Mario Tennis N64 to GBC region-free?

[Petrucci]

I currently own a NTSC-J copy of Mario Tennis for the N64, and from what I understand, it's possible to unlock characters by connecting to the GBC version of the game via Transfer Pak. However, since the GBC version is laden with RPG elements, I'd rather play a copy in English. Would it be possible to use this NTSC-U copy of the GBC game with a NTSC-J copy of the N64 game?

For future reference, does anyone know if this would work with NTSC-J Mario Golf as well? I usually import N64 games due to their relatively low price overseas, and Mario Golf also allows characters to be unlocked through the same means.

 

[FAST6191]

I don't know if anybody has gone and documented the transfer pak stuff at that level -- other than pokemon stadium and maybe perfect dark it is an afterthought for most people. Going by similar things on other systems "it depends" is going to be the answer. Most of these sorts of things that are not save based (so pokemon really) will just load a serial in and unlock accordingly. Different regions will often have different serials and thus not be primed to accept it, especially if it was all released at times where that might not have been feasible to know such things and being as Japan tended to get things first...

Equally I don't know if any of the nice for playing flash carts, so mainly the everdrive, will be up for the task. You could probably twist the usual homebrew flash cart design into it though ( https://web.archive.org/web/20160807211109/http://www.reinerziegler.de/readplus.htm ).

On the flip side as much of it would be said load a serial thing in then you could probably unlock things (or unlock the "is cart present" thing) with a cheat. It is what we did for a lot of DS stuff that responded to a GBA game being there, and indeed anywhere else we see similar unlock perks.

 

[Petrucci]

I see. Thank you for the thorough response. I could get a Transfer Pak and a NTSC-U copy of the game for the sake of trying it out, but I almost want to just go ahead and get a NTSC-J copy since they're far cheaper and often in better shape (e.g. this NTSC-J copy vs. this NTSC-U copy, both of which are the lowest price for each version I could find on ebay).

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah the Japanese do seem to have a thing about keeping games in better shape.

I did however forget to say that you might be able to look at individual games in the usual places for FAQs, especially if it is a popular game like Mario Golf.

As far as being able to link you something like
http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_DS_games_with_GBA_connectivity
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Game_Boy_games (and if I am linking that then I am duty bound to also link http://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction )
but for N64 transfer pak stuff at this level then no.

Anyway I did go look at https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/197859-mario-golf/faqs for this. No hard mention of region compatibility in my quick scan ( https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/197859-mario-golf/faqs/53944 says Euro and NA version should be), and indeed at the time of release the expansion pak was apparently a Japan only affair (but functionality was there) and people were awaiting pokemon stadium. Some did however mention something about having to continually reimport, save slot management and characters earning experience so my comment about saves earlier might have been off for this game. You could still probably do it with cheats, likely will take a few more lines (N64 cheat stuff in hardware can be limited but probably not quite enough for this) and you will have to get an example of them in memory and copy that into a cheat, but more effort than forcing a flag to be the "is cart present" type thing most other games and systems likely have.

 

[Petrucci]

I would imagine that if the PAL and NTSC-U games work together, then the NTSC-J games should work too. However, I'm slightly worried that their might be some incompatibility regarding the languages (in the same way that early gen Pokemon games have issues if a Japanese copy trades with a non-Japanese copy).