For a long time my favorite was Excite Mario Bros.
Excitebike riders, Kirby, and Samus are trying to stop you at every turn from reaching the end of the levels! Here is a full game hack which changes all the levels and graphics. Also the music has been slightly altered to give the original music some change.
Recently though my favorite has become Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash!.
A hastily done minihack (with levels designed within 2 months) that features Celeste-styled gameplay.
It adds dash and wall jump mechanics. I haven’t beaten it yet but I am really enjoying the level design.
What about you? Any favorites or recommendations?
Can’t say I’ve ever tried an SMB rom hack, but Zap & Dash sounds amazing! Can’t wait to try it out
Zap&Dash is incredible and it’s amazing it can even be done as a romhack of SMB. 100% worth checking out.
Nice try, Nintendo.
Not a ROM hack, but Redigit, before going on to make Terraria, made something called SMB X, remixing SMB 1, 2, 3, World, and Zelda 1 and 2. It also had its own level editor. Totally fun.
Mario Crossover was also hours and hours of fun, but I’m not sure if it’s playable anymore. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._Crossover
Play classic NES Mario levels as a bunch of other characters. Really great!
Mario adventure and Mario 3 mix are my favs. Highly recommend trying. Mario adventure has a ton of new things, game mechanics and power ups.
Mario 3 mix takes a lot of maps / music from all Mario 3 platforms and stuffs it into the Mario 3 engine. Tons of fun
Fap & Dash?
The two player hack.