GCN Problems reading saves when booting Japanese discs on modded US Gamecube

[Speedy77]

Hey guys!

I have a US GameCube modded with a Xeno mod chip and an SD2SP2 micro SD card adapter. I’m having an interesting problem. For some reason I can play my Japanese copy of Pokemon Colosseum just fine when I boot backup from my SD2SP2 in Swiss, but when I load the game from the disc from startup it says that the memory card doesn’t have any data on it, and asks to format it (from what I can gather as it’s in Japanese). However, loading it in Swiss by either putting in the disc and reading the .dol or by loading my backup (it’s a backup of my actual copy, not a download) it works flawlessly. I’d like to continue to play the games from the discs if possible. Has anyone else had any issues like this?

Edit: The game in question is Pokemon Colosseum, it’s the only save on the card (I’m keeping JP saves separate)

Edit 2: I did a little more testing and interestingly enough the game will work properly if I created the save file while booting from the disc, however if I boot the game using Swiss I’ll get an error message. I can also read the save file from the home screen.

 

[_v3]

Weren't the GC memory cards region locked once formatted and wouldn't allow you to store a different region save file until reformatted on the correct region???

EDIT: Found this on reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamecube/comments/1dlaf3/comment/c9rdtr1

 

[MopSec]

Weren't the GC memory cards region locked once formatted and wouldn't allow you to store a different region save file until reformatted on the correct region???

That's somewhat correct. You can have PAL and NTSC-U saves on the same memory card and it will be completely fine but NTSC-U and NTSC-J are not compatible!

 

[Urbanshadow]

The solution is just to have two memory cards and label them E/U and J. That would cover you.

 

[Speedy77]

Thanks for the replies! Sorry I should explain, I only have one Japanese Pokemon Colosseum save on the card and I plan to keep my saves separate. However, the card refuses to be read when booted from the disc at startup, but will be read fine when booting from the disc via Swiss or from the game’s backup via Swiss

 

[Lumstar]

The full explanation is complicated, but modchips do not alter the internal system/BIOS region.
Swiss changes things by having an option to override the BIOS.

 

[Speedy77]

The full explanation is complicated, but modchips do not alter the internal system/BIOS region.
Swiss changes things by having an option to override the BIOS.

Interesting, thanks for the heads up! So as far as fixing the issue, will I have to boot from Swiss every time I want to play the game? Or is there some other work-around?

Edit: I did a little more testing and interestingly enough the game will work properly if I created the save file while booting from the disc, however if I boot the game using Swiss I’ll get an error message. I can also read the save file from the home screen.

Is it possible that the Xeno Chip, once the GC memory card is formatted to NTSC U, can force a NTSC-J save file to be saved to it? Swiss may simply provide a work-around and allow the console to format memory cards to NTSC-J and save as NTSC-J, so the game doesn’t properly read NTSC-U memory cards by default when running Swiss

Edit 2: I (kinda) figured out the issue! It seems like my prediction was right, and because my GameCube is from the US it defaults to saving in ANSI. When I force ANSI in Swiss the game reads the save file just fine. The real question now is, is there any way for the GameCube’s main saving system to save depending on its region similarly to Swiss’s “auto” feature?

 

[Lumstar]

Memory cards are meant to be formatted depending on the system region (as opposed to the game's region).

Most games ignore the mismatch. When playing an NTSC-J game on a US GameCube without Swiss, the memory card should become or remain NTSC-U. (This is very easy to try. Get a blank memory card, save an NTSC-J game, and visit the memory manager. If the data is accessible, the card is not Japanese formatted)

However! Some titles have compatibility issues in other regions, and may wipe the card or fail to save.

 

[Speedy77]

Memory cards are meant to be formatted depending on the system region (as opposed to the game's region).

Most games ignore the mismatch. When playing an NTSC-J game on a US GameCube without Swiss, the memory card should become or remain NTSC-U. (This is very easy to try. Get a blank memory card, save an NTSC-J game, and visit the memory manager. If the data is accessible, the card is not Japanese formatted)

However! Some titles have compatibility issues in other regions, and may wipe the card or fail to save.

Thanks again for the tips!

Is there by any chance a list of the titles that cause some of these compatibility issues? I may stick with the NTSC-U format if I don’t plan on playing any of the problematic games

 

[Lumstar]

Not a complete list. I'm aware there's problems with Donkey Konga, Radirgy, and Mr Driller Drill Land.

The wrong region messes up the menu interface in F-Zero GX. A few other games like Rockman EXE Transmission get garbled dialogue text.