Gaming Anybody else encounter a problem running Mother 3 on their flash cart?

[dib]

Just wanted to add this here for the purposes of search and in case anybody else encounters this problem.

I have an EZFA 256, which curiously had no trouble running Kingdom Hearts, Yggdra Union, or any other 32MB game until Mother 3.

GBA Tool wouldn't trim it, nor the EZFA client's built-in auto trimmer. But it is evidently possible to remove approximately the last 256 bytes of the rom and it will still work. Open in a hex editor and find byte number 1FFFEFF with a value of 09. Remove everything _after_ that byte, save, and play.

I've tested it under VBA as well as the hardware, and it works with both the untranslated and translated game.

 

[Vague Rant]

Yeah, others have noticed this, too. According to sblur:

The last 8KB or so can be safely clobbered. We don't put anything there.

I just tried it out to make sure, seems to work fine through beginning of the game.

 

[dib]

That's good to hear. I was trying to find solutions on the translation site, but their forums are useless. The search only reports errors and the topics are difficult to browse. Figured I would post something here about it just in case.

By the way, the first time I attempted to manually trim, I left one extra FF byte attached to the end and it would not work on the hardware (still worked in VBA) so I think people should trim after the 09 value as I described for best results.

 

[gizmo_gal]

Okay, so on WHICH cards does the GAME WORK PROPERLY WITHOUT PROBLEMS?

I'm getting ready to buy a Slot 2 for just this game and it'd be frustrating if I still couldn't play it...

 

[mrgone]

3-in-1 works

 

[UltraMagnus]

I think the problem is with what loader you use, not the card itself, atleast with the ez 3-in-1

i know i had to trim kingdom hearts chain of memories to get it to work on my acekard2 + ez 3-in-1.

 

[ZombiePosessor]

No problems on my M3 Perfect. Only thing I had to do was the SRAM fix.

 

[saberhagem]

Thanks for the tip

 

[Trilkin]

Any card with a NorFlash should work.