This is my fault
the "acmlm's board" mentioned is actually the first "iteration" of the one i run now, jul. a little history:
- acmlm's board "iteration 1" ran from 2001 until a major data loss event in 2004.
- acmlm's board "iteration 2" ran from 2004 or 5 until i deleted it 2005 or 6.
- acmlm's board "iteration 3" ran from 2006 until 2007 until the web host did a coup and took over the forum.
around the end of 2 and the start of 3, i was basically the head admin. literal forum tyrant, fun times. anyway, to get back on track, the super mario world hacking forum (and the rom hacking one) were, basically, shit. low-signal high-noise garbage. the kind of thing you would expect from a bunch of literal children.
which, i mean, that's what it was — we were all teenagers back then — but still, you get the idea. people who couldn't follow the rules about not using aol sp33k or posting low quality stuff where they dragged a few pipes around and changed the level background to munchers.
we instituted an "approval" system: you had to make an introduction thread detailing why you should be allowed to post. mostly this just meant "write some words, show us you can speak english competently, and that you have a basic understanding of the rules and concepts of this community". people from the sonic 2 beta / sonic retro forums might remember a similar process for "trial members".
what this did is basically cut the noise down to nothing but kept a good signal ratio... at the cost of removing a lot of people, because now they had to go through extra bullshit to be allowed to contribute. while you still had the technical people on acmlm's board, at the time, everyone else who got the boot started their own offsite:
smw central.
you might notice that it looked an awful lot like acmlm's board did back then.
the problem was that smw central basically got all the "undesirables". and, to no surprise, that... kind of just became how smw central was. it never grew up. it never really got better. while the sonic 2 beta / sonic retro forums spawned the split disassemblies and a better understanding of those games, smw central clutched their easy-to-use all-in-one tool and that was that.
as far as i'm aware, fusoya has never shared any of his work. all of his tools are closed-source; most are undocumented. his assembly hacks and modifications to the game are similarly closed-source. his second major rom hack,
demo world: the legend continues, iirc, uses a specific lunar-magic based lock mechanism, preventing anyone else from opening or experimenting with his work. lunar magic itself, even, will checksum its executable and fail to run if it detects it's been tampered with.
lunar magic made fusoya the de-facto king of super mario world hacking and i do not think that is a position he will ever, ever give up.
