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Not just at the ends, but all the data in that range. FFB0 should be 00, FFB1 should be 00, etc all the way up to FFFF

If you have a copy of the Super Famicom game "Tales of Phantasia," you should see if it's possible for the emulator to play that game without issues. This hack should be mostly identical in how the ROM is laid out to that game, albeit I learned today that save data is accidentally handled a bit differently in EarthBound hacks (in ways that old emulators don't care about anyway). If it can't play Tales, then it won't play this hack either.

I was able to get the hack working in snes9x 1.60 by zeroing out all the data in the ROM at file addresses 00FFB0-00FFFF, but evidently the emulator you're using doesn't behave like snes9x did, and it's unclear how exactly it is behaving.

People have gotten it working in snes9x (1.61+; the latest version is 1.63 released in 2024), ares (which means that the related emulators bsnes and higan probably work too), and Mesen. You should have several options available.

The problem is well understood. This hack is an "Ex-HiROM" SNES game (not HiROM as your IpsAndSum program says), meaning its header data is stored at ROM file address 40FFB0. All the emulators that the hack works on are able to guess/recognize that, due to the ROM being massive (>4 MB) and having valid header data at that address.

EarthBound is originally a HiROM SNES game, though, not Ex-HiROM, meaning its header was originally at ROM file address 00FFB0. The hacking tool used to make the ROM bigger and change its format to  Ex-HiROM doesn't clear out the old header data at that address. And for some reason, a few SNES emulators/tools/flashcarts seem to be getting very confused by that, for reasons I don't fully understand. (Apparently there have been many historical "interleaved" ROM formats that people have used over the years, though most emulators that are still being maintained today make no attempt to support them.) I've sent a few people developing Ex-HiROM EarthBound hacks an extra patch to test things out that removes the old copy of the header, including the developers of this hack, in the hopes that it'll improve the emulators'/etc ability to guess the ROM format correctly. I guess I didn't get it to them soon enough for it to be tested for 1.2 though.

The error in your last screenshot means you have the patched ROM and patch in the same folder. Mesen has a feature where it tries to apply a patch automatically to a ROM when they're named the same, so that you don't need to manually use a patching tool. That automatic patching is what's failing (it would be bad if you were able to apply the patch to the ROM twice). You can get rid of the message by moving the ROM or patch to a different folder, or renaming either one, or disabling soft patching support in Mesen.

I'm not aware of any emulator actually caring about the checksum in the ROM header being correct, or using it for the ROM format heuristics. Snes9x doesn't seem to use it, at least. I'm not sure I've even heard of snesticle before seeing this post; the only old emulator I've heard of people still trying to use occasionally is zsnes.