Gaming Hardware Homebrew GCN Help with trying to get an NTSC-J GameCube game to save on a fresh memory card with only an NTSC-U Wii available

[ToastyMudkip]

Title pretty much sums up my problem. I've imported a JP GameCube disc to play on my softmodded Wii. PriiLoader's set up with region free everything enabled, and the disc itself boots with everything looking to work fine. Only trouble is that I can not generate a new save.

I've tried the following things already:
- Starting the disc from the regular disc channel and using a fresh memory card (not formatted to NTSC-J though, and this is an NTSC-U console)
- Starting the disc from USB Loader GX using Nintendont with virtual individual saves enabled
- Starting the disc from USB Loader GX using Nintendont with virtual multi saves enabled

My current thoughts for what may be going wrong and possible troubleshooting routes are as follows:
- Maybe the disc is detecting system region regardless, and this is some odd edge case. I dunno. This is a Japanese version of Gotcha Force for reference.
- If what I've read online indicates anything, the memory card probably needs to be pre-formatted to NTSC-J, although I don't know how I'd go about doing that in my case without a Japanese console, which sort of defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do. Maybe there's a homebrew app that solves this.
- Maybe I missed some settings or toggles in USB Loader GX for Nintendont's config that would make this all just work.

This is the first time I've tried doing something like this, since my entire library up until now has matched my console region. Any help or advice would very much be appreciated.

 

[JuanMena]

That's weird, all my Gamecube Japanese isos saves just fine in Nintendont with virtual Memory Card.

Try using GameCube Memory Card Manager!

 

[ToastyMudkip]

That's weird, all my Gamecube Japanese isos saves just fine in Nintendont with virtual Memory Card.

Try using GameCube Memory Card Manager!

I've got GCMM on my Wii, but I'm not sure what use it'd be in this case from the little bit I've used of it. As far as I've seen, it just lets you manage existing memory card data.
It does have an option for formatting a card, but it didn't have a prompt for what region to format it as when I used it last. I assume it just formats it to whatever region the system's region is. Did I miss something when going through its prompts?

 

[JuanMena]

I've got GCMM on my Wii, but I'm not sure what use it'd be in this case from the little bit I've used of it. As far as I've seen, it just lets you manage existing memory card data.
It does have an option for formatting a card, but it didn't have a prompt for what region to format it as when I used it last. I assume it just formats it to whatever region the system's region is. Did I miss something when going through its prompts?

I believe you can inject Virtual GameCube sacefiles to a real Memory Card with the option "Restore RAW" if I recall correctly. It's been long since I last used it.
Also, you could attempt using Dolphin by loafing the japanese game, cresting the RAW save file, saving the savefile in a SD/USB and "Restore RAW" to real Memory Card.

Again, not sure what might be going on with your set-up as I could save just fine with Nintendont + Real Memory Card.

Those japanese games being:

 

[ToastyMudkip]

I believe you can inject Virtual GameCube sacefiles to a real Memory Card with the option "Restore RAW" if I recall correctly. It's been long since I last used it.
Also, you could attempt using Dolphin by loafing the japanese game, cresting the RAW save file, saving the savefile in a SD/USB and "Restore RAW" to real Memory Card.

Again, not sure what might be going on with your set-up as I could save just fine with Nintendont + Real Memory Card.

Those japanese games being:

Thanks for the ideas. I just tried using Dolphin to generate a JP memory card RAW file, but using GCMM to "restore" it to my blank physical memcard results in the following message:

"Card and image flash ID don't match !"

This makes me wonder though if I can get GCMM to "restore" an individual JP GCI save file to my blank memory card instead of using a RAW file by using Dolphin to create an individual save of the game and plopping that onto my SD card. Not sure if I'll run into formatting problems, but it's worth a try I guess.

 

[Lumstar]

An NTSC-U Wii cannot read actual NTSC-J formatted memory cards. For things to work 100% properly, you'd have to outright region-change your system to Japanese.

Devices like Freeloader create a settings mismatch, by running Japanese games under a non-Japanese environment. Some games don't care, and will save to a non-Japanese memory card when forced to, but there's picky titles that might refuse to save or worse.

 

[ToastyMudkip]

I figured out why the save file wasn't generating.
Turns out I technically wasn't even saving the game. I'd completely forgotten that the game only actually generates a save file if you manually save in a pause menu and that it doesn't generate one on new game start. Dolphin's little save game file path pop-ups helped me realize my blunder. Ultimately, this was a bit of an embarrassing false alarm.

But, for anyone that finds it interesting, the blank memory card did actually accept the NTSC-J GCI file I wrote to it with GCMM, and it seems to load and save progress just fine when used on-console with my JP disc booted directly from the Wii system menu.

I spent a lot more cycles on this than I ought to have

 

[Lumstar]

I figured out why the save file wasn't generating.
Turns out I technically wasn't even saving the game. I'd completely forgotten that the game only actually generates a save file if you manually save in a pause menu and that it doesn't generate one on new game start. Dolphin's little save game file path pop-ups helped me realize my blunder. Ultimately, this was a bit of an embarrassing false alarm.

But, for anyone that finds it interesting, the blank memory card did actually accept the NTSC-J GCI file I wrote to it with GCMM, and it seems to load and save progress just fine when used on-console with my JP disc booted directly from the Wii system menu.

I spent a lot more cycles on this than I ought to have

Checking games for mojibake is an easy way to tell if things are configured right.

 

[ToastyMudkip]

Checking games for mojibake is an easy way to tell if things are configured right.

I've only got one game to actually test, but the in-game text looks fine. The way the save file's title looks when viewed from the Wii's built-in save manager looks garbled though, which makes sense.

 

[Lumstar]

I've only got one game to actually test, but the in-game text looks fine. The way the save file's title looks when viewed from the Wii's built-in save manager looks garbled though, which makes sense.

If you can view any of the file contents, that suggests your memory card is not Japanese. The save manager should ask you to reformat a Japanese card.