Idea to feasibly add rumble to 3DS games

MikaDubbz

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Ok, this is gonna sound crazy, but hear me out here. You may not be aware, but there was an accessory for Pokemon Sun/Moon and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon: the Pokemon Z-Ring

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It's a bracelet, that not only is a toy, but it also interacted with the Sun and Moon games. When you used Z-moves in the game a noise emits from the games that isn't detectable to the human ears (in further research this isn't entirely correct, there are 2 modes to the bracelet, one that picks up higher frequencies that the human ear can't detect and one that responds to another set of frequencies that our ears can hear), but the bracelet can and does pick up on it, and when the Z-move has been sensed as being used via this sound feedback, the bracelet actually rumbles. It's actually a really clever way to give a device without built in rumble and seemingly no good way to add it to the device, to still offer rumble all the same.

Still, this feature was never meant to be utilized for anything but Pokemon, and that is where it's use permanently remains. And admittedly the bracelet is a bit awkward, but I actually do own one (wanted to test out the novelty of it all and surprisingly really enjoy it), and it does fit around my adult-sized wrists. And it got me thinking.

If we can isolate the sound file that sets off the rumble in the bracelet (sound files? not sure if the thing is programmed to rumble different ways or not based on the Z-Move or anything like that, if so I imagine there are different ranges of the sound that would be sent if that were the case), and then hack/edit 3DS game files or roms to play that sound file for particular moments. Easy example I thought of is using an inject of Pokemon Pinball, after having hacked the rom first so that the places in the game when the rumble that the original game offered was supposed to go off, if possible we could place the sound file right there. Fortunately, the only time the game would rumble, there is a sound file of Pikachu shouting "Pika!" if we could replace that sound file with this one that sets off the bracelet's rumble, would that maybe work to set off the rumble while playing the game on the 3DS?


Apparently I'm not the first to wonder about messing with this old toy, as I just found this site: https://endrift.com/2017/03/20/zring-phreaking/ and wow there are like 512 different rumble commands for the device, that's crazy. I'm reading through now to see if I may be on to something here. And if I'm understanding correctly, he literally has a Game Boy rom here: https://github.com/endrift/phreakium-z/releases/tag/v1.0.0 that can interact with the bracelet (about to try it out now). If this is the case, then I should legit be able to do what I'm talking about here, at least for Game Boy roms, but presumably other titles as well.
 
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MikaDubbz

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Welp, to immediately follow up that first post. YUP, that game boy rom I found there, does indeed let you interact directly with the bracelet, choosing different noises to play to differing rumble effects on the bracelet. I can now say that not only is this feasible, it's entirely possible. I'm not too smart with this shit, but I'm gonna see if I can figure out how to take one of these noises and transplant it over the Pikachu cry in Pokemon Pinball for the GBC.

Oh man, there are literally rumble setting here that have Pikachu call out his name from the bracelet while rumbling in a very similar wary to how it sounds originally in Pokemon PInball. If I can replace the Pikachu sound in Pokemon Pinball with the particular sound in this .gb rom that sets off one of the Pikachu rumble in the bracelet, that will be perfect.
 
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FAST6191

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Missed this was a thing entirely, usually try to keep up with weird and wonderful accessories too.

If all it takes is overlaying 22KHz plus signals onto a well understood audio format (hopefully the 3ds sample rate in given games is enough to support it*, look up Nyquist Shannon sampling if you want but basic version is you need twice the sample rate of the signal you want to properly encode it) that the game will presumably already activate at choice times then far easier than other methods I would be contemplating. Also trying to think if this is the first case of ultrasound I have seen used for something in games (casual search says not a lot other than a few simulators and an old sound card from a company most would only know for gamepads https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/07/gravis-ultrasound-and-dos-games.html ).

*never looked but on older things is was popular to drop it down to reduce sizes and bandwidth/cart read bus overuse.
 

Olmectron

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I wanted to try out this bracelet so bad back when it was released. Bad for me I didn't find it anywhere online for delivery in my country.

Would have loved to get one.

Nice findings!
 

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