DS "undubs" and "patches/fixes"

[icycalm]

I've noticed that there are a few DS ROMs, English versions of Japanese games, which are variously called "undubs" or "JP dubs". I just downloaded one (the European version of Suikoden Tierkries), and am currently trying to track down another (the so-called "JP dub" of the US version of Luminous Arc 2).

From what I understand, someone must have figured out how to take the English (US or EU) version of a ROM and replace the English language track with the original Japanese one. That's the only explanation I can come up with. Let me know if you've tried any of these ROMs out and figured out what the hell's going on.

[Tain]

It's exactly what you suspect it is. People have been doing this with PS2 games for a few years; I know FFX International and the PS2 Persona games have "undub" images floating around. I distinctly remember that the guys behind one of the Persona images felt the need to replace all the music with remixes, too, for some reason.

I almost attempted this with Shenmue some years ago.

[aaden]

DS undubbing is actually pretty easy to do, you just need the right tools to get into the ROM files to play around with things. A good example of a tool like that would be dsbuff, or DSLazy. I prefer dsbuff myself.

All you do is you unpack the ROM files from both versions, grab the sound data out of the JP version, go into the NA/EU version's folder and replace the NA/EU sound data with the JP sound data. Then you repack your NA/EU version into an .nds file. It's really that simple.

The problem you run into is when the sound files for one version have different file names, which makes everything a whole lot harder. The way the sound data is included from game to game can vary a lot. The easiest is when you just have "sound_data.sdat" as the sound file.

You can get dsbuff here if you want to play around with it. I can give you more detailed instructions if you do want to actually try undubbing, or there are plenty of simple guides to be found with Google.
http://wb3000.nintendo-scene.com/dsbuff.html

I did a little bit of looking, and this seems to be an undub of Luminous Arc 2. I tried it out on my flash cart and it works fine. The game went to a black screen when I first tried it, but when I tried it again it loaded normally.

http://www.mediafire.com/?pm9cgm1fzim

[icycalm]

I've no intention of doing this sort of thing myself, but I'd love to be able to play all Japanese games in this manner. Someone needs to start a site with a collection of all such existing ROMs. If it gets popular maybe the Western publishers will think twice before spending a ton of money on rubbish dubs, and just leave the fucking voices as they are. Then maybe we'd start getting more prompt localizations -- on the DS especially, there are a shitload of games that need to localized pronto.

[icycalm]

Another question to those who know what the hell is going on with DS ROMs: Why are some of them tagged as "Fixed" or "Patched"? This really annoys me, as I am worried whether the idiots have fucked in any way with the original games. Or is it that they just mess up with the first dump, and then they try a second time and call the second dump the "Fixed" or "Patched" version?

What I am worried about is that I will start an "Unfixed" or "Unpatched" game, then get half-way through it and have the game hang on me because the dump was fucked. This sort of thing happened in the old days with pirated computer games, or sometimes the pirates would remove cinematics, etc. to save space -- which is one reason I usually refrained from pirated copies back then. So what's going on here?

[aaden]

Patches for DS roms generally involve circumventing copy protection.

There are certain DS games that have built-in copy protection-- this is mainly a characteristic of Square-Enix DS games actually. For example, the DS ROM of Chrono Trigger has to be patched or else it will freeze up at a certain spot in the game on certain flash carts. Other games do different things, like suddenly stop and go to a "Thanks for playing!" screen.

It's a pretty rare thing to see really. I think I've seen some games that weren't S-E games that had to be patched, but even then it's a very small amount of DS games that are even bothering with copy protection like this. I think this is because with the DSi and its firmware updates, the game developers are leaning more on Nintendo to combat flash cart piracy.

Anyway, many flash card dev teams update their firmware in such a fashion that you don't need patched ROMs though, like the CycloDS team. You would really only need a patched rom if you're using a flash cart that is no longer supported by firmware updates, like an old R4.

[icycalm]

Thanks for the clarifications, I appreciate it. The only thing I have to point out is that, if you are correct (which I am sure you are) then the designations "Fixed" and "Patched" are misleading. If the only thing those patches are doing is circumventing copy-protection, the ROMs should be marked "Cracked".