For those complaining: The Wood firmware is open source. It fixes this game with a patch, not a bugfix to the firmware. So theoretically, you should be able to borrow that patch if you know what you're doing.
It's located in patches_pr.cpp, and it calls the method PatchOverlay10 to apply the patch. The actual compiled patch is located in unprot_10.bin in the repository, and it replaces several pieces that have been stubbed out with EFC0DExx in the binary. By reading through the code by hand you can come up with that memory addresses would be getting patched.
Here is what I believe will get written by that method for this game, in the form of an AR code: (I did this by hand, so there's a chance I may have made a mistake somewhere)
Code:
02085894 EA0DDAD9
E23FC400 000000B0
D809CFE1 000081E5
1080BDE8 0000A0E3
03402DE9 DC08CFE1
060051E1 0000001A
000081E5 0380BDE8
F8402DE9 0163A0E3
087296E5 086286E5
045296E5 022BC5E3
042286E5 0040A0E1
020951E3 0219A033
B704A0E3 210480E1
0010A0E3 34209FE5
32FF2FE1 4136A0E3
2C109FE5 A41186E5
A42196E5 021512E2
0100000A 101093E5
041084E4 021112E2
F8FFFF1A 045286E5
087286E5 F880BDE8
08A30702 A1416657
5AF50DEB 9CEE0702
C8F70DEA 08E50702
Of course, this assumes a few things:
1. That the memory region at 023FC400 is not used by whatever cart you're using.
2. That the cart you'd use actually supports the 'E' code type.
3. That whatever is being patched here is the reason it's failing everywhere.
Edit: Also, an AR code would be a bad idea for this because it only needs to be written once.
I don't expect the above to work for anyone, but I thought I'd post it just in case it might. (It was a good exercise to see how quickly I could figure out what it was doing.)
On a side note, if you're going to order this (and don't live in Europe) I wouldn't recommend game.co.uk. They claim to ship internationally, but apparently they flag all international orders as suspicious or something. I was hoping to get it faster and cheaper directly from the UK, but it looks like Play-Asia is the only reliable choice.