just want to get an idea of how many people play hacked SNES games on hardware and emulator.

I personally am a sensitive guy, so I like movies and games to have an immersive atmospheric feel to them. hence only play SNES hacks on real hardware because it feels more authentic, as if the hack I'm playing was a unique separate title.

only problem with this is that hacks seem to be designed to be played on emulators so quite often hacks played on my Super NES are plagued with various graphical glitches. it's either that or I'm not patching the files correctly, but I've downloaded prepatched roms from emulation sites and the glitches do not appear on emulator only on the hardware.

i usually patch the rom using SNEStool, convert to GD3 format using ucon64 front end and fix the checksum if it's bad (although unsure if this even does anything). then I upload the roms direct to my game doctor sf7 using a parallel cable.

certain games just won't work though like "BS-Zelda real hardware hack", Starfox 2 and Star Ocean.

Yeah, I imagine a good number of hacks were tested only on ZSNES and SNES9X, which didn't emulate the hardware accurate enough that glitches would be noticed. This is probably before flash carts became common, but even then (and with copiers) it can be a bit tedious to constantly re-copy to test chantges. Hopefully, that will improve as bsnes increases in popularity (which more strictly enforces hardware limitations, making bugs easier to notice and forcing hack authors to fix them).
Then again, I've heard there's a least a few SMW hacks were the author specifically recommends older versions of ZSNES, suggesting they know it has bugs but they don't care to fix them.

Ah yes, wasn't that one of the reasons Byuu voiced his rant about Bsnes and the Crimson Echoes hack?  Wasn't it because the people behind Crimson Echoes made it impossible to import music via Zsnes and some other program? He wanted to be able to implement his music enhancer chip (21fx or something to that effect). Maybe I got his whole rant misquoted, but either way, I got in an argument on those forums, trying to convince people to use Snes9x when the author stated it worked only with Zsnes. I kept telling them that Snes9x 1.52 had better SPC700 emulation and was compatible with the ROM hack, but they didn't listen, they just pulled the topic from the forums.

Ah yes. That's what I meant to say. But seriously, how could the dude be so close-minded. Zsnes may be the most popular emulator, but it sure as heck isn't tje most accurate. Kind of sad, really.

I wasn't just writing to VRAM, but reading from it to construct my VWF tiles. In VBA, no problem. In BGB (and on a real Game Boy), yes problem. VRAM is locked except during VBlank, so my VWF printed garbage. The fix involved constructing each tile in a RAM buffer before writing to VRAM.

It would be so cool to be able to play Super Metroid Redesign on the SNES. Too bad it can't be done.