Hacking Patches to convert PAL 50hz games into PAL 60hz (Nintendont Compatible)

[Maeson]

Hi. I hope this is the right section to put this.

Silly story of why the heck I did this:

Spoiler

Pretty much since the days were the Gamecube was the latest Nintendo console released, I've been always bothered that here in Europe had to deal with the awful PAL 50 format. I really hate how we had to conform with inferior versions of games that ran faster in other places (And don't get me started on bad PAL conversions...). Even more when the prices were higher than in the US most of the time.

Yeah, nowadays you could play games from the US and be done with it, but the languages from PAL versions are most of the time not included. And in other cases there are differences that make the PAL version superior (Although that's not common).

Not so long ago I started to look at my PAL collection of games, and quite a few are "Only PAL 50". Was then when I decided to try and see what I could do.

I saw several Action Replay / Wiird (Gecko) codes floating around, made by an user named Ralf@gc-forever. But they didn't work on Nintendont, as it shifts data around and such, so I thought "maybe I could write them ON the iso itself!"

And that's what I've been doing.

I'm writing this post to share a few patches that will convert some of the previously PAL 50 Only games to PAL 60 (480i) games, recovering their original speed and resolution.

Important note: Credits go to Ralf@gc-forever for creating the wiird codes that gave me the possibility to do this.

Each game has 2 patches, one IPS and one xDelta. I did this because if you have another dump of the game, or you have an shrunk iso, the xDelta patch will give you problems. The IPS won't (I tried it myself). The changes themselves are very small as far as the ammount of bytes modified goes.

It also includes a small txt file that points the changes in case you want to hex edit yourself.

Games with "!!" Are PAL exclusive, or have something important on the PAL release.

Click here to expand the list:

Spoiler

Luigi's Mansion !!

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5uma5eus2re5ds3/Luigi's Mansion PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

Works on Nintendont. It will start at 576i; but at the Title Screen will ask you about changing to "Progressive Mode". Just press A and it will go into 480i (Or 480P if you have "Force Progressive" option in Nintendont turned On).

Pal Version is the superior version content-wise because the Hidden Mansion mode has many more changes and it's more of a challenge. Also seems to be less glitchy than the US and Japan versions.

Mario Party 4

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uwtt5ulp138vdzs/Mario Party 4 PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Can be forced to 480P, seems compatible, I played a couple of hours with no problem.

Mario Party 5

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fae11zlbuu7dnx6/Mario Party 5 PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Can be forced to 480P, seems compatible, I played a couple of hours with no problem.

Mario Party 6

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e80jqo6igy9ifh/Mario party 6 PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Can be forced to 480P, seems compatible, I played a couple of hours with no problem.

Mario party 7

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cbtyil1khtqefxs/Mario Party 7 PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Can be forced to 480P, seems compatible, I played a couple of hours with no problem.

Mario Golf TT

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ou9yufzwbza5we/Mario Golf TT PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. I haven't tried 480P.

Wario World

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mp9ve76nmwai1qa/Wario World PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Seems compatible with 480P, it boots fine and I ran around the first level.

Pikmin 1

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7kjte6flziiukoc/Pikmin 1 PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Seems compatible with 480P, it boots and I walked around the first map for a while with no problems.

Doshin The Giant !!

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5l0r1qtsathc8c/Doshin The Giant PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Can be forced to 480P, seems compatible, I played a couple of hours with no problem.

This game was never released in the US.

Skies of Arcadia Legends

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jee1hwmapu267p0/Skies of Arcadia Legends PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help.

Asterix & Obelix XXL !!

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3er472q5kjj8blm/Asterix & Obelix XXL PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help. Can be forced to 480P, seems compatible, I played for a while with no problems.

This game was never released outside Europe.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0zi8ia26x7ow0w/Final Fantasy CC PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help.

Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aj1oh2ofmmjls6k/MGS Twin Snakes 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help.

Baten Kaitos - Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/59ya6gwslbfl76z/Baten Kaitos PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help.

Yu-Gi-Oh The Falsebound Kingdom

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e9fnphei3hesq0k/YuGiOh TFK PAL 60hz Patch.rar?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help.

Turok: Evolution

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z2auqvwb4jqwexm/turok evolution pal60 patch.7z?dl=0

With the patch, this game boots up at 480i without any help.
The NTSC US version has problems to run properly on Nintendont, so with this people should be able to play it at the correct speed and video formats, and take advantage of Nintendont's Frame rate boost.

I'm sorry to say that are several games where I wasn't able to do this (Tales of Symphonia or Animal Crossing, for example.). I'm not experienced or knowledgable enough in how gecko codes work. If someone wants to try it it could be great.

Also, I wanted to ask, is there a patch format that is not so annoying (read: do checksums) for small changes such as the ones these patches do?

Lastly, I'd like to give thanks again to Ralf@gc-forever for his codes.

Update: Added Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes, Baten Kaitos 1 and Yu-Gi-Oh The Falsebound Kingdom... For some reason.

 

[Fjar]

Hi thank you very much: this works fine for me (i was trying to make FFCC to work in my USA console but i can't with my normal PAL dump)

 

[Maeson]

I didn't expect this post would get a comment after so much time of nothing; lol.

To "celebrate" I will update the post to add a few more games with PAL 60 patches I made.

 

[Fjar]

Thank you very much! Skies of Arcadia Legends and Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes patches working fine

 

[W hat]

Can you confirm that Pikmin 1 runs at 60 fps like this? I thought it only ran at 30 fps in the USA version, and I love that game, so 60 would be even better.

 

[Maeson]

Can you confirm that Pikmin 1 runs at 60 fps like this? I thought it only ran at 30 fps in the USA version, and I love that game, so 60 would be even better.

Where did I mention that Pikmin works at 60fps? (Really, it's to correct that if I screwed up). The game works at 30, as you point out, and 25 in the PAL version. This just makes the european release work at 30 like it was originally designed, but with the possibility to play in other languages.

60hz are not 60 fps, they're completely different things. I would love the Pikmin games at 60fps too.

 

[squad7]

What program can I patch my iso (xxx .ips)?

 

[Maeson]

To patch Isos with an IPS format patch, you can use LunarIPS, for example.

 

[squad7]

thanks, I figured

 

[eyeball226]

I really hope someone figures Tales of Symphonia out, I'd love to play it at full speed but the NTSC font is horrendous.

EDIT: Ah, reading on the gc-forever thread I see that Tales of Symphonia had separate PAL versions for different languages. That might mean the code isn't compatible between different versions. A pity as I doubt anyone would bother to do one for the UK version since there's always the US version that's also in English... but it has a font that I couldn't stand reading for any length of time.

 

[pawhtiobo]

Thank you!!

 

[the_lost]

MaeseJesus, thanks so much for these - very kind of you to share for those of us stuck with 50hz PAL versions!

If you're still following this thread, would you be able to help with how you managed to convert the AR codes into Hex addresses please? There is an AR code for Resident Evil: Code Veronica here that I want to make an iso patch from but I have no idea where to start! Unfortunately the only coding knowledge I have is of Amstrad CPC 464 BASIC, which sadly is of little use in 2017...

Would be really grateful for any guidance you could provide!

 

[Maeson]

Let's see... First I want to say that the way I did these (the only way I know) is not guaranteed to work with every game, as with some games I tried I was unable to find what parts I needed to hex edit. I'm not that great with these things, though, someone with actual knowledge about this could give you a better answer.

But, what I did was to use the Dolphin GC/Wii emulator, using the debug mode. That way you can see the more things, like code, registers and memory screens (this last one is what you need).

First, i would ran the game with the cheat, and look for the offsets that the code changes, for example:

Enable 50/60Hz Mode Option v2 [Ralf]
04008544 38000001
04008548 900D00F8

Wait for the game to boot up (for example, once you see the "Published/Licensed by Nintendo" screen) and pause the emulation.
On the tab "Memory", I would look for "04008544" and "04008548" (although sometimes you should look without the first two numbers, so 008544 and 008548). If you find them, and they have the values shown in the right part of the cheat, in this case "38000001" and "900D00F8", you would go to the next step.

Now, stop the game from being emulated, and turn off the cheat. Run the game again, and go back to the memory offsets again. They should look different now, as they are using the original values that make the game run at 50hz. What I do here is to write down a good string, of maybe 4 or 5 chunks of 8 bytes (38 00 00 01 would be one chunk, for example) around the values of the offset that the cheat changes.

You should have a string for each line of cheat. if a cheat has two offsets, like the one above, you would want to have two strings (Although, in this case, both offsets are together, it is not always the case).

Having that, I started to look on a clean iso of the game using a Hex Editor. You should make a backup before changing anything, and that's because some games actually have these chunks of bytes repeated several times all over the place (other times, it has just one match so it's pretty random), then I would edit each match separately and see which one is the correct one that would force the game to work at 60hz.

The reason for wanting larger strings of bytes is so it's easier to find the parts you want, as looking for the 8 bytes a cheat line changes could give you too many matches. I would start for a large string, and if I don't find anything, I'd start cutting a chunk of 8 bytes at a time.

After making the changes on the ISO, would boot up the game in Dolphin, and see if it worked.
You don't really need a good computer to see if the game runs at the correct speed. my laptop is baaaaad, but you can look at the VPS value on the emulators window, if it goes over 50 (Which is easy to see when you get the splash-screens of the developers' studio, for example), it is working.

That's how I managed to make all these. Really amateurish, but eh, it worked.
You can practice with one of the games I already made a patch for, just in case.

Sadly, as I said it's not fool-proof, as some of the cheats you would find on the internet (for example several of the ones I found made by Ralph@gc-forever) do more than change things that exist on the disc image, and those I never managed to make them work (Maybe are not possible, maybe I'm a big damn noob, both are possible, but most probably the latter one).

For example Resident Evil 2 and 3 were games I tried (as it is Tales of Symphonia), but I couldn't do it, and by looking at the cheat for Code Veronica, I fear it is the same.

...I hope this silly way of expaining it make sense.

 

[the_lost]

That's great - thanks for such a detailed and helpful response!

I'll try to have a go this weekend and see if I can figure it out. From what you say about RE2 and 3 it doesn't sound good but can't hurt to have a go! Problem with the RE games in particular is they aren't PAL optimised so 50hz is genuinely an inferior experience

edit: unfortunately due to studying I haven't had time to attempt this yet, hopefully in the next few weeks though...

 

[modbrain]

Thanks for these great patches ;-)

Baten Kaitos, Skies of Arcadia, Luigi's Mansion & MGS TS all run smooth on 480p Nintendont (progressive patch: ON)

But on some games like Luigis M. i have to push (before the game starts "left" (on D-Pad) and "A" button, otherwise it stays black screen (when progressive patch: ON).

The other games start automaticly. Don't know why..

 

[Maeson]

Thanks for these great patches ;-)

Baten Kaitos, Skies of Arcadia, Luigi's Mansion & MGS TS all run smooth on 480p Nintendont (progressive patch: ON)

Glad to hear that!

But on some games like Luigis M. i have to push (before the game starts "left" (on D-Pad) and "A" button, otherwise it stays black screen (when progressive patch: ON).

The other games start automaticly. Don't know why..

Thats because the Luigi's Mansion patch does not act like the others: What it does is forcing a 50hz / 60hz selector to appear (like most 60hz supported PAL games do). On the Title Screen, the game asks you if you want to change video format, and when you do what you say (left + A), you're choosing Yes, making the game appear on your tv (as it may not support Pal 50hz). On a tv that supports Pal 50hz, you'll see the game normally until you choose 60hz/progressive scan mode on the title screen, then it change video format and run at the speed it should.

Sorry for the slight inconvenience, but that's what I was able to do.

 

[modbrain]

I almost asumed that it's somekind of invisable selction screen.

Sorry for the slight inconvenience, but that's what I was able to do.

Nothing to sorry for dude

 

[[Truth]]

Let´s bump this, because it´s awesome!
Thanks a lot (and also Ralf from GC-Forever).

 

[alcab]

Wow!! Looking for something like this for a very long time!! Thanks a lot!!!

 

[FIX94]

But on some games like Luigis M. i have to push (before the game starts "left" (on D-Pad) and "A" button, otherwise it stays black screen (when progressive patch: ON).

just something I'd like to say, in nintendont I did fairly recently add a PAL60 patch for luigis mansion that gets applied once you force progressive or any other 60hz mode, I did the same to several other games (mario party 4-7 and doshin the giant) and you dont have to press anything like that, at some point I may add more patches to nintendont directly as well as I do see the interest in patches like that.