are what you'd expect. Sprite, sound, and pallette swaps for cosmetic changes. You can play as characters from Sonic's extended universe, hear the yammering from Sonic Boom over Sonic 2, whatever this Sonic the Hedgehog: Helen Keller Edition is, or say fuck it, let's play as Nintendo's Kirby in Sonic because I don't have time for society's rules.

Some mods are more substantial, fixing bugs, adding more checkpoints in Ecco the Dolphin or even making Comix Zone easier in case you are a chump. There are even some ports of infamous bootleg Genesis games, such as a Sonic game that stars Super Mario, and this is where things start to drift into shady territory.

It appears Sega didn't provide any of its own specific tools through Workshop, meaning that modders can go wild with the ROMs (Read-only memory), the game software stored on the original game cartridges. ROM hacks, a proud tradition of modding old games, have existed for decades, and many users seem to be uploading pre-existing ones from the basins of the web. An even bigger legal headache on top of the pirated variations of Sega Genesis games, modders have also uploaded other commercial Genesis games that aren't available on the platform. The internet caught wind of one user adding Contra: Hard Corps, a game which belongs to Konami. It has since been taken down.

Video game ROMs, hacks, and pirated software is nothing new online. Whatever files Steam and Sega strike down from Workshop is likely available elsewhere. What makes this situation surreal is that, before being reported, modders can upload all sorts of grey zone copyright material within Sega's own platform, something akin to walking into a McDonald's and finding someone giving away Burger King chicken fries at one of the tables. At the time of writing there are versions of Donkey Kong Country, Wolfenstein and Angry Birds (none of which have anything to do with Sega) available on the Genesis & Mega Drive Collection. They will likely be removed, and something will likely be added in their place.

I say we keep things simple, and upload more mods like this one, which changes the death noises from Streets of Rage 2 to Tim Allen's catchphrase grunt from Home Improvement.