Releasing a patch is still and always will be the best thing to do IMHO, SilentP. I'm sure there's been back-and-forth on this point early in the fan modding community's history, and patching ultimately won out.
The reason is, it is in everyone's power to create a backup of a game that he or she owns. Granted, it's much more difficult to complete a format shift of a cartridge-based game than a CD or DVD-based game (you need special hardware for data transfer), but the modding community leaves it up to the end user's honor to own a copy of the original game being modded. To release a pre-patched ROM is ultimately engaging in piracy of at least a portion of the original work; to release a patch involves no distribution of the IP holder's source code whatsoever, only instruction sets to modify that source code.
Ah. I figured these kinds of issues must have been considered at some point by the community, but I never really understood the reasoning behind that decision (I, probably understandably, forgot about the people who actually make
legal backups of their snes games, rofl). So, thanks for clarifying that.
However, because of the fact that I'm sure 99.9% of people who would d/l this patch would have obtained a CT ROM illegally, and because of the fact that Square undoubtedly knows this, I'd still be pretty shocked to learn they would ever allow this to be released in patch form now that the C&D is out. In addition, as long as you intend to release it in patch form, it seems to me Square has a pretty easy out in any press releases, through that argument. But then, this is probably another one of those things you've already considered.
[Edit: and I would understand if you can't comment for legal reasons or something
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