Tutorial  Updated

Importing Gateway saves to cia games

Switching from Gateway to CFW can be a pain, especially since all your saves were created on Gateway. There's only one way to get those saves to be usable on cia games, and that's to decrypt the saves and eventually import them in the end. It's a very tedious process, but worth it in the end to be able to keep all your saves you worked hard on for so long. Gateway has become more and more obsolete, with CFW being more convenient to work with. ESPECIALLY Arm9loaderhax!

This will guide you on how to convert Gateway saves, and import them into cia games. For those who want to abandon Gateway, or those who still want to keep Gateway but use CFW.
No other guide for this existed so I figured I had to create one.
Be sure you have PLENTY of time to work on this, you'll also need a ton of patience for this!

Thanks to @zhdarkstar for the tip about using JK Save Manager for just about everything! Made the guide ten times easier than it was before.




Requirements
JK Save Manager
CTRXplorer (Can also use FBI)





I. Preperation Steps

1. Right click and copy all your .sav files, paste them anywhere on your computer as backup

2. Make a new folder on your SD card, call it something like "Gateway saves"

3. Copy one of your .sav files into this folder

4. Look up that save file on 3DSDB to see what game it is

5. Rename that .sav file to
0004000002C23200

6. Make a new folder and name it to whatever game it is
Example:
SD:/Gateway saves/Super Mario 3D Land/


7. Place the 0004000002C23200 sav file in this new folder you just created

8. Repeat steps 3-7 until every game is setup this way. Can take a while to go through depending on how much saves you have, be really patient.

9. Download JK Save Manager.cia, and CTRXplorer.cia then place them anywhere on the SD card






II. Exporting & Importing the saves with JK Save Manager

1. Install all the cia games you need, for the games you're going to import saves with

2. Launch each and every game one time, allowing it to initialize which creates save data. Again, this takes a LOT of patience to go through

3. Install JK Save Manager and CTRXplorer cia's using any cia manager you like. Assemble them near the game cart icon on the home menu for quick access.

4. Open CTRXplorer and browse into the Gateway saves folder, then into one of the game folders

5. Copy the 0004000002C23200
sav file (Instructions on top screen, should be Y to copy), then press B twice until you're on the SD's root. Paste the file here using the Y button (Say yes to replace if the file already exists)

6. Press home and close it. Press select to open Gateway's rom menu and choose the game you're about to work on, but don't go into the game

7. Open JK Save Manager, go to "Cartridge", then choose "Export save". Name it anything such as a date ex: 5-8-16

8. Once you exported the save, go back to the main menu and choose "SD/Cia". Find the game and choose "Import save"

9. Repeat steps 4-8 until every game's save is exported then imported. You'll need extreme patience for this, as this is the only way to decrypt the .sav files.

10. Launch some of the games to confirm that the save did indeed transfer successfully.
11. PLEASE make a backup of ALL the backed up saves from JK Save Manager, by uploading them to Google Drive or Dropbox!! This way your saves are forever safe!



About Card2 games
Certain games are card2 type games, where the save file is stored inside the cartridge. In our case, the save is stored inside the rom itself. Games like Pokemon XY/ORAS, Animal Crossing New Leaf, Tomodachi Life, Zelda Tri Force Heroes are card2 games. They don't produce a .sav file on the SD card like card1 games.
To export card2 saves, carry on by selecting the rom then using JK Save Manager to export the cartridge's save. Then import the save in SD/Cia.






Trivia
- Gateway saves are encrypted, so you can't export the save until you first renamed it to 0004000002C23200 and place it on the root. Since you can't have more than one of the same file name in one directory, you gotta work on these one by one. In this process, you're decrypting the saves.


- Some games like Fantasy Life and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy store their primary save data in "Extdata". If you plan on using the same NAND in the end, you don't have to worry about exporting/importing that.


- Saves from JK Save Manager, can be used by just about ANYBODY, from any region. They're highly universal and valuable to share on saves threads. Post them if you like to contribute!
 
Last edited by MattKimura,

Quantumcat

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Finally got tired of waiting on an update for 11.3 for Gateway so I updated to Luma3DS, man what a great decision. Problem is I have one save I really need from Mario and Luigi Dream Team. Any chance someone could convert this for me? Thank you very much...

EDIT: I do not have the physical cart for this game.
If you don't want to rely on waiting for someone else, make an emuNAND and downgrade it to 9.2 using a CTR transfer. Then use Gateway mode and extract the save using this tutorial. Then you can inject it in your sysNAND, and get rid of the emuNAND.
 

omgidfc

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If you don't want to rely on waiting for someone else, make an emuNAND and downgrade it to 9.2 using a CTR transfer. Then use Gateway mode and extract the save using this tutorial. Then you can inject it in your sysNAND, and get rid of the emuNAND.

Thanks, I may give that a shot if no one responds. For one save it feels like a lot of work to go through that, but if it comes down to it its worth not scrapping like 30 hours of gameplay. Thanks for the suggestion.
 

omgidfc

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If you don't want to rely on waiting for someone else, make an emuNAND and downgrade it to 9.2 using a CTR transfer. Then use Gateway mode and extract the save using this tutorial. Then you can inject it in your sysNAND, and get rid of the emuNAND.

Quantumcat, Looks like I will need to heed your advice and create an emunand to convert my save file from Gateway. Could you point me to a tutorial of some sort for creating an emunand for this purpose? I would assume by your comment that you have some experience with this. Thanks for the help.
 

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Quantumcat, Looks like I will need to heed your advice and create an emunand to convert my save file from Gateway. Could you point me to a tutorial of some sort for creating an emunand for this purpose? I would assume by your comment that you have some experience with this. Thanks for the help.
I know you can use emuNAND9, but GodMode9 can do it too. Make sure to backup all your SD card files before you create the emuNAND because it will wipe them out.
Once you have an emuNAND, follow the guide for the 9.2 CTR transfer, except choose emuNAND options rather than sysNAND ones.
 

omgidfc

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I know you can use emuNAND9, but GodMode9 can do it too. Make sure to backup all your SD card files before you create the emuNAND because it will wipe them out.
Once you have an emuNAND, follow the guide for the 9.2 CTR transfer, except choose emuNAND options rather than sysNAND ones.
Thanks will do. I really appreciate your help.
 
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atrocious123

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Hello, i no longer have gateway so i do not have the gateway rom menu there thus i can't use the cartridge step.. anyway else to continue to restore my saves? i still have the .SAV file though. ><
any help will be appreciated, thanks!
 

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Yeah, I've never had a gateway. Is this possible to do without one? Alternatively, can someone convert a single save for me? It's MH3U
 

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LegendaryFighter

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Thanks for this!

I had upgraded to Sys 11.4, so I couldn't run Gateway to get my saves. So, I had to downgrade my NAND using GodMode, then upgraded to 9.2 using this:

https://3ds.guide/9.2.0-ctrtransfer

and this to allow Gateway mode in b9s:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-booting-gw-with-b9s-and-some-help.471417/

Hi,
I think I have the same problem.

I was on OFW 4.4 and had a GateWay with emuNand on 11.2. Online mode wasn't working, so I followed a guide here to partially update emuNand to 11.4 and it was working (atleast yesterday). Today, it wasn't and since I didn't have a emuNand Backup, I decided to start over with Luma. So, I followed the guide on 3ds.guide and after some other problems, I ended up updating to 9.2.0 with the "9.2.0 CTRTransfer". I then updated this version to Sys 11.4.

Ok, and here's my question: I still have the old saves from my Gateway-Games, but the are encrypted, so I can't import them to my cia-Games on Luma.
So, would it be possible to save my Gateway-Saves using your method?

And do I have do downgrade again or can I just do the "9.2.0 CTRTransfer" thing directly?

Thank you very much.
 

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Hi,
I think I have the same problem.

I was on OFW 4.4 and had a GateWay with emuNand on 11.2. Online mode wasn't working, so I followed a guide here to partially update emuNand to 11.4 and it was working (atleast yesterday). Today, it wasn't and since I didn't have a emuNand Backup, I decided to start over with Luma. So, I followed the guide on 3ds.guide and after some other problems, I ended up updating to 9.2.0 with the "9.2.0 CTRTransfer". I then updated this version to Sys 11.4.

Ok, and here's my question: I still have the old saves from my Gateway-Games, but the are encrypted, so I can't import them to my cia-Games on Luma.
So, would it be possible to save my Gateway-Saves using your method?

And do I have do downgrade again or can I just do the "9.2.0 CTRTransfer" thing directly?

Thank you very much.
Do you still have an emuNAND? Downgrade it to 9.2 with a CTR transfer, then boot into Gateway mode and get your saves. If you don't have an emuNAND you should be able to create one with GodMode9.
 
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LegendaryFighter

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Do you still have an emuNAND? Downgrade it to 9.2 with a CTR transfer, then boot into Gateway mode and get your saves. If you don't have an emuNAND you should be able to create one with GodMode9.

No, I don't have emuNand anymore. But I was able to downgrade back to 9.2 and can access my Gateway-Savaes again.

However, I was only able to test the saves on cartrige. Do you think it is possible to restore the saves of the cias installed on my old emuNand? (I still have the files that were on the root of the SD card, but I don't have the emuNand partition anymore.)
 

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No, I don't have emuNand anymore. But I was able to downgrade back to 9.2 and can access my Gateway-Savaes again.

However, I was only able to test the saves on cartrige. Do you think it is possible to restore the saves of the cias installed on my old emuNand? (I still have the files that were on the root of the SD card, but I don't have the emuNand partition anymore.)
Yep as long as you have the exported saves in the JKSM folder, you can import them to cia games with JKSM.
 

LegendaryFighter

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Yep as long as you have the exported saves in the JKSM folder, you can import them to cia games with JKSM.

Ok, thats a problem. Because I didn't save the saves with JKSM. I just have the cia folder

GwwG2OU.png

So, without the old emuNand, it is impossible to transfer these saves to another emuNand?
 

chatmax

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Finally got tired of waiting on an update for 11.3 for Gateway so I updated to Luma3DS, man what a great decision. Problem is I have one save I really need from Mario and Luigi Dream Team. Any chance someone could convert this for me? Thank you very much...

EDIT: I do not have the physical cart for this game.

Did you end up getting the .sav file converted? I just successfully converted my Mario & Luigi Dream Team to CIA from my gateway sav, I'm no using BS9 + Luma.
 

bjaxx87

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Ok, thats a problem. Because I didn't save the saves with JKSM. I just have the cia folder

GwwG2OU.png

So, without the old emuNand, it is impossible to transfer these saves to another emuNand?
It should be enough to just move 00000001.sav from the data folder of your EmuNAND to the respective data folder of your SysNAND. I did this before with Alpha Sapphire and while the game claimed my save was corrupted, deleting the secure value with SaveDataFiler fixed it.
 

shahanshah

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Did you end up getting the .sav file converted? I just successfully converted my Mario & Luigi Dream Team to CIA from my gateway sav, I'm no using BS9 + Luma.
How did you do that? I have a .sav I want to convert, would greatly appreciate if you could help me out.
 

Skeet1983

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I tried guide with Monster Hunter Generations. When I went to extract save from Gateway/Cartridge, it said failed to open save archive or something. Is this game known to have issue with JKSM? Thoughts and help appreciated :)
 

chatmax

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How did you do that? I have a .sav I want to convert, would greatly appreciate if you could help me out.

I used MattKimura's instructions. I had trouble the first time when trying to convert Fire Emblem .sav's, getting export errors. But I think I finally got the jist of things.
Post or pm me your sav file. I will try to convert it.
 

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