The SNES Classic Edition offers a number of visual options to make your favorite retro games even better, including a CRT television filter and a “pixel perfect” display option. The system also comes pre-loaded with several borders to fill in what the 4:3 games leave bare on the screen, but that wasn’t good enough for some fans.
Hackers have already managed to load their SNES Classic consoles up with a whole slew of extra games like Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong Country 2, but they’ve also figured out how to add custom borders to games. These are not only a lot more elaborate than what comes on the system already, many are even themed after its best games.
We’ve compiled some of our favorites, which you can see in the gallery above. These include a wood-panel television border complete with knobs and branding, a forest-themed Zelda: A Link to the Past border, and a Super Castlevania IV border that adds a dark blood moon to the already-creepy action-platformer.
While the majority of the designs we saw were themed after famous moments or scenes in particular games, a few got even more creative. NeoGAF user DarkGiygas created a Killer Instinct border designed to look like the cardboard boxes Super Nintendo games were packaged in, complete with the Nintendo seal of quality. He also created another wood grain border with a much more realistic look than the one Nintendo included on the system.
Adding custom borders to your SNES Classic is done in a similar way to how users have added extra games, requiring the use of software called Hakchi as well as a file-transferring program like Filezilla. Users just need to navigate to the proper server using their file-transferring program, download the folder containing background information, and they’ll be able to add it to their SNES Classic using Hakchi. Additional borders can then be added by placing them in the same folder.
All of this is, of course, predicated on you being able to find an SNES Classic system in the first place. The console has been almost as hard to find as last year’s SNES Classic, with retailers running out of online pre-orders in under a minute back in August.