Hacking The Zelda-Problem (aka The Pokemon-Problem)

[pedrobarca]

After Gateway 3DS was released, the exploit the cart uses was examined by many people. Especially smea is working on making that exploit useful for homebrew development.
As we all know, unfortunately this exploit only works on firmwares 4.1-4.5. I'm one of the lucky persons, who own a Nintendo 3DS that has this specific firmware version and I guess there are a lot of people around here, who also own one.
Staying on 4.5 was no problem for me, eShop isn't nearly as good as I expected and the retail games which force an update to an version above 4.5 are rare and I'm not interested in them.
And here comes the problem: This situation will change dramatically when The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds gets released. I really would like play that game, but it will certainly force my 3DS to 5.0 or even 6.0 and therefore destroy (most likely) all my hopes on getting homebrew work on my 3DS some day.
As we all know, the Gateway 3DS launcher has a firmware spoofing since version 1.1. So one chance for me would be to buy a Gateway 3DS. But since I'm not interested in pirating and 80 EUR ist a lot of money, I'm not really considering this option.
Unfortionately original retail games doesn't work while running gateway's launcher.dat (correct me if I'm wrong, but i remember reading this somewhere.), and therefore I can't use this firmware spoofing for my original cartridges.
What I would like to motivate now, is to program a launcher.dat which allows firmware spoofing for original games. As far as I know, the launcher.dat was succesfully decrypted and therefore reverse engeneering its code would be possible. Maybe this would help creating such a program?
I would really appreciate it, if some experts like smea would answer in this thread whether or not this would be possible.
I hope we find a solution for this problem. I guess a lot of you are sharing this dilemma with me.

 

[Foxi4]

Firmware spoofing already works on the Gateway - the only two incompatible games are "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" due to a custom save chip and "Monster Hunter 4" due to Anti-Piracy protection. That's pretty much your only solution at this point in time, but it also means no Multiplayer in Pokemon.

 

[VMM]

Firmware spoofing already works on the Gateway - the only two incompatible games are "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" due to a custom save chip and "Monster Hunter 4" due to Anti-Piracy protection. That's pretty much your only solution at this point in time, but it also means no Multiplayer in Pokemon.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gateway supports local multiplay just fine,
it's online support that is lacking.

 

[Pong20302000]

Firmware spoofing already works on the Gateway - the only two incompatible games are "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" due to a custom save chip and "Monster Hunter 4" due to Anti-Piracy protection. That's pretty much your only solution at this point in time, but it also means no Multiplayer in Pokemon.

X & Y also use NAND saving chip same as Animal Crossing

 

[Foxi4]

X & Y also use NAND saving chip same as Animal Crossing

Sure pong.

 

[Pong20302000]

Sure pong.

All Other 3DS games
CTR-A***

Animal Crossing
CTR-EGD*

Pokemon X
CTR-EKJ*

Pokemon Y
CTR-EK2*

3 games now start with E instead of A

 

[Foxi4]

All Other 3DS games
CTR-A***

Animal Crossing
CTR-EGD*

Pokemon X
CTR-EKJ*

Pokemon Y
CTR-EK2*

3 games now start with E instead of A

Okay, so in the very likely event it doesn't (and I posted a very detailed explaination as to "why" in another thread), I will immediately direct you to your post above with glee. Correlation =/= Causation.

 

[TheDreamLord]

All Other 3DS games
CTR-A***

Animal Crossing
CTR-EGD*

Pokemon X
CTR-EKJ*

Pokemon Y
CTR-EK2*

3 games now start with E instead of A

And how do you have these?

 

[jastolze]

All Other 3DS games
CTR-A***

Animal Crossing
CTR-EGD*

Pokemon X
CTR-EKJ*

Pokemon Y
CTR-EK2*

3 games now start with E instead of A

How do they have info on PKMN X/Y's rom without it being available yet? Or was this from the demo I saw in videos?

 

[Foxi4]

And how do you have these?

From his imaginary friends, just like the photoshopped screenshots he likes to post. Pay him no attention, we'll know for sure soon enough.

http://gbatemp.net/threads/smealum-...has-hacked-the-3ds.354464/page-8#post-4772497

I sincerely doubt it will be based on SLC-NAND because there's literally no reason why it should be, not to mention that this kind of memory is rare and difficult to come by. Pokemon will be produced in quantities far surpassing Nintendo's capacity to stock the chips.

 

[TheDreamLord]

From his imaginary friends, just like the photoshopped screenshots he likes to post. Pay him no attention, we'll know for sure soon enough.

http://gbatemp.net/threads/smealum-...has-hacked-the-3ds.354464/page-8#post-4772497

I sincerely doubt it will be based on SLC-NAND because there's literally no reason why it should be, not to mention that this kind of memory is rare and difficult to come by. Pokemon will be produced in quantities far surpassing Nintendo's capacity to stock the chips.

Alright, thank you.

 

[Zaide]

From his imaginary friends, just like the photoshopped screenshots he likes to post. Pay him no attention, we'll know for sure soon enough.

http://gbatemp.net/threads/smealum-...has-hacked-the-3ds.354464/page-8#post-4772497

I sincerely doubt it will be based on SLC-NAND because there's literally no reason why it should be, not to mention that this kind of memory is rare and difficult to come by. Pokemon will be produced in quantities far surpassing Nintendo's capacity to stock the chips.

Even if Pokemon does use standard save chips, I'd be quite surprised if it doesn't include something that prevents it from working in a Gateway. Even if Nintendo doesn't care about piracy (which isn't the case), Pokemon is a game where cheating is heavily discouraged and the Gateway makes it too easy to duplicate Pokemon by making a game save backup.

 

[Foxi4]

Even if Pokemon does use standard save chips, I'd be quite surprised if it doesn't include something that prevents it from working in a Gateway. Even if Nintendo doesn't care about piracy (which isn't the case), Pokemon is a game where cheating is heavily discouraged and the Gateway makes it too easy to duplicate Pokemon by making a game save backup.

Oh, I never said it won't have Anti-Piracy measures. What I did say is that I doubt it'll have a SLC-NAND chip on-board. Anti-Piracy can always be circumvented this way or another, hardware problems are harder to solve.

 

[chrisrlink]

also the reason why an exploit base Action Replay for the 3DS havn't been made yet and probably never will

 

[Pong20302000]

Alright, thank you.

lol the game codes are already know

feel free to check the net and you will find on many sites

even IGN

 

[gamefan5]

From his imaginary friends, just like the photoshopped screenshots he likes to post. Pay him no attention, we'll know for sure soon enough.

http://gbatemp.net/threads/smealum-...has-hacked-the-3ds.354464/page-8#post-4772497

I sincerely doubt it will be based on SLC-NAND because there's literally no reason why it should be, not to mention that this kind of memory is rare and difficult to come by. Pokemon will be produced in quantities far surpassing Nintendo's capacity to stock the chips.

*still remembers that photoshopped map screen from wind waker HD he posted, turning out to be fake LOL

To OP, we can't know for sure until it's released.

 

[Foxi4]

lol the game codes are already know

feel free to check the net and you will find on many sites

even IGN

That's not the point. The point is that the codes may not denote the save chip used - you don't know what the letter stands for. Just because Animal Crossing follows this pattern doesn't mean Pokemon will.

also the reason why an exploit base Action Replay for the 3DS havn't been made yet and probably never will

You can use the NVRAM exploit for launching unsigned content, what makes you think that an Action Replay would be a distant dream? I can see cart-swapping and live patching happening very, very soon, actually.

 

[tbgtbg]

Firmware spoofing already works on the Gateway - the only two incompatible games are "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" due to a custom save chip and "Monster Hunter 4" due to Anti-Piracy protection. That's pretty much your only solution at this point in time, but it also means no Multiplayer in Pokemon.

Yes, he can get a gateway, download a Zelda ROM, and buy a Zelda cart and leave that sitting unused while he plays off gateway (at least assuming gateway runs Zelda) but that isn't what he wants. He wants a way to play from an original cart without updating the firmware. He only wants to stay on 4.5 for future homebrew exploits (assuming they ever happen) but he does not want to play ROMs.

Firmware spoofing for original carts instead of ROMs, can someone make it possible?

 

[Foxi4]

Yes, he can get a gateway, download a Zelda ROM, and buy a Zelda cart and leave that sitting unused while he plays off gateway (at least assuming gateway runs Zelda) but that isn't what he wants. He wants a way to play from an original cart without updating the firmware. He only wants to stay on 4.5 for future homebrew exploits (assuming they ever happen) but he does not want to play ROMs.

Firmware spoofing for original carts instead of ROMs, can someone make it possible?

For all intents and purposes, it can be done as the principle is exactly the same. Thing is, the interest is very low and I doubt that the Gateway team themselves are in any way interested in such a launcher. Unfortunately I'm afraid that he'll have to "buy the game, download the ROM and play that" as dumb as it sounds if he both wants to support the company and avoid the update - it's the only way at this point in time.

 

[Armadillo]

Can always do a nand backup if he wants to buy retail and leave homebrew open. Backup 4.5, update & play retail games as normal, something interesting comes along, drop back to 4.5 with your backup .