EarthBound Halloween Hack

EarthBound Halloween Hack
Title screen
DeveloperToby Fox
PlatformSuper Nintendo Entertainment System
ReleaseOctober 2008
GenreRole-playing
ModeSingle-player

EarthBound Halloween Hack[a] is a ROM hack of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game EarthBound, developed by American indie developer Toby Fox. Gameplay takes much of the same as in the original EarthBound, featuring many role-playing game elements. It takes place in an alternative timeline of EarthBound where Varik, the main character, soon enters the lab of Dr. Andonuts, who has been wracked with grief under the assumption that his actions during EarthBound's story killed his son Jeff and his friends.

EarthBound Halloween Hack has been described as a "prototype" of Fox's 2015 game, Undertale, featuring similarities in themes and writing. It was one of Fox's earliest experiences in game development involved using RPG Maker with his three brothers to make role-playing games and creating ROM hacks in high school. The hack draws inspiration from the Brandish series, directly using its main character Varik as a substitute for EarthBound's Ness and its final boss track, "Megalovania", being inspired by the Brandish 2: The Planet Buster song "Gadobadorrer".

EarthBound Halloween Hack was released in October 2008 for a ROM-hacking competition on the EarthBound-centered forum Starmen. It received generally mixed reception by journalists, praising its mechanics and overall writing while criticizing the edgy humor. The track "Megalovania" was later remixed for subsequent projects Fox worked on, including Undertale. The track would become widely popular, which spawned various memes and remixes to the degree of being named its own subgenre on YouTube. The creator Toby Fox looks back on the EarthBound Halloween Hack poorly, calling it a "bad rom hack with swears".

Gameplay

See also: EarthBound § Gameplay

EarthBound Halloween Hack plays much the same as in the original EarthBound, with it featuring many traditional role-playing game elements. In terms of the visuals, it has darker tone. It has new enemies including tentacle-faced dogs, reanimated Starmen corpses and zombies, and more areas to explore than EarthBound.[3]

Plot

EarthBound Halloween Hack takes place in an alternative timeline of EarthBound where Ness, Paula, Jeff and Poo don't return back home after defeating Giygas. Varik, the main character, soon enters the lab of Dr. Andonuts, who has been wracked with grief under the assumption that his actions during EarthBound's story killed his son Jeff and his friends.[4] At the end of the hack, Dr. Andonuts gives the line “tl;dr: eat shit, faggots,” before his final boss fight.[5]

Development and release

Fox's earliest experiences in game development involved using RPG Maker with his three brothers to make role-playing games and creating ROM hacks in high school.[6][7] EarthBound Halloween Hack is one of his earliest projects. The ROM hack draws inspiration from the Brandish series, directly using its main character Varik as a substitute for EarthBound's Ness and its final boss track, "Megalovania," being inspired by the Brandish 2: The Planet Buster song "Gadobadorrer."[8] EarthBound Halloween Hack released in October 2008,[5] for a ROM-hacking competition on the EarthBound-centered forum Starmen.[4]

Reception

EarthBound Halloween Hack has received generally mixed reception by journalists, praising its mechanics and overall writing while criticizing the edgy humor. Miri Teixeira of GamesRadar+ writes that "if you fit into that group of Undertale/Deltarune fans [who] are able to handle a good dose of teenage edginess – I'd still [...] recommend the Halloween Hack today."[4] Hardcore Gaming 101's Jonathan Kaharl calls the Halloween Hack "almost like a prototype Undertale in terms of themes, comedy and tone", but states that "it's not hard to see why Toby Fox looks back on [it] poorly," critiquing its "hit or miss" black comedy. Kaharl describes the writing as "if Earthbound is an early season of The Simpsons, The Halloween Hack is the first season of South Park."[5]

Legacy

The song that plays during its final boss fight, "Megalovania", was later remixed for subsequent projects Fox worked on, including Homestuck,[9] Undertale,[10] and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.[11] The track would become widely popular, which spawned various memes and remixes to the degree of being named its own subgenre on YouTube.[9][12] A fan-made recreation of the first chapter of Fox's 2018 game Deltarune as an EarthBound ROM hack, titled Bound to the Dark World, was developed over the span of two years and released on October 31, 2025, which GamesRadar+ described as "a tribute to Toby Fox's ROM-hacking start."[13][14] Toby Fox looks back on the EarthBound Halloween Hack poorly, calling it a "bad rom hack with swears".[5][15]

YouTuber MatPat theorized in a 2016 video that the Undertale character Sans and Ness were the same person using Toby Fox's Halloween Hack and a secret room in Undertale containing items whose descriptions MatPat claimed corresponded to belongings of Ness as evidence. The video later became a popular meme, being referenced by Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai in 2020[16] and Toby Fox regarding MatPat's retirement from the Game Theorists channel.[17]

Notes

  1. ^ Also known as Radiation Halloween Hack, Radiation's Halloween Hack, or Press the B Button[1][2]

References

  1. ^ Fox, Toby. "Radiation Halloween Hack (Censored)". starmen.net. Archived from the original on August 17, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2025.
  2. ^ Fox, Toby. "Radiation's Halloween Hack". radiation.fobby.net.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  3. ^ Wilson, Mike (July 7, 2023). "Hacking Horror: Horror-Themed ROM Hacks for Classic Video Games". Bloody Disgusting!. Retrieved January 8, 2026.
  4. ^ a b c Teixeira, Miri (July 7, 2025). "17 years after it was released, I'm tracing Undertale and Deltarune's origins back to Toby Fox's spooky Earthbound mod". GamesRadar+. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
  5. ^ a b c d Kaharl, Jonathan (August 13, 2017). "Earthbound (The Halloween Hack)". Hardcore Gaming 101. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
  6. ^ "Indie Dev Spotlight: Toby Fox and His Success with Undertale - Total Apex Gaming". November 12, 2025. Retrieved November 29, 2025.
  7. ^ Schilling, Chris (May 5, 2018). "The making of Undertale". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  8. ^ Creswell, Jacob (July 24, 2021). "Undertale: Megalovania Has a Longer History Than You Think". CBR. Retrieved December 7, 2025.
  9. ^ a b Haasch, Palmer (February 25, 2020). "TikTok users keep reinventing Undertale's 'Megalovania'". Polygon.com. Retrieved March 14, 2026.
  10. ^ "Undertale". Edge. No. 314. January 2018. p. 95.
  11. ^ Higham, Michael. "Sans From Undertale Joins Smash Ultimate As Mii Fighter; Megalovania Makes The Tracklist". GameSpot. Archived from the original on December 8, 2023. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
  12. ^ "5 years later, 'Undertale' is still groundbreaking and wonderfully weird". Inverse. February 20, 2024. Retrieved March 14, 2026.
  13. ^ Yarwood, Jack (November 4, 2025). "Earthbound Hackers Spent 2 Years Recreating Deltarune Chapter 1 In The Classic SNES RPG, & You Can Grab It Now For Free". Time Extension. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
  14. ^ Wood, Austin (October 30, 2025). "Deltarune fans spent 2 years recreating Chapter 1 "in its entirety" inside SNES RPG Earthbound, which feels like the ultimate tribute to Toby Fox's romhacking start". GamesRadar+. Retrieved December 7, 2025.
  15. ^ Fox, Toby [@tobyfox] (February 9, 2016). "I guess I should just accept 'bad rom hack with swears' as part of my eternal legacy" (Tweet). Archived from the original on June 29, 2016. Retrieved January 8, 2026 – via Twitter.
  16. ^ Garcia, Marcelo (September 16, 2020). "Smash Bros. Creator Sakurai's Undertale Anniversary Post References a Meme". CBR. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
  17. ^ Baird, Scott (January 10, 2024). "Undertale creator references infamous Game Theory in farewell to MatPat". Dexerto. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
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