# DS #4973: Puzzle Quest 2 (USA)



## Chanser (Jun 24, 2010)

^^ndsrelease-6284^^


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## Rydian (Jun 24, 2010)

Missing NFO.


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## Donato_Dobango (Jun 24, 2010)

Filename is v-puzzq2.nds

Warning: it's VeNom so it definitely has that stupid loading screen again.

So far no AP, but haven't gotten far.  Testing on an AK2i running latest AKAIO


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## elixirdream (Jun 24, 2010)

i am downloading it 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



yeah... its with cracktro


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## ConJ (Jun 24, 2010)

Link to .nfo - http://www.ludibria.com/nfo.php?sys=nds&sysid=5926


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## elixirdream (Jun 24, 2010)

size of the game:-

*31.3 MB (32,828,480 bytes)*


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## ibis_87 (Jun 24, 2010)

Meh, personally I'm tired of Puzzle Quest. The initial idea was cool, but now it's milked too much for my taste.


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## quacko (Jun 24, 2010)

Good by to the next two weeks of my life as soon as I can find it that is.  So sad that the old go to shut down.


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## Exbaddude (Jun 24, 2010)

Starts up perfectly with VENOM intro on R4 Wood.


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## portezbie (Jun 24, 2010)

Working on SCDS2, so excited for this I played the crap out of the first one on both the ds and the ipod touch.

Played for about 15 minutes.....hating the graphics at the moment.


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## MC DUI (Jun 24, 2010)

Would love the file name whenever somebody finds it.

Loved the original puzzle quest, hope to sink some good hours into this one as well!

If it's as much fun as the original I'll probably grab it on XBLA as well.


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## BlueStar (Jun 24, 2010)

Awesome into and fully working as always, thanks Venom


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## LeX- (Jun 24, 2010)

MC DUI said:
			
		

> Would love the file name whenever somebody finds it.



Read post3 of this thread >_


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## portezbie (Jun 24, 2010)

I'm not thrilled with the battle system now, the board is ugly and you dont get the full spell casting costs. Also the tiles clear slower. I'm starting to get into it though. 

It confuses me however why they took an almost perfect game like the first one and then keep trying to change it. They should really have just made a sequel that was the same as the first but with a new story, items,spells etc.

The iphone version of the first one is actually awesome, they made a ton of improvements. Hopefully they will do the same with this one.


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## mixinluv2u (Jun 24, 2010)

Is the progress you made while playing mini-game mode supposed to save and carry over to quest mode? like the exp and gold that you got, because mine does not carry over.

In the "treasure grab" mini-game it said that i am supposed to be able to earn items but i never get anything.  And after i did a "search" mini-game it says, "let's see what we found." but then just bounced me back to the title screen....

Is there additional AP or something?


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## doyama (Jun 24, 2010)

Well I hope someone releases a clean version of this soon. I really dislike the cracktro stuff. You'd think with all the fuss that came with Dementium2 that they'd avoid doing it again?


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## Veign06 (Jun 24, 2010)

Yeah...glad I found a clean one right when it came out yesterday. Haven't played my DS in a year or so...so this intro stuff is new to me, but I havent seen it yet. Noticed my usual place is no more so I managed to find somewhere else and it had a clean version. Works great so far even though my version of akaio is about a year old haha. So far I like the game...cant wait for the xbla version on the 30th tho.


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## pichon64 (Jun 24, 2010)

This *so positive* review took me by surprise.


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## qlum (Jun 24, 2010)

I found an clean version somewhere the only problem was it didn't work on my flashcard


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## BlueStar (Jun 24, 2010)

doyama said:
			
		

> Well I hope someone releases a clean version of this soon. I really dislike the cracktro stuff. You'd think with all the fuss that came with Dementium2 that they'd avoid doing it again?



You act like cracktros are a new thing.  It's releasing games uncracked, nonworking and with no cracktro which is a recent thing.  Ideally, all games would be properly released with a cracktro, but Venom is one of the few remaining real scene groups working on the DS from the GBC/GBA days.


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## Dana Crysalis (Jun 24, 2010)

Any suggestions on which emulator can run this?  My DS just suffered an accident while I was playing, and no longer displays the top screen.  I am quite distraught.


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## Mbmax (Jun 24, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

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I'm not agree this you. Those cracktro sometimes makes more trouble than fix them.

It's just great for all those DSTT, or fake R4 owners. Let them use roms without any support of their "team".

Those groups doesn't look at the futur, just the present. We will need again clean dump later, i'm pretty sure.

I'm not against intro/cracktro, i just think those groups should attach their crack (xdelta or ips) with their clean dump.


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## BlueStar (Jun 24, 2010)

You don't end up playing "clean" dumps anyway, the flashcart teams usually just take the crackers code and make the loader automatically patch out the AP in the same way,


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## Mbmax (Jun 24, 2010)

No, wrong. Not true on DSone, dstwo, cyclods evo and ezvi.
Just need to handle correctly reads under 0x8000 which is the case on almost AP protected game.
No patch used.


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## Prof. 9 (Jun 24, 2010)

The new VENOM/SUXXORS releases have intros again, so I made another intro skip.

Skipping Puzzle Quest 2 intro: open the ROM in a hex editor change the byte at address 1D29CF from 1A to EA.


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## tijntje_7 (Jun 24, 2010)

The intro is actually pretty cool 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



No need to skip it ^^
I loved the first, I hope this one will be as good


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## cosmiccow (Jun 24, 2010)

Well, while it's not shovelware by any means, I don't believe that 8.5 score from IGN.

If it has a good intro I want it. I adore their last one (from Megaman Zero collection), that tune just kicks.


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## Miser (Jun 24, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

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Try playing some introed GBA releases on a slot 2 like the EZ 3in1. They don't work. Clean dumps of the same games do. 
PC scene has rules that make sense, that the game is released clean with a crack included. And if they release a cracktro, it's also separate. 
Why can't they do that in the NDS scene aswell?


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## Leamonde.Halcyon (Jun 24, 2010)

I'm happy with my cracktro version. Working beautifully on my AK 2.1 with Akaio 1.7

It's definitely different from CotW and Galactrix, and some of it feels a bit clunky but overall I'm very pleased with it,


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## Azngamer15 (Jun 24, 2010)

why is it so fucking UGLY. I don't understand


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## Donato_Dobango (Jun 24, 2010)

I don't think it's ugly at all.  Just more of an anime-inspired art style than the first game.  The GUI is less cluttered and the close ups of the overworld means you are just walking through a dozen similar looking sprites that represent new castles.

So far the game itself seems a little easy, something I hope is fixed once I get past level 10.


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## doyama (Jun 24, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

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Well they're not new definitely, but to be honest have kinda become less and less so over the years. PC games used to be full of them but even there it's becoming minimized, aside from the keygens and whatnot. Perhaps with the NDS AP becoming more of an 'issue' that cracktros will become more common. But right now I think they're the exception, not the rule even in general.


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## TrolleyDave (Jun 24, 2010)

doyama said:
			
		

> Well they're not new definitely, but to be honest have kinda become less and less so over the years. PC games used to be full of them but even there it's becoming minimized, aside from the keygens and whatnot. Perhaps with the NDS AP becoming more of an 'issue' that cracktros will become more common. But right now I think they're the exception, not the rule even in general.



I can remember the C64/Atari ST/Amiga days when if it didn't have a crack and an intro it was nuked and the entire scene made fun of the release group. lol


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## Ruri (Jun 24, 2010)

I don't like it.  Lots of problems.

Mandatory door-opening and trap-disarming minigames.  Didn't they learn from how much people hated that in Galactrix?

The vast majority of the weapons and items seem to have generic effects -- weapons usually just do damage.  None of the interesting triggered effects that you had in PQ1, at least so far, and tons and tons of equipment that only differs from each other by minor numbers.

Ugly game.  Noticably uglier than the original PQ.  Feels like the graphics were designed for the PC and crudely ported to the DS.

Maybe it gets better later.  Do you eventually find more interesting equipment, with more interesting passive effects?  Mostly what I liked about Puzzle Quest was the wide variety of interesting stuff you could play around with, interesting combinations and combos you can form -- all of the sequels have, for some reason, been worse at that, providing fewer options.


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## darkydz (Jun 24, 2010)

Does anyone use No$GBA? I don't want SPANISH Puzzle Quest 2. How to change it to ENGLISH?


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## Miser (Jun 24, 2010)

TrolleyDave said:
			
		

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Wanting to release working games is understandable. I agree that they should crack them, BUT I really can't see why they have to PREcrack it, why not include a clean version and a patch.
What I don't get are the intros. What do they contribute to the release? Is it just an ego thing, wanting to leave their mark?


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## doyama (Jun 24, 2010)

TrolleyDave said:
			
		

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Haha indeed. Getting 'warez' off the BBS' with my 28.8 Supra Modem. Somewhat scary that back then I actually knew how to create a working modem string, from scratch, without any references. I suppose it's no different than having to muddle through the Cisco OS to configure the switches around here. Somethings change, but somethings remain the same!


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## Wanted (Jun 24, 2010)

pfft BBS... i used to get my Amiga Warez via post from Fairlight in Australia to NZ.


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## Mbmax (Jun 24, 2010)

Just to let you know guys, this is not a cracktro, but just an intro.
No AP on this game as i can see on the clean dump.


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## Noib (Jun 24, 2010)

Miser said:
			
		

> Wanting to release working games is understandable. I agree that they should crack them, BUT I really can't see why they have to PREcrack it, why not include a clean version and a patch.
> What I don't get are the intros. What do they contribute to the release? Is it just an ego thing, wanting to leave their mark?



Which shows you don't understand the scene. That's what it's all about; bragging rights. It's not about spreading warez. Historically, (definitely in this case if you have seen the internal floating around by a fake group who is probably just venom) sceners don't like p2p. Releases are for the scene, not for outsiders. Of course affiliates get leaks and the public gets access to it, but that's not what the groups want. They are not out to please the common mouth breather. Just be happy that dumping is so easy and far spread these days that it's easy to get a clean release if they don't release one.

That said, I agree that it would be nice if it went more PC style and released the clean rom and cracktro patch for edge case compatibility reasons. Hell, on games that don't need a crack they could release a separate .nds that's just an intro similar to what has been done in the past. However, I don't expect them to actually do this. In the end it doesn't really hurt anyone, as the people who complain about this sort of thing are the self entitled useless zero-day leechers. Serious groups who are archiving for preservation purposes are just going to re-dump later anyways.


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## Miser (Jun 24, 2010)

....


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## BlueStar (Jun 24, 2010)

Miser said:
			
		

> What I don't get are the intros. What do they contribute to the release? Is it just an ego thing, wanting to leave their mark?



Why do people even go to the trouble of getting games and releasing them in the first place?  It's the spirit of competition.  Any scene is about getting the most anticipated games earliest, notching up the most releases, cracking the hardest protections and coding the most technically impressive intros.  You benefit from that spirit of competition in getting the dumps and protection cracks, if you don't like what comes with it then buy the games and dump/crack them yourselves.


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## Miser (Jun 24, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

> Why do people even go to the trouble of getting games and releasing them in the first place?  It's the spirit of competition.  Any scene is about getting the most anticipated games earliest, notching up the most releases, cracking the hardest protections and coding the most technically impressive intros.  You benefit from that spirit of competition in getting the dumps and protection cracks, if you don't like what comes with it then buy the games and dump/crack them yourselves.


And what's wrong with releasing them separate, like they do in the PC scene?


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## ShinRyouma (Jun 25, 2010)

I like this game, and I think this is better than the 1st one (more like RPG)


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## Kringler (Jun 25, 2010)

I'm having a weird issue with this ROM. The game will run fine the first time (when you make a save game) but after I quit and move through my other ROMS (the second it goes over Puzzle Quest 2) my DS freezes up (And it will show the title of the last ROM I was looking at instead of PQ2). If I delete the save file (It's 0 KB and I have 150 MB left) it will work fine again and still have all the progress I had when I saved (even though the saves gone). I'm using R4YSauto.


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## Leamonde.Halcyon (Jun 25, 2010)

Donato_Dobango said:
			
		

> I don't think it's ugly at all.  Just more of an anime-inspired art style than the first game.  The GUI is less cluttered and the close ups of the overworld means you are just walking through a dozen similar looking sprites that represent new castles.
> 
> So far the game itself seems a little easy, something I hope is fixed once I get past level 10.



It has a HARD mode the default is set to medium difficulty. Check the options on the main menu after you load your character and before you choose quest.


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## BlueStar (Jun 25, 2010)

Miser said:
			
		

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The PC scene is a different animal because of the update patches released for games - it's never been done like that in the handheld scene.  The closest any group has come is Capital when they started packing intro removers with their GBC ROMs, mostly to nix the people who'd been credit-whoring by releasing their own removers after every release.

Here's the cracktro converted to flash if you want to watch it on its own  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



http://flashtro.com/page.php?id=2424


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## ConJ (Jun 25, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

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Off topic, but yep, cracktros are certainly not a new thing. I used to get Commodore Amiga games back in the day, and every game had a cracktro. It was/is part of the scene.

There were some awesome cracktros.


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## Miser (Jun 25, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

> The PC scene is a different animal because of the update patches released for games - it's never been done like that in the handheld scene.  The closest any group has come is Capital when they started packing intro removers with their GBC ROMs, mostly to nix the people who'd been credit-whoring by releasing their own removers after every release.
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> Here's the cracktro converted to flash if you want to watch it on its own
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Never? All the NDS scene had was clean dumps until recently. 

I did see the _intro _already, it's ok. I do like looking at them, but I don't want an additional intro screen I have to skip everytime I launch a game and the tampering with the rom in general. In the end it'll just cause problems. Try to play some introed GBA games on the EZ 3in1 for example and you'll see that they don't work, when clean dumps do. That's why it should be released SEPARATE. Not that they ever will because they're too cool to do compromises.

And yes, I did play Amiga when I was a kid and I remember some of the cracktros. It *was *part of the scene, true.


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## Pong20302000 (Jun 25, 2010)

Miser said:
			
		

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if you dont like the intros pay for the games

clean releases always get posted eventually


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## InuYasha (Jun 25, 2010)

Found on another site..... hex edit 001D29CF (1A) to (EA)...


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## LeX- (Jun 25, 2010)

InuYasha said:
			
		

> Found on another site..... hex edit 001D29CF (1A) to (EA)...



http://gbatemp.net/t237030-ds-4973-puzzle-...t&p=2937860


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## InuYasha (Jun 25, 2010)

Oh well I ment to post it earlier when I found it...either way its on 2 pages now.....


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## latestmonkey (Jun 25, 2010)

hey guys, noob here.

i'm pretty new to this stuff, running it on an AK2i.

The skull counter doesn't update for me during battles.  Is this borked for anyone else?  Or is there something with my character that I'm completely missing?


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## mixinluv2u (Jun 27, 2010)

latestmonkey said:
			
		

> hey guys, noob here.
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> i'm pretty new to this stuff, running it on an AK2i.
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> The skull counter doesn't update for me during battles.  Is this borked for anyone else?  Or is there something with my character that I'm completely missing?


if you are referring to the skull with a number next to it on the top screen, that's not a counter.  it just indicates how much extra damage you will do when you match skulls.


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## Ruri (Jun 27, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

> The PC scene is a different animal because of the update patches released for games - it's never been done like that in the handheld scene.  The closest any group has come is Capital when they started packing intro removers with their GBC ROMs, mostly to nix the people who'd been credit-whoring by releasing their own removers after every release.
> 
> Here's the cracktro converted to flash if you want to watch it on its own
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> ...


Yes, but...

The DS scene doesn't use intros, generally.  Traditionally, in the _DS_ handheld scene, releases are clean and non-clean releases eventually get nuked.  Groups trying to get fame by adding intros are defeating themselves in the long run, because it's just going to get nuked in favor of an accurate release once one is available -- given the option, nobody wants to archive a non-clean version that may or may not work with future hardware.  Also, saving altered versions of the images in the set results in horrible things like what happened to the NES scene, where you have like five or six copies of some roms, most of them bad in one way or another, just because the GoodNES set contains them all.

That's why the NDS scene traditionally nukes unclean dumps as soon as a clean one becomes available.

(Also, as others have pointed out, just as a matter of terminology -- this isn't a cractro, since the game didn't have any AP.)


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## BlueStar (Jun 27, 2010)

Nuked where?  On actual scene sites or just called nuked on websites like gbatemp and ds-scene?  Because if the sites are following the Nintendo DS Release Standards, it's the clean, non-working releases which get nuked.

Some people are make the assumption that release groups are releasing the games for your benefit.  They're not.


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## KidIce (Jun 29, 2010)

TrolleyDave said:
			
		

> I can remember the C64/Atari ST/Amiga days when if it didn't have a crack and an intro it was nuked and the entire scene made fun of the release group. lol



That's because a release w/o a cracktro usually was Isepic'ed/AR'ed/FC'ed/etc. "One filing" a game w/ a freezer cartridge does not make you a cracker by any stretch of the imagination. Lamers that thought so deserved to be ridiculed.

And Atari ST's were broken Amiga's. :-P

I don't really care to have cracktro's on my handhelds, though. I mean, I'm mashing the buttons trying to get past the effin' credits. Made by... Published by... Codec by... Health warning... GOD I only have 15 minutes on my smoke break, can I start the damn game already?!? I don't really need another screen in my way. 

Go ahead and release w/ a crack and/or cracktro, but please include a patch for me to get rid of it (or better a patch for me to add them should I desire). Especially, as Mbmax pointed out, now that The SCDS2, EZVi and so on are adding methods to defeat the usual copy protection (I'm old school, I refuse to call it AP or DRM) for DS games w/o the usual patches. If they perfect this, cracks will not be needed.

I don't mind cracktros on a system I only play at home though, I have more time when I'm there and I love the demo scene. ;-)


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## latestmonkey (Jun 29, 2010)

mixinluv2u said:
			
		

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ohhh duh.  i'm an idiot.   I thought it was a counter so I would know when I had enough skulls to use my weapon.  (So, uh.. where exactly is the counter so I know if I have enough skulls to use my weapon?)


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## jakethepspguy (Jun 30, 2010)

I'm trying to run this on my m3 and on no$gba and it black screens after the game intro.  What am I doing wrong?


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## Ruri (Jul 1, 2010)

BlueStar said:
			
		

> Some people are make the assumption that release groups are releasing the games for your benefit.  They're not.


GBAtemp and DS-scene, on the other hand,  _are_, generally, being run for the benefit of the community...


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## doyama (Jul 3, 2010)

Well fortunately now there is a no-intro version of the game available for those who want a 'clean' version


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## emuman99 (Jul 5, 2010)

clean rom:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zzyyizjnmnt
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=F1U9U3RF


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## basher11 (Jul 5, 2010)

again, dont post roms!


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