Hacking vcromclaim - extracts ROMs and manuals from NAND dumps

Plombo · Jan 27, 2011

Yesterday, I released a new utility called vcromclaim. Its primary purpose is to extract ROMs from Virtual Console games on NAND dumps created by BootMii and other NAND dumpers. It also extracts manuals and some game saves as an added bonus.

The ROMs and saves it outputs are compatible with popular emulators. The manuals are HTML files. It can decompress virtually any compressed file it encounters.

At present, it works almost flawlessly with the following VC platforms:

NES (tested with FCEUX, save extraction supported)
SNES (tested with Snes9x and ZSNES, save extraction supported)
Nintendo 64 (tested with Mupen64Plus and Wii64, save extraction supported)
Master System (tested with Dega)
Genesis (tested with Gens/GS and Genesis Plus GX, save extraction supported)
TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine (tested with Hu-Go!)

Another huge feature: vcromclaim automatically restores the sound to VC SNES games where the original ROM with correct sound is not included. To my knowledge, there is no other software in existence that can do this - I reverse engineered it myself.

It requires Python 2.6 or 2.7. You can get it from my vcromclaim GitHub repository.

Enjoy!

BasedKiliK · Jan 27, 2011

Interesting. This would be good for people who want to "backup" their legal VC games as roms.

scooby74029 · Jan 27, 2011

sounds interesting have to check it out

WiiUBricker · Jun 29, 2011

A HUGE, HUUGE thanks for this usefull tool

. I don't care if this thread is 5-6 month old.

A suggestion: Would it be possible to support extracting ROMs straight off wad files?

Fishaman P · Jun 29, 2011

YESZ!

...Now would this tool help in our quest to make the SMAS disc into a VC WAD?

DarkMatterCore · Jun 29, 2011

Fishaman P said:
YESZ!

...Now would this tool help in our quest to make the SMAS disc into a VC WAD?

You can do that manually already. Just LZH8 decompress the ROM and other data on the game ISO and inject it on an existing SNES VC WAD. Is not that difficult.

SifJar · Jun 29, 2011

PabloACZ said:
Fishaman P said:

YESZ!

...Now would this tool help in our quest to make the SMAS disc into a VC WAD?

Click to expand...

You can do that manually already. Just LZH8 decompress the ROM and other data on the game ISO and inject it on an existing SNES VC WAD. Is not that difficult.

He meant the other way around. i.e. use the emulator from SMAS as a VC channel with a different ROM. I think anyway.

WiiUBricker · Jun 29, 2011

Sadly it has some issues with certain ROMs and with newer ROMs, that uses a different LZ compression.

DarkMatterCore · Jun 29, 2011

Well, there's a LZH8 compressor by hcs, anyway.

I don't think it's possible to use the emulator itself (main.dol, I suppose) on a WAD, since it reads data from the disc and not from the NAND. Most of ppl want this because of its compatibility with WiiMotes. Sorry if I misunderstood your question.

WiiUBricker · Jun 29, 2011

Hm.. almost any ROM with inserted PCM file has a bad checksum. Can I fix this somehow?

SifJar · Jun 29, 2011

WiiBricker said:
Hm.. almost any ROM with inserted PCM file has a bad checksum. Can I fix this somehow?

Work out how the checksum is calculated and calculate a new one. Changing any file will cause the checksum to be incorrect, that's the whole point of a checksum.

WiiUBricker · Jun 29, 2011

SifJar said:
WiiBricker said:

Hm.. almost any ROM with inserted PCM file has a bad checksum. Can I fix this somehow?

Click to expand...

Work out how the checksum is calculated and calculate a new one. Changing any file will cause the checksum to be incorrect, that's the whole point of a checksum.

Yes, but the checksum should not change since the purpose of the snesrestore.py is to gain a replica of the original rom.
Anyway, how can I edit the checksum in the ROM image itself?

Edit: Found a solution myself.

ucon64 --snes --chk rom.smc

sonictails2000 · Jul 18, 2017

does this work with a japanese or european wii as well as american?

The Real Jdbye · Jul 18, 2017

sonictails2000 said:
does this work with a japanese or european wii as well as american?

I don't see why not, there aren't any big differences between JPN/EUR/USA NANDs or VC games.

sonictails2000 · Jul 18, 2017

kk i have been wanting to get a jp wii for a long time and download stuff like ff5 and then be able to dump an official legal rom and get a fan translation. many games never made it to the western wii shop channel.

also id like to request msx games be added to the list for future updates since you can still get those on the jp wii shop channel

GreyWolf · Jul 18, 2017

You know this thread hasn't been updated since 2011, right?

sonictails2000 · Jan 21, 2018

edit (see the post below!)

sonictails2000 · Jan 23, 2018

Update:

Been using the software and it's fantastic!

Certain games are having some problems though that haven't been listed yet, so I wanted to put them here!
(All games were downloaded on a NA Wii U Console running vWii)

Games that don't dump a ROM or Manual:
Super Street Fighter 2 Genesis

Games that don't dump a ROM but the manuals dump:
Blaster Master NES
Double Dragon 2 NES
Faxanadu NES
Mega Man 3 NES

Games that dump a ROM but the rom is unplayable (But the manuals dump!):
1080 Snowboarding N64 (rom runs, but FPS is very low...)
Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa NES
Final Fantasy NES
F-Zero X N64 (rom runs, but FPS is very low...)
Mario Tennis N64
Mega Man 2 NES
Mega Man 4 NES
Shadow of Ninja NES
StarTropics NES (The game loads, but NO music and I can't create a new character and play the game)
StarTropics 2 NES
Street Fighter Alpha 2 SNES (The rom works, but all the graphics are distorted)
Super Dodge Ball NES
Ufouria: The Saga NES

Games that dump a ROM, but no manual dumps because the script crashes when it tries to export the save file. (Program says "unknown save type")
-1080 Snowboarding N64
-Mario Golf N64 (But the rom exports and runs at full speed!)

Still having problems with a Japanese vWii cause it doesn't recognize any of the games at all!

GreyWolf · Jan 23, 2018

GreyWolf said:
You know this thread hasn't been updated since 2011, right?

sonictails2000 · Jan 24, 2018

LOL!

Updates:

Using the advice on this page: ( https://github.com/Plombo/vcromclaim/issues/6 ) is helping to fix many of the NES rom dumping problems! If you are having trouble, try that out!

Ufouria: The Saga and the Mega Men dump successfully using that. Shadow of the Ninja dumps now, but the title screen kinda doesn't work right. StarTropics 2 is having the same problem.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa NES/Famicom still has problems even when using this method...
It seems like Japanese Famicom games have problems dumping...

Hacking vcromclaim - extracts ROMs and manuals from NAND dumps

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