I recently realized that I've never talked much about the SSX modding community here. I've shown off a few of their creations, but I've never advertised it or explained what it's accomplished beyond that! I think it's about time I talk about it and what we've accomplsihed together.
Existing in some form since 2018 but officially forming in 2021, the SSX modding community aims to tackle the more technical side of the SSX games, from reverse-engineering, decompilation, and the programming of tools for various purposes. Currently led by modders modeco80, Archy, Linkz, and several others, they've done things with these games that surprised even me. Archy told me that it was my modding showcase video from late 2019 that got him into the scene, so while I'm not up for big fancy video productions anymore, I thought I might as well put the spotlight on the modding community once again to show everyone what they've managed to accomplish in these exciting 8 years.
You may have seen me post custom SSX Tricky tracks before, such as Yukon Supercross, Moloka'i Pa'hee and Snow Belline by modder ManTheSam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq3fyxMtr5o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_cLe0dbN18
These were made possible by both Archy and Linkz, who have both made their own full SSX Tricky level editors, helping each others' projects along the way. First starting development on June 7th 2023 is Archy's level editor known as IceSaw, a play on the name of one of the official tools used by EA Sports BIG, known as IcePick. This level editor takes the form of a Unity package and is capable of creating full-fledged Tricky levels, minus a few more complicated tasks such as advanced lighting and intro cameras. It also has partial support for SSX OG and has early unpublished work that will eventuallly allow the same modifications to be done to SSX 3:
https://github.com/GlitcherOG/Icesaw-SSX-Level-Editor-Plugin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb2_DF9lBvk
Due to the ever-growing jank of Unity, a successor has been in the works aptly named IceSaw2, which aims to be a completely standalone application, but development on it has been slow due to a lack of contributors:
https://github.com/IceSawTeam/Ice-Saw-2
Modder Linkz has his own SSX Tricky level editor, taking the form of a Blender plugin, known as BXTools. This software has more cutting-edge technology, such as a good amount of work on lightmap generation, and usually sees advancements before they're implemented into IceSaw:
https://github.com/Linkz64/bxtools
The community as a whole have developed and put together a comprehensive collection of PCSX2 PNACH cheats and GameCube Action Replay codes to avoid having to find questionable codes across the internet:
https://github.com/SSXModding/SSX-Patches
Adding to Archy's list of modding feats is the SSX Multitool, the Swiss Army Knife of SSX modding tools. It can do a ton of things, from extracting SSX levels for use with IceSaw, unpacking/repacking/creating of the franchise's .BIG file archives supporting every compression type, nearly full support for audio replacements, language file creation and editing, texture editing and replacement, and a myriad of other useful things. It has recently begun adding support for GameCube and Xbox versions of various game files:
https://github.com/GlitcherOG/SSX-Collection-Multitool
One of his most recent masterpieces is the SSX Mod Manager. Due to the games taking various forms and usually requiring unpacking and repacking game ISOs, Archy has taken it upon himself to make a full mod manager that automates the entire process of modding environment preparation and installation, with the least amount of user interaction possible! Existing mods have nearly all been converted to its special compressed format:
https://github.com/GlitcherOG/SSXModManager
Of course, to aid in the creation of his tools, Archy and several others have been maintaining what is known as the SSX Library, a codebase representing all their reverse-engineering and datamining efforts, and is the core of all their tools. This specific project, which was created on November 30th of 2025, was unintentionally fed into Generative AI models without his consent, which is why all the recent recomps and game recreations render and construct the levels nearly flawlessly, but fail to reproduce things like lighting, because it contains so little information about the games' lighting:
https://github.com/GlitcherOG/SSX-Library
Archy has also taken it upon himself to snatch up every rare piece of SSX merchendise and early development build. The recent dumping and releasing of the SSX 3 July Beta build was his work.
If all that wasn't enough, Archy managed to restore SSX 3's original Online functonality through emulation of the original servers. Info for this project has its own dedicated website, which has been on the subreddit's sidebar for a while now:
http://ssxor.org/
If the modding community has made mods, what mods have been made? Apart from the custom tracks I've already shown off, this is a comprehensive list of every mod available via the SSX Mod Manager:
SSX OG HUD Fix By Archy
Miku By AnythingForAPudding
(adds Hatsune Miku into SSX Tricky)
Aloha Hole By Myself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVkW2kr_vSA
Cup Board By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4teSJSnffM
Moloka'i Pa'Hee By ManTheSam
Snow Belline By ManTheSam
SSX Tricky Mario & Pokemon By Zenloup
(exactly what it sounds like)
SSX Tricky Steve By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjomiIsyQEk
Stop Sign By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSv9AJOOlY8
Tiny Garibaldi By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_9h4SfcQPg
Tiny Megaplex By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn2Cg53wbJQ
Twist'N'Turn trick-off By ManTheSam
(his first custom track that he never showed off publicly)
Yukon Supercross By ManTheSam
SSX Tricky Grow By Archy
SSX Tricky Visible Reset By Archy
(makes invisible reset barriers visible)
SSX 3 MUSIC MOD PACK By SheikProject
(massive pack of custom music)
SSX 3 Easter EGG Outfits By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuihSoToxag
SEX 3 By Bane
Sora Kingdom Hearts By Zenloup
(also exactly what it sounds like)
Pre Alpha Restoration Mod by Myself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne5l4YiMaTI
SSX 3 300% By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRgNeJi91iE
SSX 3 No Intro By Archy
SSX 3 Steve By Archy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fj4AXGjis4
SSX 3 Custom Podium Music By Zenloup
SSX 3 Broken Objects By Archy
Something very important to note is that the SSX modding community has always struggled to maintain its projects due to being very small, leaving all the work to only a few people, therefore they are actively looking for partial or full-time human programmers experienced with languages like C or C++ and reverse-engineers to assist them with reverse-engineering, datamining, and decompilation projects, which include inactive decompilations of the first three games, progress having stagnated due to the lack of contributors:
https://github.com/ssxdecomp/ssx
https://github.com/ssxdecomp/ssxtricky
https://github.com/ssxdecomp/ssx3
Overall, the SSX modding community is a treasure trove of unique and obscure information and tools you really can't find anywhere else, and it's a shame that it gets so little attention. If any of this sounds interesting to you, I've added the link to their Discord server to this subreddit's sidebar.
Note that unlike this subreddit's relaxed rules on the matter, the SSX modding community has strict rules regarding Generative AI, it not being a place to dump recomps and PC ports willy-nilly. It wants to keep contributions to its projects as authentic and human-made as possible, so in the event AI technologies unexpectedly become unavailable, you'd still be able to modify SSX games with high efficiency, as well as PC ports still becoming a possibility. Please respect their wishes.
