super-beheader

Remove copier headers from SNES roms (aka SMC to SFC converter).

What

SNES game dumps use the extension .sfc, for Super Famicom. But many roms use the extension .smc instead. What's the difference between these two file types?

SMC stands for Super Magicom, a game backup device that would add an extra header to the dumped ROM.

SMC files are basically SFC files with an extra set of bits prepended to the game ROM.

Why

Most SNES emulators can run both SFC and SMC files, just ignoring the extra headers.

Some patches, though, expect the "raw" SFC file to apply cleanly.

Some emulator frontends, like OpenEmu, require the SFC file to calculate a hash that will be used to retrieve game metadata (like cover image) from online databases.

Being able to convert from SMC to SFC can prove useful in these cases and probably others.

How

$ super-beheader.py -h
usage: super-beheader.py [-h] [-o OUTPUT_DIR] [-z] inputs [inputs ...]

Remove copier headers from SNES roms (aka SMC -> SFC).

positional arguments:
  inputs                roms to behead

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTPUT_DIR, --output-dir OUTPUT_DIR
                        output directory
  -z, --zipped          zip resulting SFC