Hacking Gateway 3DS - possible to use save games from a retail cartridge?

[cherryduck]

Okay so here's my question. I have the retail cartridge of Luigi's Mansion 2 on which I've been playing and gotten fairly far. I'd like to play Luigi's Mansion 2 on my Gateway without losing my save progress. I have that dumper tool thing to grab the save file from my cartridge, is it possible to transfer my save from my retail cartridge to the Gateway 3DS?

 

[justinkb]

Not currently possible afaik.

 

[Pong20302000]

why would you like to play it on where its likely to crash and loose the save?

and no there is no current way to transfer the save to work with the gateway

 

[pasc]

Wait… whats with the 3DS Savegame De/Enctypter Tool ?

Shouldn't that work ?

 

[someonewhodied]

saves are encoded per-game. You can use your own save if you rip your own rom, but thats it. (That is how you are supposed to be legally obtaining roms anyways)

 

[Quicksilver88]

why would you like to play it on where its likely to crash and loose the save?

and no there is no current way to transfer the save to work with the gateway

What would make you say this as I have played several games for many hours on gateway (Castlevania, DKCR, ML Dream team) and have not had one single crash or loss of data....as a matter of fact every time you do a home/close on a game its eeprom save data gets written to the 3DS SD card which you can then pull out and backup your save game file giving you a way to keep multiple save revisions to reload if you want to go back in a game for some reason.

 

[Quicksilver88]

The short answer to your question by BTW is no.....I have had a few other threads going on this and have been trying to figure out a way to use the r4 dongle to dump saves from some of my reatil saves and use them on the gateway....the largest problem is that ever since firmware v2.2 (end of 2011) Nintendo changed the encryption method for saves and the current decrypt/encrypt tools will not work on anything but the earliest released games.

Meanwhile you can trade save game files from another gateway user using the same region game as you are using so what I would do is start a thread asking for someone to share their Luigi .sav file with you and maybe you can find someone that has played the game to about the same point you have. Then you just take that .sav file put it on the root of your 3DS SD card and when you load that rom from the gateway it will load that .sav file into the gateway's eeprom and bingo.

At least with the gateway we can share save files with other gateway users wich is more than the r4 dongle allows anymore as it is only useful to backup and restore to the same cartridge.

 

[Kishnabe]

Is this possible now?

I have some physical carts, who saves I want to salvage.

 

[lambstone]

Is this possible now?

I have some physical carts, who saves I want to salvage.

Cliffnotes version of an answer. No.

 

[SomethingBells]

Another question in the same vein: If I were to copy my save files from my SD card, they would not work with a retail cartridge? If so, that kind of blows.

 

[Arras]

Another question in the same vein: If I were to copy my save files from my SD card, they would not work with a retail cartridge? If so, that kind of blows.

Yup, that's right. For now, retail cartridges only accept saves from that specific cartridge, and Gateway saves only work on a Gateway (and maybe the retail game that was used to create the dump - not sure about that)

 

[trdpatrick]

So can I rip my retail cart on Gateway then backup the save on the NDS adaptor plus?

 

[zhdarkstar]

So can I rip my retail cart on Gateway then backup the save on the NDS adaptor plus?

No. The GW's .sav format and the dongle's .sav format are incompatible.

 

[zakk95]

Okay so here's my question. I have the retail cartridge of Luigi's Mansion 2 on which I've been playing and gotten fairly far. I'd like to play Luigi's Mansion 2 on my Gateway without losing my save progress. I have that dumper tool thing to grab the save file from my cartridge, is it possible to transfer my save from my retail cartridge to the Gateway 3DS?

Got it working today

Gateway 2.4b

Backed up ROM(.3ds) from retail card
- (file name is something like ABCD.3ds)

Backed up save(.sav) from retail card
- (file name is something like ABCD.sav)

Renamed .3ds to .3dz (important!! otherwise it will not work. some header thingy i presume)
- (now it's ABCD.3dz)

Copied .3dz to red card

Started the game (via gateway) and created a new savefile in SD card for the game (to identify save file name)

Identified the newly created save file in SD card
- (file name is something like 0000XX000XXX000XXX.sav)

Wrote down the file name (0000XX000XXX000XXX).
Deleted newly created save file
Renamed backed up save file to the long one. (ABCD.sav -> 0000XX000XXX000XXX.sav)

Start the game and enjoy the good old save.

Hope this helps..

 

[hippy dave]

That didn't work before with Luigi's Mansion, be interesting if it does now...

 

[gamesquest1]

there would be no reason to use a "save dongle" thing just dump the save in the gateway menu, and there is things that will work and games it won't same as always, the dumped save has to be 512kb or card2 format and not use 6.x save encryption(unless it was played in classic mode)

so it will for some, won't for others