Any way to change the region of a Wii save?

Nullified_Person

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So, I have played the NTSC version of Mario kart Wii for a bit now and I have a save for that version of the game. I have now gotten my hands on the PAL version of the game since I want to use the PAL version since my Wii is PAL and I have tried to search every bit of the forum for any answers regarding changing the region of Wii saves. All I could find was the way to change the region for NSMB and that method doesn't work for Mario kart Wii of course. So now I made an account here on GBATemp to find answers on how to possibly change the region. I have tried to look into the saves and compare both the NTSC and PAL in HxD but didn't find anything different between the saves.

Any help is appreciated and yes my Wii is softmodded and I have the homebrew channel installed on it

EDIT 30/06/2022: THE FIX IS RIGHT HERE FOR ANYONE TO SEE
1656613038739.png
 
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XFlak

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why not just keep playing the NTSC version of the game?

IIRC for NSMB it was just a matter of renaming the save game ID. It might be this simple for other games too... but probably not. I don't think it will be risky to try though (but obv always make sure u have priiloader, bootmii and a nand backup before doing something out of the ordinary).
 
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Nullified_Person

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why not just keep playing the NTSC version of the game?

IIRC for NSMB it was just a matter of renaming the save game ID. It might be this simple for other games too... but probably not. I don't think it will be risky to try though (but obv always make sure u have priiloader, bootmii and a nand backup before doing something out of the ordinary).
Well gotta try that, just going to take the NTSC save game ID and change it to PAL and try it then and see if the game loads up with the NTSC save
and ofc I have priiloader, bootmii and a nand backup
 

Nullified_Person

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Well gotta try that, just going to take the NTSC save game ID and change it to PAL and try it then and see if the game loads up with the NTSC save
and ofc I have priiloader, bootmii and a nand backup
Nope that did not work, the game shows this screen apparently
20220617_115914.jpg
 
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Nullified_Person

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well at this point I will just make a new save and get back to where I was from NTSC but on PAL. I did not make that much progress on the NTSC save anyway so I think it's fine without converting the save region
 

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For the most part if the simple rename/tweak header aspect does not work then give up there and replay. Not like there is much to unlock on Mario Kart either, to say nothing of by and large if you can unlock it to begin with then you can do it again.

You can figure out where all the data changed location to (maybe it is only a slight shift, and if Japanese-not that then maybe figure out a way to have sensible names (assuming that did not come with a shift in data location -- 16 bit Japanese text to 8 bit English tending to do that and be the primary cause with additional features added in the port being a close second).
Alternatively you might be able to go the other way and locate any relevant data you want and port that across as cheats, I would normally reserve such efforts for a big RPG or pokemon or something similarly time investmenty than what is effectively a high score table. Be slightly wary about this between regions for Mario Kart as times might not quite be the same if some of the speedrun stuff I have seen is anything to go by.

Before going too much further I would also look to see what the Mario Kart hacking people are doing as you might find it is the NTSC version that everybody hacks (don't know what goes for the 200cc mods) and does fun things for https://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/Main_Page for a start there.
 

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So, I have played the NTSC version of Mario kart Wii for a bit now and I have a save for that version of the game. I have now gotten my hands on the PAL version of the game since I want to use the PAL version since my Wii is PAL and I have tried to search every bit of the forum for any answers regarding changing the region of Wii saves. All I could find was the way to change the region for NSMB and that method doesn't work for Mario kart Wii of course. So now I made an account here on GBATemp to find answers on how to possibly change the region. I have tried to look into the saves and compare both the NTSC and PAL in HxD but didn't find anything different between the saves.

Any help is appreciated and yes my Wii is softmodded and I have the homebrew channel installed on it
Check this thread out. And do as @godreborn did. Not guaranteed that it'll work, but there's a possibility since you said there's not much difference between the two saves in HxD..
But honestly just keep using the NTSC version on your PAL Wii..
 
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godreborn

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sounds like he's almost there. a compressed save should look like a garbled mess, but if he can compare them with HxD, and they look similar, it sounds like he's already decompressed them.
 
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Nullified_Person

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Check this thread out. And do as @godreborn did. Not guaranteed that it'll work, but there's a possibility since you said there's not much difference between the two saves in HxD..
But honestly just keep using the NTSC version on your PAL Wii..
Actually might try that tbh
but it's fine either way since I didn't get that much progress in the game so I will just complete the cups again
 

Nullified_Person

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sounds like he's almost there. a compressed save should look like a garbled mess, but if he can compare them with HxD, and they look similar, it sounds like he's already decompressed them.
yup, it was decompressed, do they need to be compressed? Since I extracted both the NTSC and PAL save and they are different just don't what to do next. Am I supposed to just place the NTSC data.bin in the PAL folder in private/wii/title/(the pal folder)?
 

godreborn

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you wanted pal to ntsc, correct? for some reason, the save is double the size as the one on my vwii, not sure why, but they're identical, the two you supplied me. try this one:
 

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