Getting the ROM

To be able to play any MKDS hack, you need a fresh Mario Kart DS ROM first, which you need to get by your own self. This is a good guide to dump the ROM of the game from your own cartridge: https://wiki.no-intro.org/index.php?title=Nintendo_DS(i)_Dumping_Guide Doing this is completely legal, so you don't have to worry about doing it. What isn't legal is downloading the ROM from the internet. We don't recommend doing that, but if you don't care about being a pirate, go for it, but don't ask any help to us about that.

Optional: Checking the Integrity of your ROM

Sometimes it might happen that your ROM could be, for whatever reason, corrupted or modified. This might interfere with the experience with the MKDS hack, as it could show unknown bugs, issues or problems of any sort, including the game not even booting. To check if your ROM is completely fresh and fine, go to this site: https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha1_checksum.html Then, drop your ROM into the box. In the output box you will receive a code.

Now you need to check if the code matches with these ones: For USA / NTSC-U: 691e00d9a5dd80b04f80cc7559503e8b06848785 For JPN / NTSC-J: a4c790b6cd1e45a9728001081845c17f06985a17 For EUR / PAL: ce97d9b43f0d3ca0d48b781983e8a16f6393378f

If the code you got from the output matches the code of your version of the ROM given above then your ROM is fine. If it doesn't match, your ROM received some kind of modification, noticable or unnoticable. We highly recommend you to get another ROM if you don't want to experience unwanted problems with any MKDS hack.

Downloading the Hack

Now that you have the ROM, you need to download the contents of the hack. They all come in a single file, but you need the specific file for the region of your ROM (note that the Korean (KOR / NTSC-K) version of the game isn't supported by most hacks). You can get the files for each region from the resources page.

Getting the Hack

Now you can either use the xDelta program which comes with the bundle of files you downloaded or you can go here: https://hack64.net/tools/patcher.php With any of those two you will be able to patch any hack into your ROM. What to do here is quite self-explanatory: select the original fresh ROM you have, select the patch of the hack and let the patcher do its work to lastly get your cool copy of that hack.

That's it!