Hacking Action Replay Codes for 3DS Games?

jastolze

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Hey I'm just curious now that there's talk about 3DS homebrew on the Gateway, what's stopping Action Replay codes?

I apologize if this thread has been posted before. I didn't see my answer in any of the previous threads, so I went ahead and created one. :D
 

mr. fancypants

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nintedo use a private key to sign the games and the 3ds reads those codes and recognize them. for an action replay (for the 3ds) you will also need a code but the 3ds wont recognize it

(if im wrong tell it me)
 

jastolze

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I think when (and if) Gateway gets past the one game per SD card, THEN it will be possible to load cheats.
 

FAST6191

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Cheats work in one of four ways usually

1) On old consoles they hook the game within the game itself (ish in the case of hardware, yes in the case of software methods like GABsharky, GBAATM, DSATM and such) and apply codes that way.
2) Game Genie (and PAR ROM write codes for those few iterations that had it) sit between the cart and the console and redirect writes accordingly.
3) High level interrupt for those consoles that support it. Can also include hardware level.
4) Modified saves. A fair few of these.

1) Is likely out for the time being/until gateway or someone else gets unsigned code running (either by breaking the checks or by breaking the encryption).
2) Same problem as 1) really.
3) What I predict will happen first if the current course is the one that people head down for hacking. More on it in a moment.
4) Could have already happened (rip and restore saves has already happened no?*) but it seems the saves are protected by Nintendo at some level.

*if so I would be half surprised. Likewise if the NAND is not checked for loading old code (we have seen downgrades which would seem to indicate this is the case) then you might have save restoration/cloning (trade and restore) be possible.

3) then. What seems to have happened is gateway have an exploit which they can they get the loader/kernel (which runs all the time on the 3ds, unlike most older handhelds and consoles which are one program devices) to ignore certain checks (regions, whatever copy protection presently exists...). If they can modify this then they can also modify it to reach out and touch the memory in the game and thus you have your cheats (how you dump the memory and how you work around issues of pointer codes/dynamically allocated memory is another thing). Whether they have to steer clear of memory that holds the binary remains to be seen (it is technically no execute rather than encryption/signing of memory as far as I know which should not trouble things but who knows if they left some measure of checking a la the DS stuff onboard) but not all variables are held in such areas. Theoretically you could do the same with a few probes and an appropriate selection of hardware that can generate signals of the right type and fast enough.

Either way though such things are probably a bit lower down on the to do list.
 

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