Okay, here's a weird one. Kart Fighter is an unlicensed "pirate original" fighting game for the Famicom which features characters from Super Mario Kart beating the holy hell out of each other, Street Fighter style. Sound like Super Smash Bros? It shouldn't. This game predates Nintendo's own take on the genre by several years, and in fact could be cited as a source of inspiration for the creation of Smash Bros. Well, okay, maybe not. But still.

Anyway, Kart Fighter is...well, it's actually really good, surprisingly. Some would go as far to say that it's the best one-on-one fighting game on the NES, though its only serious competition is Joy Mech Fight, TMNT Tournament Fighters, and all that unplayable pirated crap like those "ports" of The King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat, and the dreaded Cony versions of Street Fighter.

Among its bootlegged peers, though, Kart Fighter reigns supreme. The game positively reeks of effort - all character sprites are original and unique to this game, and are large, colorful, and well-animated. The gameplay isn't perfect, but it's at least existent, which is more than you can say for any other pirated fighting game ever made for the NES. It's actually playable, for chrissake. PLAYABLE! Heavens!

It's not an excellent game by any means, but its mere concept and the decent amount of quirk contained within (dig the game's inexplicably capable and hot interpretation of Princess Peach) make Kart Fighter very much worth playing. If only for a few minutes.

And yes, the game has a two-player mode. Press left or right on controller 2 at the character select screen to enable it. Have a fun!

This hack does the following:

-Fixes character names and score board
-Recolors the title background yellow, to be more accurate to Super Mario Kart.
-Corrects the error where Mario had a green hat and Luigi had a red hat.
-Slightly improves character palettes - Mario/Luigi often had a half-white face and Peach had very dark brown hair, these have both been recolored to be more accurate.
-Improves palettes for duplicate characters (for example, if two people pick Mario, player 2 now has the color scheme of Wario)


There is still plenty of room for improvement:
-Luigi's special moves cannot be executed by a human player,
-Bowser moves far too slow, making him totally non-viable,
-Mario/Bowser should have their home stages swapped (Mario's home being a lava stage is strange),
-The music on Peach's stage (Clouds) could have its volume slightly reduced as it's obnoxiously loud,
-You shouldn't have to fight Bowser twice,
-"The End" should show up on all difficulties,
-You shouldn't be penalized for a perfect,

...and there's almost certainly more.

This hack is intended for a clean "Kart Fighter (Unl)" ROM, with a CRC32 of 4877213A.

Database match: Kart Fighter (Unl).nes
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20180803-121122)
File SHA-1: EBF39B0E6EC4B8D5FC0C7715BB88C9E733018D89
File CRC32: 4877213A
ROM SHA-1: 19119E04C7542CD294A5B34844F0D4578E211DF8
ROM CRC32: 6C15609F