Hacking About Super Mario Advance 4's release

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Best news I heard all year. SMA4 can be played on 3ds, Does it also mean we can just rip the wii u eshop rom with the e-reader levels and play them as well?

 

[CheatFreak47]

Best news I heard all year. SMA4 can be played on 3ds, Does it also mean we can just rip the wii u eshop rom with the e-reader levels and play them as well?

Not really new news, I guess you just picked up on this from the recent content area eh?
Yep, the Wii U version GBA rom has the eReader levels embedded in the rom, they even doubled the rom size to fit them all.

The only problem with running it on a 3DS via GBA VC mode (AGBFIRM) is that it uses 128k FLASH save type, which we had previously thought to be unsupported- thus, all the publically avaliable tools make bad GBA CIAs for this game.

@Asdolo is working on something he's calling "New Super Ultimate Injector for 3DS" which supports the save type- and it's still in semi-private beta.

 

[VinsCool]

Not really new news, I guess you just picked up on this from the recent content area eh?
Yep, the Wii U version GBA rom has the eReader levels embedded in the rom, they even doubled the rom size to fit them all.

The only problem with running it on a 3DS via GBA VC mode (AGBFIRM) is that it uses 128k FLASH save type, which we had previously thought to be unsupported- thus, all the publically avaliable tools make bad GBA CIAs for this game.

@Asdolo is working on something he's calling "New Super Ultimate Injector for 3DS" which supports the save type- and it's still in semi-private beta.

A bit unrelated, but would this also make LSDJ work on it properly?

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Not really new news, I guess you just picked up on this from the recent content area eh?
Yep, the Wii U version GBA rom has the eReader levels embedded in the rom, they even doubled the rom size to fit them all.

The only problem with running it on a 3DS via GBA VC mode (AGBFIRM) is that it uses 128k FLASH save type, which we had previously thought to be unsupported- thus, all the publically avaliable tools make bad GBA CIAs for this game.

@Asdolo is working on something he's calling "New Super Ultimate Injector for 3DS" which supports the save type- and it's still in semi-private beta.

Yes I am well aware of the tool and i have seen it, as i was asked to test the Download play for nes roms on it. Also I'm aware of the save format about that game and known about the issue for some time, though since his absence I have not know of any updates despite following the injection tool threads.

But I am glad development has progressed. Though if that has managed to be possible then I guess the 512KB flash memory patch may be possible as well, since I came across this one post a few months ago. http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3436/

Anyway, still glad that progress is being made in that area, not that is a problem on wii u but that game really was meant for a portable system, hoping sometime nintendo would consider releasing it for switch eshop at some point. Is just too bad nintendo probably never tried to maintain the 3DS VC games as much as the wii u ones did, considering they had a good dev team on that to do something as impressive as add extra content to some of those releases.

 

[CheatFreak47]

A bit unrelated, but would this also make LSDJ work on it properly?

I don't know what LSDJ is. This?
If so, no, because GBA mode is for GBA games only afaik.

 

[VinsCool]

I don't know what LSDJ is. This?
If so, no, because GBA mode is for GBA games only afaik.

It doesn't rely on GBA mode at all.
In fact, I was asking because of the savetype used, and the fact that injection attempts caused blackscreens.

 

[CheatFreak47]

Yes I am well aware of the tool and i have seen it, as i was asked to test the Download play for nes roms on it. Also I'm aware of the save format about that game and known about the issue for some time, though since his absence I have not know of any updates despite following the injection tool threads.

But I am glad development has progressed. Though if that has managed to be possible then I guess the 512KB flash memory patch may be possible as well, since I came across this one post a few months ago. http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3436/

Anyway, still glad that progress is being made in that area, not that is a problem on wii u but that game really was meant for a portable system, hoping sometime nintendo would consider releasing it for switch eshop at some point. Is just too bad nintendo probably never tried to maintain the 3DS VC games as much as the wii u ones did, considering they had a good dev team on that to do something as impressive as add extra content to some of those releases.

In case I wasn't clear, AGBFIRM has always supported EEPROM8K and FLASH 128K, we just didn't know about it until Aurora Wright came in and sorted out how the GBA footers work. So in this case, that pokemon rom hack there is more or less useless now that we know AGBFIRM actually properly supports 128KB Flash. I guess it's useful for people running on limited flashcarts or something? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It doesn't rely on GBA mode at all.
In fact, I was asking because of the savetype used, and the fact that injection attempts caused blackscreens.

Then no, it makes no difference. The only reason GBA mode now supports more saves is, as I said above, it always had support for these saves, we just didn't know about it until Aurora did some reverse engineering on it and sorted it out.

Chances are all the VC emulators are just kind of crap and that's why LSDJ doesn't work.

 

[JamesAaronSpirin]

IPS patch in the first post is down.

 

[gamesquest1]

IPS patch in the first post is down.

just use the xdelta patch

 

[Kiken]

https://mega.nz/#!JYMEFA5Y!pll1ILT7oHTv5uJCSddoa4Yl0R3P2GWRRzWtkdlYhVQ
this is the link to the .ips and .xdelta files (whichever you prefer), needs to be applied to the ROM

Super Mario Advance 4 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) (Rev 1)
CRC-32: 8d84acfc
MD4: 32ae0e4fbd649bf1cf118507b4eea77c
MD5: ae8af6b539d509019bdd06565c10804a
SHA-1: 2e5ce11a893464dc0cce0a6b451580ba35a7e5de

EDIT: I do hope I did not underdump the ROM. I assumed the ROM would still be 8Mb in size. I gave the game a quick test on VBA and the normal game and additional levels worked just fine.

My guess is the EU ROM had enough space left without having to be increased to 16Mb (the US release was increased from 4Mb to 8Mb for the VC release to hold the additional levels.

EDIT: here are the hashes for the patched ROM/VC Release:

CRC-32: d4f45b01
MD4: 10406a1dc607ad06858419ab1033a5e8
MD5: 733e976fd06d65e9f5635b836a14a81b
SHA-1: 00667ce3da4bfee3182c4445ac2f5483870be97c

Only stumbled upon this now, link is down, can anyone host or link to the patch for the EUR version?

 

[lordelan]

Only stumbled upon this now, link is down, can anyone host or link to the patch for the EUR version?

PMed you

 

[sthendalbp]

PMed you

Can you PM the EUR patch too? I can't find it anywhere now

 

[lordelan]

Can you PM the EUR patch too? I can't find it anywhere now

Sure.

 

[XDeltaOne]

Sure.

Please can you send me the files too?

 

[Lostbhoy]

Might as well make a thread....

... And since its being passed around like a nudebook....

 

[Localhorst86]

The ROM is part of the no-intro set by now, btw.

x124 - Super Mario Advance 4 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) (Rev 1) (Virtual Console)

 

[lordelan]

The ROM is part of the no-intro set by now, btw.

x124 - Super Mario Advance 4 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) (Rev 1) (Virtual Console)

Correct. Since I can't give direct links, just look for the top post in the Roms subreddit, then find the GBA no-intro set and get the Rev 1 version that has the (Virtual Console) suffix.