Hacking Help with damping pokemon fire red GBA game save

[JoJoMix]

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a reproduction cartridge of pokemon fire red as the prices of authentic ones are really expensive and I live in UAE so shipping would cost me as well. I received the cartridge and it works flawlessly and the save works when playing on DS lite. My issue is that I want to dump the save file and play it on emulator or even modify things with pkhex, but the save file appears to be corrupted.

I use the original R4 and r4idsn, wood os 1.62 and read about two homebrew which are GBA backup and savemanager. GBA backup did make a save file dump but the file doesn't work in pokegen, pkhex or visualboyadvance (setting save to flash 128k). The other hombrew savemanager doesn't even detect the game in slot-2 but it does detect other old gba games i own, both fake and authentic.

I am not really sure if this reproduction game has some sort of different chip or the problem from my flashcart R4. I want to finish the game and transfer pokemon from this 3rd gen to pokemon soul silver through pal park either with emulator or patched rom. Having difficulty from now on dumping save made me worry that this game save might not work for other purposes.

Also if anyone want to suggest playing on emulator only, I do love playing portable and hence bought this cartridge. I know this topic issue is pretty old but would really appreciate your help.
I attached the dumped save file if anyone interested.
http://www35.zippyshare.com/v/WUL7n0G1/file.html

 

[Shadow#1]

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a reproduction cartridge of pokemon fire red as the prices of authentic ones are really expensive and I live in UAE so shipping would cost me as well. I received the cartridge and it works flawlessly and the save works when playing on DS lite. My issue is that I want to dump the save file and play it on emulator or even modify things with pkhex, but the save file appears to be corrupted.

I use the original R4 and r4idsn, wood os 1.62 and read about two homebrew which are GBA backup and savemanager. GBA backup did make a save file dump but the file doesn't work in pokegen, pkhex or visualboyadvance (setting save to flash 128k). The other hombrew savemanager doesn't even detect the game in slot-2 but it does detect other old gba games i own, both fake and authentic.

I am not really sure if this reproduction game has some sort of different chip or the problem from my flashcart R4. I want to finish the game and transfer pokemon from this 3rd gen to pokemon soul silver through pal park either with emulator or patched rom. Having difficulty from now on dumping save made me worry that this game save might not work for other purposes.

Also if anyone want to suggest playing on emulator only, I do love playing portable and hence bought this cartridge. I know this topic issue is pretty old but would really appreciate your help.
I attached the dumped save file if anyone interested.
http://www35.zippyshare.com/v/WUL7n0G1/file.html

That's a Chinese clone LOL ofc your going to have problems buy a authentic cart and then u won't have this problem

 

[JoJoMix]

That's a Chinese clone LOL ofc your going to have problems buy a authentic cart and then u won't have this problem

Hey Shadow,

I know this is Chinese cartridge but it is not a complete clone or bootleg, but a reproduction so i assume they put the rom in a new cartridge. I thought maybe the rom is modified so I did dump the rom and run it on the emulator visual boy advance along with the dumped save, game runs perfect but save is not. So there is something wrong with the method the save file is dumped, rom dumping is perfect.

If there is no way then sure I will buy an authentic one

 

[Zense]

I'll check it out.

Edit:
So I've been trying to get it to work with the USA and the USA,Eu Rev A ROMs and none of them worked with a simple import of battery backup. I went and compared a completely new .sav generated from VBA with this one and they were similar up to like halfway thru, which makes me believe that the .sav isn't bad. I don't know if there's much more than this I can try though...

You could check out this thread:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/a-gba-save-converter.53867/page-2

 

[JoJoMix]

I'll check it out.

Edit:
So I've been trying to get it to work with the USA and the USA,Eu Rev A ROMs and none of them worked with a simple import of battery backup. I went and compared a completely new .sav generated from VBA with this one and they were similar up to like halfway thru, which makes me believe that the .sav isn't bad. I don't know if there's much more than this I can try though...

You could check out this thread:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/a-gba-save-converter.53867/page-2

Hi Zense,

Really appreciate your help and I would check the method on that thread. I thought maybe I need to hex edit the save as I did try a save converter tool but it didn't work.

 

[Zense]

Hi Zense,

Really appreciate your help and I would check the method on that thread. I thought maybe I need to hex edit the save as I did try a save converter tool but it didn't work.

No problem
Anyways, I think hexediting might be the way to go.
Btw in order to understand better, how far have you come in the game? Did you beat the Pokémon League?

 

[JoJoMix]

No problem
Anyways, I think hexediting might be the way to go.
Btw in order to understand better, how far have you come in the game? Did you beat the Pokémon League?

Actually I only played for less than an hour. I want to continue but was worried when I couldn't not dump and use the save anywhere else but this damp cartridge, hence a waste of time. I want to be able to use the save on emulator or modify things on pkhex and return it back if possible. even If i can't inject back just playing and dumping a working save for other methods would still be great.

 

[ootnes2]

Hello everyone,
I want to finish the game and transfer pokemon from this 3rd gen to pokemon soul silver through pal park either with emulator or patched rom. Having difficulty from now on dumping save made me worry that this game save might not work for other purposes.

You should be able to trade from your cart to a legitimate cart and then upload from the original cart.

 

[Shadow#1]

Hey Shadow,

I know this is Chinese cartridge but it is not a complete clone or bootleg, but a reproduction so i assume they put the rom in a new cartridge. I thought maybe the rom is modified so I did dump the rom and run it on the emulator visual boy advance along with the dumped save, game runs perfect but save is not. So there is something wrong with the method the save file is dumped, rom dumping is perfect.

If there is no way then sure I will buy an authentic one

It is a complete clone and bootleg so not a "reproduction" as Nintendo would NEVER use a glop top

 

[migles]

Hey Shadow,

I know this is Chinese cartridge but it is not a complete clone or bootleg, but a reproduction so i assume they put the rom in a new cartridge. I thought maybe the rom is modified so I did dump the rom and run it on the emulator visual boy advance along with the dumped save, game runs perfect but save is not. So there is something wrong with the method the save file is dumped, rom dumping is perfect.

If there is no way then sure I will buy an authentic one

rudolphs save backup tool is not picking up the correct save type.. it picks my official cartridge as flash 1M as well.
there is a cfg file but i don't think you can change the save type... however since it doesn't have a battery, it's not Sram as well

and yes it does have a differnt chip. actually both chips are different.. probably the game is even modified to allow to write on this type of storage
it's a bootleg...

your dumped save just appears to be a bunch of noise... so it's normal that your emulator is not picking it up

 

[Zense]

You should be able to trade from your cart to a legitimate cart and then upload from the original cart.

Actually that might be a good idea. Try to boot a copy of D/P/Pt or HG/SS and transfer your pokemon with pal park. Just find a complete save for those DS games (unless you have one already) and check if it works. At least that way you'll know that you'll be able to transfer them in the future, even if you won't be able to use pkhex. You're using a DS so trading within the same generation (the gba games) wouldn't work.

 

[JoJoMix]

You should be able to trade from your cart to a legitimate cart and then upload from the original cart.

I do own a legitimate pokemon ruby game but didn't try to link trade between them. for palpark I wanted to use desmume or soul silver rom but If i can't dump save or savemanager can't read the gba game I can't guarantee that patched soul silver would read this cartridge.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Actually that might be a good idea. Try to boot a copy of D/P/Pt or HG/SS and try to transfer you pokemon with pal park or whatever it's called. Just find a complete save for those DS games (unless you have one already) and check if it works. At least that way you'll know that you'll be able to transfer them in the future, even if you won't be able to use pkhex. You're using a DS so trading in the same generation wouldn't work.

The cartridge is also an apparent fake because of the transparent cover, but whatever he already stated this.

I would be happy to use palpark to check but I need to finish this bootleg game as well so palpark would work , seems like i will check my ruby and post my findings.

 

[Zense]

I would be happy to use palpark to check but I need to finish this bootleg game as well so palpark would work , seems like i will check my ruby and post my findings.

Oh, I didn't know you had to complete FireRed in order to use pal park from the 4th gen games. I only thought the latter ones had to be finished. Are you sure about this?

 

[migles]

Oh, I didn't know you had to complete FireRed in order to use pal park from the 4th gen games. I only thought the latter ones had to be finished. Are you sure about this?

one can use palpark any time. as long as it has a pokedex in the 3gen games IIRC

 

[Zense]

rudolphs save backup tool is not picking up the correct save type.. it picks my official cartridge as flash 1M as well.
there is a cfg file but i don't think you can change the save type... however since it doesn't have a battery, it's not Sram as well

and yes it does have a differnt chip. actually both chips are different.. probably the game is even modified to allow to write on this type of storage
it's a bootleg...

your dumped save just appears to be a bunch of noise... so it's normal that your emulator is not picking it up

I'm not at all experienced with this, but when I compared saves from vba and this guy's save through a hex editor I found that they weren't that different, as said earlier. However, I wouldn't know how to distinguish if his save is indeed just random noise. Could you elaborate? Did you check it too?

 

[JoJoMix]

rudolphs save backup tool is not picking up the correct save type.. it picks my official cartridge as flash 1M as well.
there is a cfg file but i don't think you can change the save type... however since it doesn't have a battery, it's not Sram as well

and yes it does have a differnt chip. actually both chips are different.. probably the game is even modified to allow to write on this type of storage
it's a bootleg...

your dumped save just appears to be a bunch of noise... so it's normal that your emulator is not picking it up

that does make sense now. I will give up on this cartridge. Those Chinese change chips and have different save format which can't be used anywhere else lol.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

one can use palpark any time. as long as it has a pokedex in the 3gen games IIRC

Really? maybe I assumed that because I tried Ruby before and nothing showed up in my soul silver because I didn't finish Ruby. Sorry about that

 

[migles]

I'm not at all experienced with this, but when I compared saves from vba and this guy's save I found that they weren't that different, as said earlier. However, I wouldn't know how to distinguish if his save is indeed just random noise. Could you elaborate? Did you check it too?

i am not an expert or anything...

heres a sample of a normal save i downloaded randomly from the internet (which matches my real save a little. i didn't used my save as a sample because i saved in the beggining there is barely any data in it...):
http://imgur.com/a/9IJ7e
first picture shows the end of the data..

save file starts with some blank data and ends with plenty blank data, you can see in the file there are some areas with different patterns, some blank areas, etc.. doesnt' make sense but at the same it does make sense..


however in his dumped save, data is filled at random, there are no empty areas, it's filled to the brim with random stuff
also, notice something interesting in statistics
http://imgur.com/a/jaifJ

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

that does make sense now. I will give up on this cartridge. Those Chinese change chips and have different save format which can't be used anywhere else lol.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


Really? maybe I assumed that because I tried Ruby before and nothing showed up in my soul silver because I didn't finish Ruby. Sorry about that

you need access to paypal building in the 4th gen game of course.
but once you access it you can use it.. if you don't have a pokedex in the 3gen game a message with an error will show up IIRC.
the fact it doesn't appear, pretty much can mean the cartridge is not original.. (it is not detecting a compatible game)
i never seen palpark accepting non official cartridges... of course, give it a try.. but i wouldn't count on that...
there are some patches you have to apply in order to import pokemons from a slot2 flashcart, but theese guarantee detection of SRAM saving (flashcarts use SRAM)
i even believe there are specific patches for each different flashcart

 

[ootnes2]

I do own a legitimate pokemon ruby game but didn't try to link trade between them. for palpark I wanted to use desmume or soul silver rom but If i can't dump save or savemanager can't read the gba game I can't guarantee that patched soul silver would read this cartridge.

Trading works on some other non-legitimate carts. Pal park will likely not detect your cart. If you use pokepatch on certain gen IV games (like Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) some palpark games may detect your cart, but will display an error message when you try to transfer.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-can-i-use-pal-park-with-roms-only.316349/#post-4036532

 

[JoJoMix]

i am not an expert or anything...

heres a sample of a normal save i downloaded randomly from the internet (which matches my real save a little. i didn't used my save as a sample because i saved in the beggining there is barely any data in it...):
http://imgur.com/a/9IJ7e
first picture shows the end of the data..

save file starts with some blank data and ends with plenty blank data, you can see in the file there are some areas with different patterns, some blank areas, etc.. doesnt' make sense but at the same it does make sense..


however in his dumped save, data is filled at random, there are no empty areas, it's filled to the brim with random stuff
also, notice something interesting in statistics
http://imgur.com/a/jaifJ

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


you need access to paypal building in the 4th gen game of course.
but once you access it you can use it.. if you don't have a pokedex in the 3gen game a message with an error will show up IIRC.
the fact it doesn't appear, pretty much can mean the cartridge is not original.. (it is not detecting a compatible game)
i never seen palpark accepting non official cartridges... of course, give it a try.. but i wouldn't count on that...
there are some patches you have to apply in order to import pokemons from a slot2 flashcart, but theese guarantee detection of SRAM saving (flashcarts use SRAM)
i even believe there are specific patches for each different flashcart

Wow, you are right I just checked another save of the internet and there are many blank spaces, while the save of bootleg is filled up with noise.

I also checked a clean and patched soul silver with finished game save file. The game didn't pick up the bootleg fire red at all and I got the pokedex

 

[migles]

Wow, you are right I just checked another save of the internet and there are many blank spaces, while the save of bootleg is filled up with noise.

I also checked a clean and patched soul silver with finished game save file. The game didn't pick up the bootleg fire red at all and I got the pokedex

make sure you didn't forget to enable slot 2 linkage in your flaschart. my dstwo has an option to disable or link as rumble.