Rom version

[Sarcose]

There are the USA, EU, and J versions of the actually released game. The Japanese original release allows Yoshi to eat dolphins - that might be good to look into. But are there different ROM versions? 1.0, 1.1, something like that? We need to decide on what we are going to use for the hack, and stick with it.

[Sarcose]

After doing some digging I have learned that there is only one version of each game but there are headered and unheadered versions of the SMW(U) (usa) ROMs. Most hackers use a Headered (U) version rom. To tell whether your ROM image is headered or unheadered, look at the file size.
524800 bytes => headered ROM of SMW
524288 bytes => headerless ROM of SMW
Most IPS files for SMW require the headered ROM of 524800 bytes.

Adding a header is simple. I just confirmed that this works, as I had an unheadered Super Mario World (U)!.smc rom (U stands for USA release, E stands for Europe release, J stands for Japan release. "!" means it is the pure, unmodified original image (as opposed to things like t1, h1, x, b, which mean things like bad checksum or trainered or "fixed" or the like).)

To add a header open the ROM in Lunar Magic. LM will ask to add a header for you. It will do so, and you don't even have to save it, it appends it right to the file before you can even begin editing. BAM. Ready for patching and hacking.

[Assault Squirt]

Seeing as it's easy to modify the US/EU versions to be able to eat dolphins (literally 2 lines of code), I'd say we choose US, since it's the easiest to get.