Hacking A little problem about 3DS's region lockout...

elisherer

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Every application, supposedly, has a flag that indicates what region it is (btw RF=Region Free).
If every region is a bit in that flag like 0100 means US and 1000 means JAP then 1100 is a mask to allow US & JAP togather
and 1111 will be RF.
 

Wym92

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Every application, supposedly, has a flag that indicates what region it is (btw RF=Region Free).
If every region is a bit in that flag like 0100 means US and 1000 means JAP then 1100 is a mask to allow US & JAP togather
and 1111 will be RF.
Thanks, btw, has this happened before?
 

Wym92

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There's a different banner for each region. Some regions have different title names like Crashmo-Fallblox...PAL regions are usually 5 languages which can have different banners.
Based on the information on 3dbrew, I think the banner may cannot control the game's content... We found that the OoT can display totally different text when playing on different 3DSs, not only the simplified-tradition change, some text have been completely converted. I mean the in-game text, not the title flag shows at Home Menu, the title is simply translated from traditional to simplified.
 

CollosalPokemon

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Based on the information on 3dbrew, I think the banner may cannot control the game's content... We found that the OoT can display totally different text when playing on different 3DSs, not only the simplified-tradition change, some text have been completely converted. I mean the in-game text, not the title flag shows at Home Menu, the title is simply translated from traditional to simplified.

Then it (likely) uses a LOCVX. (probably 1 or 2)
 
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Ris312

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Sorry for the bump, but I think the regions Bit-mask for Taiwan and China games are swapped.

Games from Japan have a bit-mask of 0x01, so Japanese consoles check for a bit-mask 0x01 as no other console can play Japan Region Games.
Games from America have a bit-mask of 0x02, so American consoles check for a bit-mask of 0x02 as no other console can play USA Region Games.
Games from Korea have a bit-mask of 0x20, so Korean consoles check for a bit-mask of 0x20 as no other console can play Korean Region Games.

So its probably safe to say that every console checks for a different bit in the games region bit-mask depending on its region.

Games from Europe have a bit-mask of 0x0C (which is 0x04 + 0x08) so I'm guessing that Australian and Europe consoles use different
masks but since Europe Games are 0x0C both Europe and Australia consoles will pass the check. Europe games work on Australian consoles
So this means in the future its possible for Nintendo to split Europe and Australia and give them games specific to each region.
(Australian people seem to import games online from Europe since a lot of the times is way cheaper then buying the games locally)

If China region games have a Bit-mask of 0x50 (which is 0x10 + 0x40) and Taiwan region games have a bit-mask of 0x40,
that would means that Taiwan consoles check for a 0x40 bit-mask but if they did this, they would also play China region
games as 0x50 is 0x40 + 0x10, but according to the replies in this topic, Taiwan consoles can't play Chinese region games.

But if Taiwan Region games are 0x50 (0x40+0x10), this allows Taiwan consoles (bit-mask 0x10?) and
Chinese (bit-mask 0x40?) consoles to pass region check. China Region games are 0x40, this allows only
Chinese consoles (bit-mask 0x40?) to play Chinese Region Games but not Taiwan consoles as bit 0x10 is OFF.
but I can't test this theory since the banner is stored in an encrypted part of the rom which can't be decrypted yet...

Maybe this picture will make more sense?

cfn6G.png

(Note: The region masks for Europe and Australia might be wrong / swapped)
 

Wym92

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Sorry for the bump, but I think the regions Bit-mask for Taiwan and China games are swapped.

Games from Japan have a bit-mask of 0x01, so Japanese consoles check for a bit-mask 0x01 as no other console can play Japan Region Games.
Games from America have a bit-mask of 0x02, so American consoles check for a bit-mask of 0x02 as no other console can play USA Region Games.
Games from Korea have a bit-mask of 0x20, so Korean consoles check for a bit-mask of 0x20 as no other console can play Korean Region Games.

So its probably safe to say that every console checks for a different bit in the games region bit-mask depending on its region.

Games from Europe have a bit-mask of 0x0C (which is 0x04 + 0x08) so I'm guessing that Australian and Europe consoles use different
masks but since Europe Games are 0x0C both Europe and Australia consoles will pass the check. Europe games work on Australian consoles
So this means in the future its possible for Nintendo to split Europe and Australia and give them games specific to each region.
(Australian people seem to import games online from Europe since a lot of the times is way cheaper then buying the games locally)

If China region games have a Bit-mask of 0x50 (which is 0x10 + 0x40) and Taiwan region games have a bit-mask of 0x40,
that would means that Taiwan consoles check for a 0x40 bit-mask but if they did this, they would also play China region
games as 0x50 is 0x40 + 0x10, but according to the replies in this topic, Taiwan consoles can't play Chinese region games.

But if Taiwan Region games are 0x50 (0x40+0x10), this allows Taiwan consoles (bit-mask 0x10?) and
Chinese (bit-mask 0x40?) consoles to pass region check. China Region games are 0x40, this allows only
Chinese consoles (bit-mask 0x40?) to play Chinese Region Games but not Taiwan consoles as bit 0x10 is OFF.
but I can't test this theory since the banner is stored in an encrypted part of the rom which can't be decrypted yet...

Maybe this picture will make more sense?

cfn6G.png

(Note: The region masks for Europe and Australia might be wrong / swapped)
As a matter of fact, China has no 3ds game yet in spite of the Mario 3D Land and the Mario Kart 7 came with the 3DS itself, so I cannot be sure, maybe you are right;)
 

3DSGuy

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Sorry for necro-bump, but I thought you guys should know something interesting. I got my hands on the icon data for Taiwanese copy of Legend of Zelda: OOT 3D. And the region lockout bitmask does in fact allow both Chinese and Taiwanese 3DS usage. And since auto-booting skips checking of the update partition, this would have allowed the demo to be booted from both a Taiwan and iQue 3DS. Mystery solved.
 

willdunz

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It's very hard to sell games in China due to its strict censorship policies. The few Chinese titles available are disguised as "entertainment software" to pass the censorship review. Obviously nobody wants to buy a region-locked console with only a handful of games. So in order to sell this thing to Chinese consumers, iQue and Nintendo intentionally designed iQue consoles(DS,3DS) to be able to play either Japanese or HK/TW retail carts. This is because console grey market is popular in China and people can import these carts on the internet, essentially bypassing the censorship.
 

emmanu888

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It's very hard to sell games in China due to its strict censorship policies. The few Chinese titles available are disguised as "entertainment software" to pass the censorship review. Obviously nobody wants to buy a region-locked console with only a handful of games. So in order to sell this thing to Chinese consumers, iQue and Nintendo intentionally designed iQue consoles(DS,3DS) to be able to play either Japanese or HK/TW retail carts. This is because console grey market is popular in China and people can import these carts on the internet, essentially bypassing the censorship.


So technically, the iQue consoles can play games from more than one region ?
 

willdunz

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So technically, the iQue consoles can play games from more than one region ?
After more research I take back my original statement about iQue 3DS. Apparently it CANNOT play every game from other regions. It can only play retail cart from other regions if it has Simplified Chinese language built-in, which is very rare. I think one example is HK retail cart of Zelda OOT 3D, this cart has SC language option so it can be played on iQue 3DS.

Although iQue DS is able to play games from other regions. I don't know why they removed this feature from iQue 3DS.

Sorry for the confusion.
 

3DSGuy

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So technically, the iQue consoles can play games from more than one region ?
No the iQue 3DS will only play games which are region locked to China. (It is possible to add multiple regions to a game's region lock). Some Taiwanese games include China in it's region lock. However those sorts of games will only run if auto-booted, otherwise the update partition check will fail (being Taiwanese not Chinese). Fortunately, this Taiwanese demo was auto-booted, so it didn't matter that it had the wrong update partition.
 

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