Secret of Goku Browser ROM Hack Brings Dragon Ball Z's Hero Into The SNES Classic

Secret of Mana needs no introduction; it's one of the best and most celebrated SNES RPGs of all time, up there with Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy, and it's a game that SNES fans know like the back of their hands. But what they won't know is what the game feels like with Goku from Dragon Ball Z as the main character, but luckily for us, ROM hacker Mikola Lysenko has been working to give us that experience in our browsers

Mikola has been working on this hack for the last couple of weeks and, with the assistance of Claude, now has Goku in the leading role, punching and firing ki blasts in order to progress through the game. If you're against AI-coded projects, then look away now. But if you want to check out Secret of Mana with a new flavour, then check out the details below!

There's now a SNES cartridge port, and thanks to the latest update, the Instant Transmission and Kamehameha features work perfectly. As I mentioned in the title, this is also a browser-based game too, and you can play the game on any platform without having to do any downloading.

The storyline is wild: Goku's Saiyan pod crashes right into Potos just as the Mana Sword is pulled free. The pod squashes him, leaving Goku to go on the adventure in his stead! Goku can fly over chasms and blast right through walls and ceilings, dealing out Dragon Ball-style punishment to all the enemies in his path.

Large battles can slow the action down with lag a little bit, so there's still a little bit of tinkering to do to get everything running smoothly. If you want to play this on your SNES, you'll need a legally acquired, unmodified, and headerless Secret of Mana (USA) ROM (CRC32 D0176B24) to patch the new Secret of Goku hack onto.

I want this to be advertised primarily for a real SNES instead of a browser game; that would seal the deal for me. It hasn't been tested on an actual console yet, just emulators, but this would be perfect to play on Taki Udon's new FPGA console when it releases, or to play on your existing SNES via a flash cart. Still, the fact that you can play in your browser means you can play it on an existing device right now without shelling out any extra money, so I guess I can't complain. But playing this with a SNES pad on my CRT would always be my preference.