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SNES Rom Hack to play PAL rom on NTSC Cart?

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:25 pm
by Tormenter
Anyone have any information on how to hack a PAL SNES Rom to work when I burn it to a NTSC system/cart?? Thanks!

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 10:12 pm
by mic_
Yeah, get SNESTool.

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:35 pm
by Tormenter
mic_ wrote:Yeah, get SNESTool.
Doesnt work, you have to remove the header before burning the rom to chip to make it work, and the region info that snes tool changes is in the header.

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:54 pm
by MottZilla
What do you mean get it to work? Be more specific if you can.

Some games will poll a certain PPU register on SNES that will reveal if the system is NTSC or PAL. Many games use this to lockout running on import systems. UCON64 can crack these games usually.

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:03 pm
by Tormenter
MottZilla wrote:What do you mean get it to work? Be more specific if you can.

Some games will poll a certain PPU register on SNES that will reveal if the system is NTSC or PAL. Many games use this to lockout running on import systems. UCON64 can crack these games usually.
Well I took a rom, Pop'n Twinbee, removed header (like your suppose to) (It was a PAL rom), burned it to chip and wired it up. When I put the game in my system (NTSC/US) I get the error message that says something like "This game pak can not be played on your super famicom or super nintendo system"

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:08 pm
by MottZilla
Run the ROM through UCON64 with the -f switch to remove the PAL/NTSC lockout problem you are experiencing.

http://ucon64.sourceforge.net/
http://ucon64.sourceforge.net/ucon64/readme.html
-f remove NTSC/PAL protection

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 1:31 am
by mic_
Doesnt work, you have to remove the header before burning the rom to chip to make it work, and the region info that snes tool changes is in the header.
No, in that case you've used the wrong option. SNESTool can patch the actual ROM (typically code that reads $213F and then looks at bit 4 of the result).

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 9:04 am
by Tormenter
MottZilla wrote:Run the ROM through UCON64 with the -f switch to remove the PAL/NTSC lockout problem you are experiencing.

http://ucon64.sourceforge.net/
http://ucon64.sourceforge.net/ucon64/readme.html
-f remove NTSC/PAL protection

Should I do this with our without a header?

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 12:21 pm
by MottZilla
It doesn't matter if you run UCON64 on it with or without the header in place. But you still must remove the header before burning the file to EPROM.

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 1:18 pm
by Tormenter
MottZilla wrote:It doesn't matter if you run UCON64 on it with or without the header in place. But you still must remove the header before burning the file to EPROM.
Thanks for the info. Ill give it a try tonight and see how she goes!

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 1:27 pm
by Tormenter
Just ran the ucon on it, would it still say PAL in the startup info when you run it in emu? It did just making sure

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 2:05 pm
by mic_
Just ran the ucon on it, would it still say PAL in the startup info when you run it in emu? It did just making sure
The emulator is probably just looking at the Country Code byte at $FFD9, which doesn't have anything to do with the software region protection.

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 8:09 pm
by MottZilla
Yes it will still be PAL region. What you did with UCON64 is broke the routine that says "If System Not PAL, Show Annoying Message". Instead it will hopefully result in "If System Not PAL, Run Game Anyway". You can test this on some emulators like ZSNES by clicking "Force NTSC".

Posted: Sun May 23, 2010 11:25 am
by Tormenter
MottZilla wrote:Yes it will still be PAL region. What you did with UCON64 is broke the routine that says "If System Not PAL, Show Annoying Message". Instead it will hopefully result in "If System Not PAL, Run Game Anyway". You can test this on some emulators like ZSNES by clicking "Force NTSC".
Yep, game worked fine on real hardware, thanks for the info =) I had the program already, but had no clue that it did such a thing lol. Now, only if I could get ucon64 to work on a 64 bit OS w/o loading up a virtual machine with 32bit os! hehe

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:05 am
by jaxmazon
Hi guyz sorry for bringing a dead topic back to life but I have an issue with ucon64, everytime I try to use it I get an error Im not sure if Im using the program correctly or that it could be that im running windows 7 64 bit. However I can't find out any tutorials on how to use ucon64 I really want to try and run my copy of Knights of the round on my PAL snes but I get the PAL/NTSC lock message :(.

could anyone explain step by step how to remove PAL/NTSC lockout with ucon64 please

thanks in advance