Hacking Is it possible to hack another VC game into the Mario all stars ISO?

dushbadge · May 9, 2019

So that upon inserting the disc, it boots into another game.

Think of it like putting a disc in and it boots to Super Metroid.

Haven't seen any info regarding launching VC off a disc but replacing the all stars rom in the all stars Wii ISO might be the closest way to achieve this.

tech3475 · May 9, 2019

Most people will just install the WAD or use a homebrew emulator.

Is there any specific reason why you want to have it on a disc?

CMDreamer · May 9, 2019

Afaik, no VC games can be "installed" on non rewritable media (be it CD, DVD, or Bluray -just in case some brilliant mind comes to think of this-.
The media where they reside must be RW. Even more, thay can't be installed outside of the main system's internal storage media (flash memory).

Guess why...

AkikoKumagara · May 9, 2019

I'm looking into this since it's pretty curious... it's not a "VC game" in the conventional meaning, just a compressed ROM being emulated. It seems there's some sort of verification step before the ROM boots, perhaps a header check (if we're lucky, that's all it is). I've read there's some trickery to the audio of the ROM on this disc, so I'm not sure how that'd be accounted for.

CMDreamer said:
Afaik, no VC games can be "installed" on non rewritable media (be it CD, DVD, or Bluray -just in case some brilliant mind comes to think of this-.
The media where they reside must be RW. Even more, thay can't be installed outside of the main system's internal storage media (flash memory).

Guess why...

I don't think you understand the topic. We can replace files in a backup and still launch the backup, or use some real-time file replacement tricks like what's used for Brawl modding. This isn't technically a VC game, the emulator and the ROM are both separate (but both exist on the disc, I think). The game saves to the system memory as a Wii game when it writes a save because that's still technically what it is.

An interesting topic, though: People on Neogaf have been able to patch the ROM and still play it. https://www.neogaf.com/threads/this-changes-everything-mario-all-stars-physics-patch.456754/

MaxiBash · May 16, 2019

My speculation is maybe.
I checked the contents of Mario All-Stars and it’s almost identical to a extracted VC WAD- minus the manual and the dummy file.
It’s possible to convert Mario All-Stars to a working WAD, and it might be possible to reverse it. However, there isn’t really a point to it unless you need it for a backup loader of some sort.

eyeliner · May 22, 2019

That would be grand, replacing the rom by any other. I'd love to understand more about the file structure of the Wii iso's and VC files.

But, alas, your dawg here is like a dumb brick concerning such things, so he must expect someone to try it.

SaulFabre · Apr 21, 2021

Well, only thing to do for know if it is possible is testing.
I've written a blog entry about this:
https://gbatemp.net/entry/i-reverse...ersary-special-can-its-rom-be-replaced.18668/

Hacking Is it possible to hack another VC game into the Mario all stars ISO?

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