Hacking Naruto Collection (GC) Includes GBA Emulator

[W hat]

This is weird. It's Japan-only. The ISO contains 6 .tgc files, which can be converted to .gcm / .iso files. They can then be extracted again to find .bin files that can be renamed to .gba and played in VisualBoyAdvance. However VBA doesn't run them well -- the one I tested only played sound and had no image / didn't allow for inputs.

Does anyone have experience getting nested .tgc files running as standalone games? If we can get the converted ISOs to run on their own, we could then inject other GBA ROMs and see if they run. Other games with weird nested tgcs are:
MGS: TTS Special Disc (JPN)
Zelda Collector's Edition (successfully standalone game for Wind Waker demo)
Most demo discs

There's no way Eighting / TOMY developed this "AGB Emulater" (internal title on the nested ISOs) on their own. Maybe it's repurposed Game Boy Player code? If so, it would have nearly 100% compatibility! Edit 2: GBP is hardware-based, there's no way it's all GBP code.

Confirmed! Pokemon Box contains four GBA ROMs. These also do not load in PC-based GBA emulators. The purpose of the GBA and the GBA->GCN cable is verifying you have the cartridge and uploading your save file. Then the game sneakily loads its own copy from the ISO. Think about it: uploading a 16MB ROM over one of those cables? It would take ages!

edit: Pokemon Box ROMs

 

[Rydian]

You tried the ROMs they were playing in a PC emulator and didn't even get video, but you have your hopes up that this emulator is an all-purpose 100% compatibility one and NOT a specially-modified one for those games?

Might want to get your heads out of the cloud. It's obviously custom made for those games, and likely the ROM images were modified as well to fit in.

 

[W hat]

You tried the ROMs they were playing in a PC emulator and didn't even get video, but you have your hopes up that this emulator is an all-purpose 100% compatibility one and NOT a specially-modified one for those games?

Might want to get your heads out of the cloud. It's obviously custom made for those games, and likely the ROM images were modified as well to fit in.

Maybe you're right.

Still, who made this emulator? Eighting? Wouldn't an emulator almost have to come out of Nintendo? It also looks very similar to the Game Boy Player.

It's not necessarily the fault of the ROM that VBA can't run these games.

edit:
What have we here? 4x 16.0 MB Nintendo GBA ROMs on the Pokemon Box disc. These also don't load in VBA or no$gba.

 

[Fire-WSP]

The Gameboy Player is no Software Emulator. It is a real GBA on the Board. The GB Player Disc is only a "driver".
This Naruto Thing seems to be a real GBA Emulator but it could be that it is just capable to play exact these Roms on the Disc.
About this Roms you found... well they are *.srl files so these are real production roms.
I dont think they are altered so they should play on an Emulator. Maybe you left something out while extracting?

 

[W hat]

The Gameboy Player is no Software Emulator. It is a real GBA on the Board. The GB Player Disc is only a "driver".
This Naruto Thing seems to be a real GBA Emulator but it could be that it is just capable to play exact these Roms on the Disc.

Indeed. My head is firmly on the ground now.

There's a Nintendo-sanctioned GBA on GC emulator that plays these ROMs:
4 Naruto GBA games
Pokemon Ruby
Pokemon Sapphire

I'd still like to inject other ROMs and see how the compatibility is.

You can inject ROMs easily into Pokemon Box but there is special code on the Ruby / Sapphire cartridge that is used to interface with Box. One would need to circumvent this and somehow start the embedded emulator without being in contact with the GBA. Then there's the problem of saving the game. The "press Z to open a menu" and the "borders" on screen still make me think some aspect of the GBP code was shared, but as the GBP is hardware-based the similarities may end there.

Naruto still needs a way to launch the mini-ISOs included on the disc, or some way to repack .tgc files.

 

[Rydian]

Just a note, do you have a Wii? The Wii is an upgraded GC, and so has better emulation. There's no VC GBA titles I'm aware of to swap, but the homebrew emulators have much higher compatibility than this.

 

[W hat]

Just a note, do you have a Wii? The Wii is an upgraded GC, and so has better emulation. There's no VC GBA titles I'm aware of to swap, but the homebrew emulators have much higher compatibility than this.

Some games are tricky to emulate and I'm curious how well this emulator can handle them. Mother 3 and Rhythm Tengoku are rhythm-based and the Wii emulators do an admirable, but not fantastic job.

Plus, seeing the capabilities of this weird thing would be fun.

 

[Chary]

This looks like a cool discovery. Neat.

 

[Normmatt]

Whats the release numbers for the games that contain these gba roms I'd like to see why they don't work in vba-m.

EDIT: Just noticed it loads the GBA BIOS which means nintendo must have had some knowledge of this otherwise TOMY would be using copyrighted material without consent.

 

[W hat]

Whats the release numbers for the games that contain these gba roms I'd like to see why they don't work in vba-m.

EDIT: Just noticed it loads the GBA BIOS which means nintendo must have had some knowledge of this otherwise TOMY would be using copyrighted material without consent.

I don't think they're in any No-Intro or scene databases (yet?).

I'm happy to help with anyone's questions or requests about this game. If you need any information, just ask.

 

[kp_centi]

Could you give the official name of this Gamecube game or a product page?

 

[iamatmylimit]

That is interesting but not new. The gamecube The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time 2 disc were supposedly running off nintendo "built" emulaters/emulation. So a built in GBA emulater for a gamecube wouldnt be new as a n64 emulater/emulation (what the zelda games were running on) was already made. I forgot where i heard/read this otherwise id post the article.

All i learned was nintendo had made thier own emulaters.Its no different from the snes emulater which could be burned to a disc (with games) and played on a real playstation console. Having a standalone gba emulater (with game) on disc made by nintendo isnt far fetched. Backwards compatibility is just emulation and nintendo has mastered this with all the ds/gba's etc. they released.

 

[W hat]

Could you give the official name of this Gamecube game or a product page?

http://redump.org/disc/26642/
Naruto Collection
ナルト コレクション
or
Tomy Presents Special Disk Naruto Collection
トミー プレゼンツ スペシャル ディスク ナルト コレクション

That is interesting but not new. The gamecube The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time 2 disc were supposedly running off nintendo "built" emulaters/emulation. So a built in GBA emulater for a gamecube wouldnt be new as a n64 emulater/emulation (what the zelda games were running on) was already made. I forgot where i heard/read this otherwise id post the article.

Did those ever have N64 ROMs injected into them? I know the built-in NES emulator in Animal Crossing had NES ROMs injected successfully.
--
Part of my goal was to share this disc that not many people know about, and potentially get these roms in the No-Intro database if they aren't there already. Of course, successfully running other ROMs on Nintendo's GBA emulator would be pretty neat too.

 

[iamatmylimit]

Im not sure if they were injected. Someone here im sure has more knowledge on this than me.

Thanks for sharing the info on the game. I was one of those not aware of this game,i was only aware of the naruto 2 demo (u) which i cant even find on ebay.

 

[W hat]

Thanks for sharing the info on the game. I was one of those not aware of this game,i was only aware of the naruto 2 demo (u) which i cant even find on ebay.

N2 demo was undumped for a long time. It's extremely rare.

Redump.org catalogs many discs like this. Sometimes they are dumped and other times they are not. Many JPN discs never make their way onto the Internet.

 

[SuperrSonic]

Okay, this is what I found so far from this Naruto Collection game
The maker code is 01 which = Nintendo
there are several tgc files each can be converted into an iso this iso contains the AGB emulator also marked with 01
They all have a .bin for the GBA game, I ran this .bin in VBA-m and it worked, I replaced this .bin with Sonic Advance 2, packed the iso and ran this with DML it worked, this thing is a fully working GBA emulator, it doesn't save, but it uses a universal patch kind of thing which makes games like the Sonic games have everything unlocked from the get-go

That's everything so far, as a whole it doesn't work with DML even with disc inserted it just blackscreens when you pick a game but if it's separated into multiple isos then it works.

EDIT: 32MB roms don't work, tried Mother 3 and Kingdom Hearts

 

[reprep]

SuperrSonic

thanks for the interesting knowledge. why it hasn't got much more interest is beyond me. i would be more than glad if you can explain the process to make the gba emulator a seperate iso a bit more detailed. also if you did any more experiments, i would totally love to know the results.

have you tested any other roms? with the roms working have you discovered any glitch? does it support 480p mode like gameboy player? have you encountered any other compability issue apart from 32 MB roms and save game problem?

 

[SuperrSonic]

SuperrSonic

have you tested any other roms? with the roms working have you discovered any glitch? does it support 480p mode like gameboy player? have you encountered any other compability issue apart from 32 MB roms and save game problem?

The Select button isn't mapped and is constantly pressed. And the controls might not be very responsive.
480p works but it doesn't ask like a normal GC game, you need to use a loader.

I think(it was a long time ago) pressing the start button in Nightmare in Dreamland causes horrible graphic issues. That's all, some slow downs when Sonic gets hit when he has a lot of rings in some levels but the audio doesn't slowdown just the gameplay.

Oh, I think I haven't mentioned this but just like the GBP, this emu skips some frames because of the Hz difference.

Quote from some guy regarding The GameBoy Player:
"the GBA runs at a 59.73Hz refresh rate and that the GameCube does a (poor) framerate conversion to 59.94Hz"

 

[reprep]

thanks for the answer. btw forum just glitched and slashed the first half of my previous post so i reedited it, sorry for that.

this official emulator is surely worth a shot. i don't know the quality of gba emulators on gc but an alternative (especially when official) is always worth trying.

do you happen to know the release date of this game? couldn't find it on redump.org?

 

[SuperrSonic]

thanks for the answer. btw forum just glitched and slashed the first half of my previous post so i reedited it, sorry for that.

this official emulator is surely worth a shot. i don't know the quality of gba emulators on gc but an alternative (especially when official) is always worth trying.

do you happen to know the release date of this game? couldn't find it on redump.org?

The opening.bnr says the following:

Date: 2003/04/17
Name is AGB Emulater (Yeah, it's mispelled)
Short and Long name is Mario vs. Donkey Kong