Hacking Definitive Answer for Spirit Tracks (US)

[shrimps]

After being asked on someone else's behalf to get this working for them, I seem to have bitten off more than I can chew by agreeing.

After trawling through hundreds of useless forum posts all over the place I am no closer to finding the definitive answer on being able to play and save this game. I've messed around with plenty of stuff before and patched games so I thought this shouldn't be too much of a problem. But I've now tried using the Xenophobia patch, using lots of different versions of AKAIO, using saved games from other flashcarts etc and I'm fed up.

Can someone give me a straight up one sentence answer?

[I think some sort of wiki with definitive information for this sort of stuff would be very useful. Forum threads just get clogged up with rubbish and tend to deal with the very latest development. It's really hard to find an objective overview once a proper solution has been found.]

 

[Devin]

Put AKAIO RC2 On You Micro Sd Card.

 

[Gryphon93]

I did just patch the ROM (the rom has to be original size/not trimmed) and put it on my MicroSD card, put that in my R4 and turned on my DS. After turning off Soft Reset, I started the game and could run it just fine. *Removed*

Edit: Deleted the link and reference to the site. I didn't think of that they also hosts the actual games there, sorry...

 

[Sumea]

Just release notes of AKAIO 1.5.1 would be enough.

Anything AFTER AKAIO 1.5.1 works with Phantom Hourglass - but if you are using your OLD save... that cannot be restored without some hex hacking - you need to start a new game if you have one made in uncompatible version of flashcart/software.

also; Clean rom (clean, can be trimmed, no patches)

 

[CannonFoddr]

^^^^ Gryphon pleas delete the links and references to that site - it's a ROM site & is NOT ALLOWED on GBATEMP

 

[Gryphon93]

I deleted the link. I didn't think of that they are sharing the roms over there. I'm sorry about that. I'll be more cautious next time, promise

.

 

[shrimps]

Already there are two posts which are of no relevance and one which refers to a different game (possibly a typo)!

I have tried using 1.6RC2 on a clean rom (4506 - but the release that came with a zipped crack) and I just get the green 'Loading' text.

 

[retKHAAAN]

did you correctly install 1.6RC2? i'm running spirit tracks as we speak without issue.

 

[_NeTcHoW_]

If your AceKard is 2.1, maybe you have the bad batch card. If so, you will have to wait for the next version of AKAIO to run it properly. Try looking for topics related the AK2.1 bad batch for more info.

 

[shrimps]

That is something which hasn't actually come up before. Cheers netchow.

Just to make sure I'm not going mad I will wipe all of the firmware off the cart and install 1.6RC2 one more time. Old8oy what exactly did you mean by correctly install? I am quite prepared for a big headslap, but beyond copying the directory and the .nds to the root of the card what more is there to do? The loaders page hosted by gbatemp contains exactly the same file as the one that comes with 1.6RC2 anyway.

edit - I am also going to try and find another dump...

 

[Another World]

akaio only supports clean rom drag and drop. patched games are not guaranteed to work correctly. spirit tracks has worked for a long time on akaio. format your msd using the panasonic formatter and put on a fresh clean copy of akaio 1.6 rc2. save your skins and globalsettings.ini if you want.

-another world

 

[shrimps]

You tend to know what you're talking about, is the bad batch comment just pure speculation or a genuine documented possibility?

 

[HBK]

You tend to know what you're talking about, is the bad batch comment just pure speculation or a genuine documented possibility?

Genuine documented possibility, go ask anyone that has a bad AK 2.1 and you'll see what they mean.

 

[Another World]

You tend to know what you're talking about, is the bad batch comment just pure speculation or a genuine documented possibility?

ak2.1 hwid 80 sold after dec 09 are not a bad batch. they have some different hardware. its odd that when we contacted team acekard they said they didn't know what the problem was. then one night normmatt attacked it and fixed it within an hour. a beta was tested and passed. so the fix will be in the next public release of akaio. those kits will get their own "rainbow" loading screen, so you will know instantly if you have that card or not.

cheers,
-another world

 

[shrimps]

That's a definitive response. Cheers all

 

[Deleted User]

You tend to know what you're talking about, is the bad batch comment just pure speculation or a genuine documented possibility?

ak2.1 hwid 80 sold after dec 09 are not a bad batch. they have some different hardware. its odd that when we contacted team acekard they said they didn't know what the problem was. then one night normmatt attacked it and fixed it within an hour. a beta was tested and passed. so the fix will be in the next public release of akaio. those kits will get their own "rainbow" loading screen, so you will know instantly if you have that card or not.

cheers,
-another world

pre dec-09/new-hardware ak2's also have the rainbow loading screen. (just tried it on my bro's pre dec-09 ak2)
It's just ak2i's which won't have the rainbow loading screen. (unless norm finds a way to distinguish the pre dec-09 and post dec-09 ak2 carts, the current crc check returns same results on both carts and dumps of the ak2's are same too, bloody thing, lol)