Hi everyone, I've been busy working on other projects this year. But I thought I'd take a moment to revisit my SMA4 thread from a year ago, and answer some questions from other people.
while I did enjoy scanning & playing Renegade's version of the unreleased level e-cards in SMA4, I only encountered one problem and it was with the 100-up mushroom card he did.
the 100up mushroom card Renegade made can only be scanned once per game and I cannot use it again and get the message "this power-up card has already been scanned" (I was using no$gba). all other unreleased power-up cards (like the 3up mushroom card) can be scanned or used repeatedly with no problems.
This is an interesting discovery that was overseen when testing these cards out. The only reason I can think as to why the 100-Up Mushroom can only be scanned once is because of the promo set it is part of.
All items (except the 100-Up Mushroom) use D-### as their identifier. The 100-Up Mushroom is the only card which uses B-### as its identifier. What this means is that any card scanned from the "B" set can only ever be scanned once, where all others can be scanned multiple times. (Levels are "A" set, Demos are "E" set, etc.)
As such, the 100-Up Mushroom only be scanned once per save data. (four times total in a save file). This behavior is exactly the same as how the Japanese version of the e-card would work on the japanese version of the game.
Im contacting you to get some more information about the E-reader because Im tying to understand it really.
My goal is to develop a Pokemon Pinball demo e-card that was never for distribution and also never dumped.
Unfortunately, translating Japanese e-Reader cards isn't that easy. Cards from various sets have their data stored/encrypted using different formats. The only reason why the SMA4 cards were able to be cracked is because (1) enough documentation on them existed already and (2) the binary data uses relatively little encryption involved.
I tried my hands at translating cards from the japanese Rockman Zero 3 set, as well as the japanese Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire set. No success in either endeavor...
Not only is the data encrypted differently, but the cards contain a lot of text that requires proper translation....
(Besides, in the case of Rockman Zero 3/Mega Man Zero 3 - those cards' effects can be achieved via Action Replay - or swapping save files from different regions of the game where the e-reader support is available - or are natively included in the "Collection" releases for PS4/XB1 or NDS)
tl;dr - No, I can't translate Pokemon Pinball e-reader cards, and I have no desire to, sorry.
Hey guys, i have a problem. Please see 3 images below to understand what i'm talking about.
We all know that the official cyan switch can only be activated in world e. So here's my problem. When i immediately activated it on the screen with a lakitu, the switch appeared to have its exact cyan color (image 1). But when going back to the main world e map, the color changed to green blue (image 2) (just like green blue switch that can only be unlocked in the main game (image 3)).
I don't know if this because of my rom, or my e reader rom, or it's just an inherent error in the American Version that the creators are not aware of. So do you have the same problem. If you do, do you know how i can fix it? Thanks a lot!
Yes, this is a known issue in the games. The "Cyan" and "Blue Green" switches use the exact same graphic and palette. It was never intended for either switch to be active at the same time - as Blue Green is exclusively for the SMB3 save data, and Cyan is exclusively for the e-World save data.
I hope that this has helped address some of the critical questions that were brought up here.
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BigOnYa:
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K3Nv2:
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ZeroT21:
