SM74c seems pretty cool. The levels are a bit... bland or empty feeling and not as aesthetic as compared to the vanilla game but they're all new to explore and find stars in so I can't complain. It's just about right on the difficulty level too, at least the 10 stars I got - a bit harder than the usual game but doesn't require you to know every single speedrunner trick or retry jumps 100 times like some bad SMW hacks I've tried. The patching process to make it work on console was a pain in the ass though, you have to patch the original patch with the 'on console' patch, then apply that patch to the rom. took me a while and a bunch of reading READMEs to get ir right.
>RGB N64.
This is an easy mod, I did it myself. Just get a ~$12 little circuit board off ebay, install it over the pins and run three wires. Pretty much anyone who solders can do this, and it's pretty forgiving even to beginners. Then get a SNES euro-scart cable (includes the wires for RGB). The hard part then is finding something to plug it into. I run the RGB modded N64 into a 15 khz RGB->YPbPr converter on a ~2000 era trinitron when i'm running an analog setup. End quality is great but it's a real rats nest of cables and hard-to-find adapters to get it there. it's worth it though, fuck chrominance blur right in the anus.
>HDMI N64
Got this one too, but I was a pleb and paid for a premodded one. I think I could handle the soldering myself but I didn't really see anyone selling single copies of the mod kit, the guy was mostly selling quantities of 10 minimum and I didn't really feel like doing that and reselling. This is what I've got plugged in right now into a big flat screen. Quality is better than the framemeister since the signal stays digital the whole way. Image quality looks best at the 1080 mode (box fills pixels) but adds one frame's worth (~16 ms) of lag. I use this 90% of the time. "Direct mode" at 480p doesn't add any lag/only a few ms of lag but most tvs will have some garbage "upscaling" bullshit that fux with your pixels. So I only use this for games or parts in games where lag is absolutely critical. Overall the HDMI mod is pretty sick and is becoming more and more relevant now that lots TVs are dropping analog video inputs altogether or annoying adapters. My new flat screen only has a CVBS input, no s-vid or component and it needs an adapter that didn't even ship with the tv so I had to order one separately.
>Flash carts. These are great, just have to pack a single cartridge with my console these days, saves tons of space. I had one of the offbrand ones that you have to reset before turning off to save, worked just fine except if you forget to press reset before turning off. Gave that one to a friend when I got my everdrive 64. Has a fullset on there, every game works and boots right up. shit's tight, no complaints.