Multiple patches for a single ROM

I play a few games, such as Super Metroid and LoZ:ALttP which have some pretty 
nice ROM hacks out, and it'd be nice if you could use multiple IPS patches with 
a single ROM and have them all listed and playable as separate games.  You 
could implement this with a simple naming scheme such as this:

A single ROM patch that replaces the original game in the game list (i.e. a 
translation patch or something like that where you don't intend to play the 
unpatched game) would retain the same naming scheme, exact same name as the ROM 
but with the .ips extension instead of the .smc/.swc/.sfc extension.

Multiple patches for a single game, or ROM hacks where you want to be able to 
still select and play the original game as well as the hacked version:

Original ROM filename: SomeGameName.SMC
IPS Patch Name: SomeGameName.SMC_PatchedGameName.IPS

In the game list you would have:
SomeGameName
PatchedGameName

The save file for the patch would be saved as PatchedGameName.srm, and any time 
the emulator makes a reference to the patched game it would refer to it as if 
you were running a hardpatched ROM named PatchedGameName.smc (i.e. Game 
specific settings, the previously mentioned save file naming, etc).

This would be really neat because then if you had a bunch of good ROM hacks you 
could just pack up all of the IPS files in a .zip with the original ROM and 
you'd be set.  I'm currently running off of a 320GB USB hard drive, so my 
current workaround is to just make a new copy of the ROM for each patch, but 
it'd be nice to see this implemented to avoid having to double, triple, or 
quadruple the amount of space used just for redundant copies of ROMs... that's 
kind of the point of hotpatching, isn't it?
Original issue reported on code.google.com by qwertym...@gmail.com on 17 Sep 2010 at 12:44
MathewWi / snes9x-gx

Multiple patches for a single ROM #590
