E-reader Japanese Pokémon minigames

[RetroTrainer]

Hi, I'll explain the situation a little, let's see if someone can help me.

I'm trying to put together all the Pokémon minigames from the e-reader into a single GBA multimenu cartridge (thanks to lesserkuma's Multimenu program).

The thing is that in The Internet Archive I have found the Memory Dumps of all the minigames that came out in the rest of the world (the .SAV), but the ones for the minigames exclusive to Japan are not there.

In order to make the minigame work on a regular GBA cartridge, I need to patch the e-reader rom so that it saves to SRAM, and then with HxD edit the save part to paste the .SAV and make it works on a normal GBA. As I tell you, I have already achieved it with all the minigames from outside Japan, because I have all the .SAV.

The problem is that I have no idea how to create that .SAV file to be able to do it with the rest of the Japanese minigames. I have all the cards in .RAW format (they are also in The Internet Archive), with which I can, from an emulator, load the cards and play the game from the PC, but since I do not create any save file, I cannot do it in a GBA.

Does anyone have any ideas how these .SAVs could be created? The truth is that I would greatly appreciate the help, since it would be the way to have all the minigames compiled in a single cartridge.

If you have any questions that I can resolve, ask me.

Thank you so much.

By the way, here's the japanese minigames exclusive list: Imakuni's Ball / Wooper's Juggling Game / Big Fruit Strategy! / Tokotoko Truck / Construction: Action / Construction: Melody Box

 

[city41]

The problem is that I have no idea how to create that .SAV file to be able to do it with the rest of the Japanese minigames. I have all the cards in .RAW format (they are also in The Internet Archive), with which I can, from an emulator, load the cards and play the game from the PC, but since I do not create any save file, I cannot do it in a GBA.

I can probably help. I just whipped up a quick script that converted from raw to sav. I tested it on 'Pokemon-e TCG - Skyridge - Haunter (USA) (Long Strip).raw' and it works.

Trouble is I know basically nothing about Pokemon. Can you give me the name of an example Japanese raw card you want to convert and I'll try it? If it works (and I think it will), I'll figure out a way to share my script.

 

[SAIYAN48]

DId you get the entire e-Reader library dump?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hi, I'll explain the situation a little, let's see if someone can help me.

I'm trying to put together all the Pokémon minigames from the e-reader into a single GBA multimenu cartridge (thanks to lesserkuma's Multimenu program).

The thing is that in The Internet Archive I have found the Memory Dumps of all the minigames that came out in the rest of the world (the .SAV), but the ones for the minigames exclusive to Japan are not there.

In order to make the minigame work on a regular GBA cartridge, I need to patch the e-reader rom so that it saves to SRAM, and then with HxD edit the save part to paste the .SAV and make it works on a normal GBA. As I tell you, I have already achieved it with all the minigames from outside Japan, because I have all the .SAV.

The problem is that I have no idea how to create that .SAV file to be able to do it with the rest of the Japanese minigames. I have all the cards in .RAW format (they are also in The Internet Archive), with which I can, from an emulator, load the cards and play the game from the PC, but since I do not create any save file, I cannot do it in a GBA.

Does anyone have any ideas how these .SAVs could be created? The truth is that I would greatly appreciate the help, since it would be the way to have all the minigames compiled in a single cartridge.

If you have any questions that I can resolve, ask me.

Thank you so much.

By the way, here's the japanese minigames exclusive list: Imakuni's Ball / Wooper's Juggling Game / Big Fruit Strategy! / Tokotoko Truck / Construction: Action / Construction: Melody Box

The last loaded e-reader card is stored in the save file, no? Worked for me with the Eon Ticket... I just "scanned" the eon ticket bin in VBA-M and copied the ROM and save to my flashcart. Then I had a way to distribute the Eon Ticket on real hardware without needing to own an e-Reader.

 

[city41]

The last loaded e-reader card is stored in the save file, no?

It depends on the card. A card has a flag in it that says if it's savable or not. The simpler cards that are only one or two strips, often don't have that flag set.

Post automatically merged: Dec 24, 2024

Anyway, I see RetroTrainer only has one post and this is an old thread, so they might not come back.

But to convert from raw to sav,

Run nedcenc on the raw to get a bin file

nedcenc -d -i mycard.raw -o myraw.bin

extract the vpk out of the bin. This is the tricky part and the part I don't think anyone has made a tool for. But maybe I'm wrong? I have a script that will do it, but it requires nodejs so can be tricky to set up if you're not familiar with it.

Once you have the vpk

neflmake -i mycard.vpk -o mycard.sav -type 1 -name something

That will convert the vpk into sav file. The "-name something" is what determines how the game's name shows up in the ereader's menu.

Then you can load the ereader rom with the sav file as usual.

The tools I mentioned are here for Windows: https://caitsith2.com/ereader/devtools.htm
Or here for Linux: https://github.com/AkBKukU/e-reader-dev/tree/main/bin

 

[BETA215]

It depends on the card. A card has a flag in it that says if it's savable or not. The simpler cards that are only one or two strips, often don't have that flag set.

Post automatically merged: Dec 24, 2024

Anyway, I see RetroTrainer only has one post and this is an old thread, so they might not come back.

But to convert from raw to sav,

Run nedcenc on the raw to get a bin file

nedcenc -d -i mycard.raw -o myraw.bin

extract the vpk out of the bin. This is the tricky part and the part I don't think anyone has made a tool for. But maybe I'm wrong? I have a script that will do it, but it requires nodejs so can be tricky to set up if you're not familiar with it.

Once you have the vpk

neflmake -i mycard.vpk -o mycard.sav -type 1 -name something

That will convert the vpk into sav file. The "-name something" is what determines how the game's name shows up in the ereader's menu.

Then you can load the ereader rom with the sav file as usual.

The tools I mentioned are here for Windows: https://caitsith2.com/ereader/devtools.htm
Or here for Linux: https://github.com/AkBKukU/e-reader-dev/tree/main/bin

Dude, thank you so damn much!!! These CaitSith2 tools have been so confusing for me: I've been trying to get an eReader card into a savefile for god knows how long. And I finally got Imanuki?'s Ball in a savefile now! Thank you so much, this is a cool Christmas gift! Now time to play it hahaha

For BIN to VPK conversion, I used the following Python script. Besides the default Python install, I only needed to install bitstring (pip install bitstring) for it: https://github.com/RollingStar/CardShark/blob/master/bin_to_vpk.py. neflmake on Windows is neflashmaker, mentioned as Flash Maker on CaitSith2's website.

In my case I created a savefile for the eReader+ (exclusive to Japan), so it doesn't displays characters normally. Whatever I added as a name for the game in the eReader menu, it looked like garbage. But the game still works properly. Tested on an EZ-Flash ODE.

 

[city41]

In my case I created a savefile for the eReader+ (exclusive to Japan), so it doesn't displays characters normally. Whatever I added as a name for the game in the eReader menu, it looked like garbage. But the game still works properly

That is because neflmake/neflaashmaker doesn't support the Japanese encoding. But yeah it will still work just fine like you said.

Oh nice in that python script, that is good to know.

Just yesterday I started the task of modernizing these tools. Eventually I should have a website where you just drag files onto it and it will do anything ereader related you want.

The project is here

https://github.com/city41/ereader-tools

But it's still got a long way to go before it's useful.