This is basically a copy and pasta from another board I posted on but my main point should be implied (i hope)
So in Super Mario RPG for the VC, there are some differences, like Moleville being darker then normal and Flame Wall being transparent/missing colors. I want to know if these are problems with the SNES emulator on the Wii itself or if Nintendo/Square-Enix actually edited the game.
Now here's the ROM part. If you know anything about .WAD files and the Homebrew Channel, it'll be easier to understand.
Ok anyway, so to install a Virtual Console/WiiWare game onto your Wii, they turn the dumps into .WAD files and using a custom WAD installer from your Wii, you can get free VC/WiiWare games. So basically, the .WAD is a game.
Within a .WAD file, you can decrypted it into pieces using a program such as WADTool. They come out as SMRPG NTSC.000.des (with SMRPG NTSC.wad being the .wad file). Ranging from 000 to 007 files from the SMRPG .wad file.
Now within those 00x.des files is the actual 'ROM' version of the game. In this case, its SMRPG NTSC.005.des. It's usually the biggest file out of the group (this being the 2nd largest). When you've extracted the contents the 005.des file, using a program such as U8 Tools, you get a some files, one of which is the rom. When it came out, it came out as LZ77JCBE.rom, which is the ROM. Now I'm not certain if doing this to other games like NES VC games or N64 games actually come out with a playable ROM to use on an emulator, but I know changing LZ77JCBE.rom to something like SMRPG.smc and booting it up in Snes9x/Zsnes won't make it playable.
-Side note- Reading on a forum, I think GBAtemp (thats where I learned how to extract .wad's and etc), someone did say they extracted Sin and Punishment and got the .rom file out and changed it to SP.v64 and it actually did boot up in an emulator. The .rom file extracted out and an actual commercial rom size where the same, if not, almost similar. But in this case of SMRPG, a commercial SMRPG ROM is about 4 MB, while the extracted .rom file is only around 3 MB. My thinking is that they might have shrank/compressed/made it smaller by deleting unused data like taking out blank spaces where it wasn't needed. Or maybe they had to modify the whole thing with it having the SA-1 chip and all.
So how can I tell this LZ77JCBE.rom file is the actual SMRPG "ROM"? Well I loaded it up into a hex editor and, belive it or not, there ARE actual similarities to a commercial ROM. Like if you open up a commercial SMRPG ROM into a hex editor, and load up the LZ77JCBE.rom into a hex editor and put them side by side (having the window sizes the same height/width), you can actually scroll down on both and you can find almost the same data. While the commercial SMRPG rom has actual ASCII readable words viewed in a hex editor, loading up the LZ77JCBE.rom file will show similar results but there's obviously been some kind of compression or some kind of thing. You can spot letters here and there and make out words in your head and whatnot, but its hard to actually edit anything you want.
Things I've tried doing using the LZ77JCBE.rom file:
loading it up in Tile Layer Pro to see possible editable gfx (doesn't work)
loading it up in SNESPal to find Palette color patterns (didn't work)
loading it up as a .smc file in snes9x/zsnes (didn't work)
-
I loaded it up in a hex editor and found the lettering for the Jump text for Mario's special's and simply changed it but I haven't figured out exactly how to put this all back together as a .wad.
Other things I've tried:
injecting a SMRPG rom into a SMRPG.wad file (didn't work)
=-=-=-=-=
So basically in nutshell, I extracted a "ROM" version from the Super Mario RPG Virtual Console .wad file and want to know if anyone would be willing to help me find out how to go about converting it into an bootable ROM in a SNES emulator, or help trying to hack/edit it.
Of course something like this, could be on a whole nother playing field on its own. In which, editors/emulators would have to be modified heavily to make this "ROM" file compadible.
-=-=--=-=-=
Tree List of Files:
SMRPG_NTSC.wad
--->(decrypted using WADTool)
___SMRPG NTSC.000.des
___SMRPG NTSC.001.des
___SMRPG NTSC.002.des
----------->(extracted using U8 Tool)
________wwwlib-rvl.lz7 (unknown)
___SMRPG NTSC.003.des
----------->WiiNTLG-Regular.ttc (font file)
___SMRPG NTSC.004.des
___SMRPG NTSC.005.des
----------->banner.tpl (picture used for Wii Channel)
________home.csv
________home_nosave.csv
________Huf8JCBE.pcm
________JCBE.var
________LZ77emanual.arc (digital manual)
________LZ77JCBE.rom ("ROM")
________Opera.arc (something for Opera Browser?)
___SMRPG NTSC.006.des
___SMRPG NTSC.007.des
If you guys can give me ANY details on what I should know, PLEASE tell me. Like what are some of those file are used for or something like that.
So in Super Mario RPG for the VC, there are some differences, like Moleville being darker then normal and Flame Wall being transparent/missing colors. I want to know if these are problems with the SNES emulator on the Wii itself or if Nintendo/Square-Enix actually edited the game.
Now here's the ROM part. If you know anything about .WAD files and the Homebrew Channel, it'll be easier to understand.
Ok anyway, so to install a Virtual Console/WiiWare game onto your Wii, they turn the dumps into .WAD files and using a custom WAD installer from your Wii, you can get free VC/WiiWare games. So basically, the .WAD is a game.
Within a .WAD file, you can decrypted it into pieces using a program such as WADTool. They come out as SMRPG NTSC.000.des (with SMRPG NTSC.wad being the .wad file). Ranging from 000 to 007 files from the SMRPG .wad file.
Now within those 00x.des files is the actual 'ROM' version of the game. In this case, its SMRPG NTSC.005.des. It's usually the biggest file out of the group (this being the 2nd largest). When you've extracted the contents the 005.des file, using a program such as U8 Tools, you get a some files, one of which is the rom. When it came out, it came out as LZ77JCBE.rom, which is the ROM. Now I'm not certain if doing this to other games like NES VC games or N64 games actually come out with a playable ROM to use on an emulator, but I know changing LZ77JCBE.rom to something like SMRPG.smc and booting it up in Snes9x/Zsnes won't make it playable.
-Side note- Reading on a forum, I think GBAtemp (thats where I learned how to extract .wad's and etc), someone did say they extracted Sin and Punishment and got the .rom file out and changed it to SP.v64 and it actually did boot up in an emulator. The .rom file extracted out and an actual commercial rom size where the same, if not, almost similar. But in this case of SMRPG, a commercial SMRPG ROM is about 4 MB, while the extracted .rom file is only around 3 MB. My thinking is that they might have shrank/compressed/made it smaller by deleting unused data like taking out blank spaces where it wasn't needed. Or maybe they had to modify the whole thing with it having the SA-1 chip and all.
So how can I tell this LZ77JCBE.rom file is the actual SMRPG "ROM"? Well I loaded it up into a hex editor and, belive it or not, there ARE actual similarities to a commercial ROM. Like if you open up a commercial SMRPG ROM into a hex editor, and load up the LZ77JCBE.rom into a hex editor and put them side by side (having the window sizes the same height/width), you can actually scroll down on both and you can find almost the same data. While the commercial SMRPG rom has actual ASCII readable words viewed in a hex editor, loading up the LZ77JCBE.rom file will show similar results but there's obviously been some kind of compression or some kind of thing. You can spot letters here and there and make out words in your head and whatnot, but its hard to actually edit anything you want.
Things I've tried doing using the LZ77JCBE.rom file:
loading it up in Tile Layer Pro to see possible editable gfx (doesn't work)
loading it up in SNESPal to find Palette color patterns (didn't work)
loading it up as a .smc file in snes9x/zsnes (didn't work)
-
I loaded it up in a hex editor and found the lettering for the Jump text for Mario's special's and simply changed it but I haven't figured out exactly how to put this all back together as a .wad.
Other things I've tried:
injecting a SMRPG rom into a SMRPG.wad file (didn't work)
=-=-=-=-=
So basically in nutshell, I extracted a "ROM" version from the Super Mario RPG Virtual Console .wad file and want to know if anyone would be willing to help me find out how to go about converting it into an bootable ROM in a SNES emulator, or help trying to hack/edit it.
Of course something like this, could be on a whole nother playing field on its own. In which, editors/emulators would have to be modified heavily to make this "ROM" file compadible.
-=-=--=-=-=
Tree List of Files:
SMRPG_NTSC.wad
--->(decrypted using WADTool)
___SMRPG NTSC.000.des
___SMRPG NTSC.001.des
___SMRPG NTSC.002.des
----------->(extracted using U8 Tool)
________wwwlib-rvl.lz7 (unknown)
___SMRPG NTSC.003.des
----------->WiiNTLG-Regular.ttc (font file)
___SMRPG NTSC.004.des
___SMRPG NTSC.005.des
----------->banner.tpl (picture used for Wii Channel)
________home.csv
________home_nosave.csv
________Huf8JCBE.pcm
________JCBE.var
________LZ77emanual.arc (digital manual)
________LZ77JCBE.rom ("ROM")
________Opera.arc (something for Opera Browser?)
___SMRPG NTSC.006.des
___SMRPG NTSC.007.des
If you guys can give me ANY details on what I should know, PLEASE tell me. Like what are some of those file are used for or something like that.
