taking gb/gbc/gba games and dumping them onto pc

Legendeer

New member
Hi

I know you can get Flash Advance Linker/FA extreme or whatever, but what about normal GB/GBC games? Are they compatible with Flash Advance Linker or not?

Also - is it very easy to hack games and then send them to a rewritable flash card? The only game i have hacked is pokemon red and it was quite difficult.

thanks,

Legendeer
:huh:
 

belmont

New member
There are also cards for older GB systems!

It is easy to patch hacks on GBA games.
Use any patchin utility.
I patch hacks and trainers and work perfectly with my F2A.
 

Legendeer

New member
Hi

I didn't mean how easy it is to patch hacked ROMS, I meant to actually change the game. Like in Pokemon Red I changed the text that was in the game. I know how to patch games kinda, but I don't really understand what it does. I used HebeGB.

Do you know where I can get FA Extreme, or ones for GB/GBC and stuff like that? I assume it would be compatible with my European games, because I'm from the UK.

Thanks for the help, I just wanted to know because I would like to upload pokemon gold from my real GBC collection to my PC, change some of the sprites and text, then send it back to a gameboy cart so that I had my own personalized pokemon game. Would all that be possible?

Thanks again,

Legendeer

(btw I'm only 12 1/2 and I haven't had much experience with this sort of thing before, although like i said I did attempt to hack pokemon red once before).
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
I don't really have any experience with GBA linkers etc., but as far as not understanding patches goes - keep at it. Hacking is called hacking because that's the best approach to it - just hack away and you begin learning very quickly. You're not even a teen and yet and you're well clued up, so I imagine you'll have a good grasp on things very soon. You might want to read up on hardware and how the GBA interprets the bytes in a ROM, as well as understanding how graphics and strings are stored. Maybe get some programming experience under your belt if you're really interested. Good luck. :)
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
Depends what you want to do really. Best thing to do is learn how things work - but that's more of a long term thing, hands on experience, book learning and all that. If you're interested in the basics of actual ROM hacking, stuff like this might come in handy. Knowledge of the machine's actual hardware is pretty much essential for successful hacking though.
 

Legendeer

New member
Okay thanks.

All I know about the GBA is that it's 32-bit, and it's capable of PSone graphics. That's it. I don't understand all about chips and processers, etc.

I know this site tells you all the specs for the systems that it has emulators for, but I don't really understand them.

Thanks for all the help. I'll have 2 be going to be soon (It's 11:00pm here)

As a final word for today, can you tell me where the rules are for this forum, because you're supposed to read them before you post but I can't find them. Thanks a lot :D you 've been a big help.
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
I dunno, they're somewhere. I don't read them. As long as you don't ask for games or illegal software you'll do fine.

It's 11pm here also, I'm also from the U.K.
 

Legendeer

New member
ok

Hey can I just ask you something:-

How come emulator-zone has loads of emulators, but has no roms for them? I can understand that they don't want to for legal reasons, but it doesn't say where you can get ROMS from either, and there's no point downloading an emulator if there are no ROMS for it.

I already have roms, but newbies who just come onto the site would probably be confused.

The emulators themselves are illegal aren't they?
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
Emulators are mostly legal, though the methods to make them often break reverse engineering rules - but since nobody can prove they were made illegally, they're not illegal as such.

Companies actively search the Internet for ROM sites and have them shut down. If this site were to start hosting copyrighted games, it would eventually be taken offline.
 

Legendeer

New member
Oh ok. What about ROM sites that have a disclaimer about how "these roms are for backups for people who've bought the actual games" kind of thing? Then the website couldn't be shut down because it's not actually illegal.

I think you're allowed to have ROMS as long as you've bought the game, just in case the game breaks.

:D
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
You're allowed to make a personal backup of the ROM, but you can't publish it online anywhere. ROMs that you download (especially living in the U.K.) are likely to be slightly different overseas versions of the games (most often American) and so it's not the same software, and hence illegal.

The disclaimers sites put up are absolute nonsense, and only intended to buy the site a little more time or convince their hosts that they are doing things for legitimate purposes.
 

Legendeer

New member
Oh right. But that means that eventually there will be no roms available ever. If the companies have ROM sites shut down.

Could you get sued for owning a ROM site, even if it said on it that it was only to make it easier for people to get backups for the games they have bought?

I thought I might make a ROM site, because of how there never seems to be more than 3 working ROMS on any one site, but if they are regularly shut down, I don't think I will. Plus I'd rather not be sued if I can help it. :p Ah well,
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
ROMs will always be available. The Internet is too vast and distributed to police entirely. Some sites get away with it by being sneaky (though most eventually get shut down) and by swapping hosts. Also, BitTorrent sites such as Suprnova are able to spread ROMs by only placing the torrent files (which contain no ROM data and hence are legal) allowing people to share directly from their hard disks.

And that's just the "Web" portion of the Internet, (HTTP). There will always be P2P apps, including decentralised ones which can't possibly be shut down. There's also IRC, manual file trading, USENET, etc. - piracy has always found a way, and always will. So don't panic about losing ROMs :)

If you want to spread ROMs, opening a site probably isn't the best way, especially if you're relying on free hosts, as it WILL be shut down. What you could perhaps do is learn about IRC and BitTorrent and share through those.
 

Legendeer

New member
My site is hosted at my ISP. But it's just a personal site.

Are IRC and BitTORRENT like Shareaza? Cuz I used to go on a game boy roms site but now you can only get the files through shareaza and it just doesn't download when you start it.
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
Shareaza is annoying because it tries to intercept BitTorrent downloads. If the Game Boy site has torrents, you should use this client rather than Shareaza. However, since you're only on dialup Internet you might have trouble using torrents - works best on faster connections.
 

Legendeer

New member
How did you know I'm on dialup internet? :huh:

Could you tell me how the torrent stuff works? You said that some sites offer bittorrent files that have no rom data so are legal, but then where are the roms? They'd have to be hosted somewhere, wouldn't they? ;)

I think it has something to do with finding people who own a rom, and downloading it through shareaza or others from their computer to yours, or something like that?
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
I knew you were on dialup 'cos of your IP address.

Torrents basically work by a site hosting a file, which directs your Bittorrent client to a "tracker". You connect to this, and it gives you the address of other computers sharing the file, and registers your computer as a sharer. So all the host does is keep track of computers - it's the sharers/downloaders who send all of the data. As you download the file you are also sending it to other people.

I hope that makes sense, it's a hard thing to explain. It's a lot like normal file sharing applications in a way, but also a lot like a normal Web site.
 

Legendeer

New member
Okay, I'm just looking at bittorrent now, from that download link that you posted. Is it simple to use?

And it would be perfect legal to have a ROM site as long as there were no actual ROM files on it? (eg. they were all torrents or whatever)?

Would I still need to put a disclaimer?
 
J

Jet Set Willy

Guest
It depends. I expect most hosts are stills sensitive about torrents, as they're a gateway to illegality. You'd also have to find a tracker to use - since running your own is probably out of the question, you'd have to use one an established torrent site gives you access to, and so your torrents would be displayed on their site also.
 
Top