Homebrew DSi Nintendo Zone app?

[Deleted User]

There are a few other people working on hacking the DSi from other avenues. Team Twiizers just released a video of a save game exploit that they’re using to run code in DSi mode. This is pretty cool, and as far as I know it’s the first time a hobbyist has been able to run code in DSi mode. I’m not sure how much if any of the new hardware they’ve managed to reverse engineer through this hack.

Running code in DSi Mode? Well that seems interesting. We could run our own "exploit" that unlocks the hidden app, but we'd just have to know where in the system to look for that information. I think getting it to load could be easier than we thought, actually!

This disables access to the SD Card, though. I'm not sure what, if any information gets written on the SD Card when a system unlocks Nintendo Zone the regular way.

 

[DRAGONBALLVINTAGE]

Soon™

I decrypted the nand and renamed the .app to .nds!

 

[ChampionLeake]

Running code in DSi Mode? Well that seems interesting. We could run our own "exploit" that unlocks the hidden app, but we'd just have to know where in the system to look for that information. I think getting it to load could be easier than we thought, actually!

This disables access to the SD Card, though. I'm not sure what, if any information gets written on the SD Card when a system unlocks Nintendo Zone the regular way.

Okay. TeamTwiizer hacked only the DSi-Enhanced game, Classic Word Games. Keep in mind, DSi-Enhanced games do not have SD access. They also share on cart memory only which is very limited as well. DSi-Enhanced exploits can only be used for CID dumping and DSiLink (If you have a certain wifichip for you dsi). I know this since I've exploited this game as well: https://github.com/ChampionLeake/classic-wordsploit/

You also can't "run our own "exploit" that unlocks the hidden app". Come on. This can't be done since the app natively doesn't exist on the consoles' NAND itself. You were 100% wrong about that statement. DSiwarehax can't even do this really. You have to manually decrypt the nand and the nintendzone app onto the nand to place on the home menu. It's not an unlocking procedure. It's more of a "I'm putting it on there"

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Soon™

I decrypted the nand and renamed the .app to .nds!

You could've just decrypted the .app onto the nand instead on just coverting to a .nds. I think that also breaks the app as well. I would just put that on my NAND.

 

[DRAGONBALLVINTAGE]

Okay. TeamTwiizer hacked only the DSi-Enhanced game, Classic Word Games. Keep in mind, DSi-Enhanced games do not have SD access. They also share on cart memory only which is very limited as well. DSi-Enhanced exploits can only be used for CID dumping and DSiLink (If you have a certain wifichip for you dsi). I know this since I've exploited this game as well: https://github.com/ChampionLeake/classic-wordsploit/

You also can't "run our own "exploit" that unlocks the hidden app". Come on. This can't be done since the app natively doesn't exist on the consoles' NAND itself. You were 100% wrong about that statement. DSiwarehax can't even do this really. You have to manually decrypt the nand and the nintendzone app onto the nand to place on the home menu. It's not an unlocking procedure. It's more of a "I'm putting it on there"

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You could've just decrypted the .app onto the nand instead on just coverting to a .nds. I think that also breaks the app as well. I would just put that on my NAND.

Me Schooled impossible!

Also how does one decrypt the .app file?

 

[dpad_5678]

Me Schooled impossible!

Also how does one decrypt the .app file?

It wouldn't be in the SRL. There's some sort of data for the home menu that determines whether the NZone app should be shown or not.

 

[DRAGONBALLVINTAGE]

It wouldn't be in the SRL. There's some sort of data for the home menu that determines whether the NZone app should be shown or not.

I assume its in 0000 or the launcher folder

 

[Ryccardo]

I also find it quite odd it was called "Spot" and not "Zone"

Spot was the old service optimized only for DS/Lite

I'm not sure what, if any information gets written on the SD Card when a system unlocks Nintendo Zone the regular way.

There's some sort of data for the home menu that determines whether the NZone app should be shown or not.

Yep, something somewhere in the launcher's save

 

[Phillipos Andemariam]

Test Release?

What you need:
1. From the internet, you have to download all the required files (the distribution box rom, and the bestbuy beacon)
2. You need to set up a wifi router, (or hotspot might work too) preferably named "BestBuy". It needs to have no security.
3. One DSi, and two a DS with two flashcarts (I think any one will do fine)

Steps:

Ok, this part is very hard to understand because I'm a dumbass, but if you think you can read it, give it a shot.

1. First, use the latest version of the SSLPatcher to Patch the Distribution Box rom so that it can work over the custom server "altwfc". Then insert the modified rom (which should say [NOSSL] at the end of the rom) into the flashcart for the console that will send the Nintendo Zone.

2. We will now set up the WiFi settings on each console with their own flashcarts.

3. Delete all your settings, restart the console, go to WiFi settings again.

4. Make a new connection.

5. Enter in your Access Point's settings, and set auto-obtain DNS to "no" and use this one for both systems:

104.131.93.87 - Primary DNS
Secondary DNS - same as primary DNS.

After that, test your connection. If it worked, congrats. You're ready for the next part.

6. Run the Distribution Box Rom from the other DS. Then wait at the DSi menu, and I think Nintendo Zone might pop up using this method.

I'm sorry if it didn't work and it wasted your time. I'm not that smart.

Let me know if it works please!

Can you make a video tutorial for this?

 

[Deleted member 508645]

First time I hear about this.
If it's a NDS title we should be able to have it running and connect on a WEP network and sniff the traffic to see where it's trying to connect (and with some static reversing maybe trick it into thinking it's connected to the server and start the hostpot)

Other way arround, on the 3ds there was something similar, just creating a WiFi network with a certain SSID the hidden app will be triggered and shown, maybe this works the same.

Oh god I'm two years late. Well, I'm not sure about DSi, but 3DS Nintendo Zone activated when its connected to a network called "attwift". Try this on the DSi, it might work. This might explain a little bit more into detail

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Or, you can install UNLAUNCH onto your DSi and run it from there. (You can uninstall after) h t t p : / / d a r k f l a k e . x 1 0 h o s t . c o m / If you want to run games off the DSi's SD Card, follow the whole tutorial. If your only installing unlaunch, stop the tutorial once you've installed it.

 

[JarHead]

I know this thread is sorta dead but i'm interested in this too and found this: github.c om/yellows8/wmb-asm/tree/master/ds/nzonehtmlhaxx (i have newbie rank so that link might not work. a google search for yellows8 nintendo zone should do the trick.) I'm sure someone here has already found this but unless i'm reading this wrong this should work with a Raspberry Pi 3. I saw mentions in this post about yellows8's nintendo zone server and this might be it. I have a newbie rank for a reason so none of this may be accurate.

 

[emc28285]

I’ll look into it, I found a copy however didn’t know how to work it. Stay in touch and we can figure it out I really want to get it to work

 

[therealatticuss]

Does anyone know how to activate/unhide the pre-installed Nintendo Zone app on a DSi?
I know the app only activates when a special wifi beacon is detected according to the DSibrew wiki but have no clue about the rest. (Such as how to craft and trasmit the beacon)

Managed to find a Nintendo Zone Wireless Distribution Box rom to try my luck there but it needed to connect to the internet first and it gets a access denied error when it does. (Guessing it's due to the Nintendo WiFi shutdown.) No dumps of the other NZone carts (Best Buy) exists to test as well.

Was really curious about this for a while and really wanted to play around with it. (and also have a neat and rare icon on the menu. )

its possible to access it through Unlaunch.

 

[emc28285]

its possible to access it through Unlaunch.

Is there a way to access it somehow on a CFW 3ds?

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Access as in get it to work

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

No one's mentioned how the Wireless Distribution Box has a bunch of different settings for connecting to custom servers and whatnot if you hold down the touchscreen while loading the cartridge, that is definitely our ticket to getting somewhere.

Spoiler: Images

 

[theoldmototoad50]

Oh god I'm two years late. Well, I'm not sure about DSi, but 3DS Nintendo Zone activated when its connected to a network called "attwift". Try this on the DSi, it might work. This might explain a little bit more into detail

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Or, you can install UNLAUNCH onto your DSi and run it from there. (You can uninstall after) h t t p : / / d a r k f l a k e . x 1 0 h o s t . c o m / If you want to run games off the DSi's SD Card, follow the whole tutorial. If your only installing unlaunch, stop the tutorial once you've installed it.

Does it only work in the USA?

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

Does it only work in the USA?

Systems from different regions have different lists of hotspots they look out for.

Edit: Didn't want to double post, it seems like to do this you also need a WEP-encrypted access point with a specific key that corresponds with the name of the SSID - in this case BestBuy.

 

[JarHead]

I'll try using my wifi extender to see if I can get something done, although I don't have high hopes.

EDIT: Turns out my wifi extender did a few updates and now features are unavailable like WEP encryption and changing the wifi channel. Not sure if WEP is required but i'm pretty sure the wifi channel has to be 1.

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

Hey y'all, I'm back with a few updates. I've been able to get both the v1 Distributor and the Best Buy Beacon to work with one another, (for reference, I used two old 3DS's to do this) but the Distributor's being picky and it's looking for updates/games and whatnot from the Wi-Fi Connection servers. Don't have a screenshot, but the Distributor gave me a different error this time around.

In other news, I bought this guy from eBay for shits n' giggles (and testing, lol).

I dumped the rom and while I'm no expert at nds hacking, I'm trying my best to take a look inside the files within the ROM with a hex editor. If anyone wants to help, I'd really appreciate it if you guys would link me to some tools that can help me: find all the text (or any strings) with within an .nds ROM, see what the Distributor is looking after it's connected to the Best Buy Beacon. I'm positive I've actually gotten a lot farther than most people with the tests I did.

As for actually GETTING Nintendo Zone on DSi, the process is really simple. I did it by using the Memory Pit exploit and installing Unlaunch:

And just so you guys know, I used to be on this website. I was known as WintendoZone and I was pretty cringey back then.

 

[JarHead]

Wow i'm actually impressed. I know there's a tool out there somewhere that I used to extract DS Download Station demos, but i'm not sure that would be much use here. It might be worth a shot though. Try downloading DSBUFF and see if anything interesting comes up. If I had to make a guess it would probably do some sort of security check to see if it's the legit server then check for a list of games to display, but that's based on absolutely nothing and just something I thought up.

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

Update! While I haven't done hex editing before, I found the addresses that the DS tries to connect to just sitting there in text in the hexeditor. I'm assuming you can change it to point to a server that hosts the files and you're good to go!

Pretty simple process. really.