
Banjo Tooie for N64 finally cracked - ramiwi
http://www.eurasia.nu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3118
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AdamTReineke
The encryption algo:

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=explorer&srcid=0Bz16_...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=explorer&srcid=0Bz16_qdX0WIZSTVGSnBxeGstNGM&docid=517e737b0ccd07a76ee7abc863e7d923%7C5ad2bd8827a046134b30bf3902cdc58e&chan=EAAAAEE%2BVhIU6/3OGe73DwvASBIiRBAXReo/1/aClWvsTHtX&a=v&rel=zip;z4;n64_cic_nus_6105.c)

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peapicker
One cool thing: looking thru the README it looks like they ended up fixing a
part of Banjo Tooie that had always broken before due to the
challenge/response being encoded wrong in one case.

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rpledge
I guess the DRM was strong enough for this product, it's past its shelf life
now. Or is this a case of no one really wanting to pirate the game badly
enough to put in the effort to crack it?

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icebraining
The real "DRM" of that game were the cartridges - even if you cracked the
same, you couldn't burn it to a CD like the Playstation games, and N64
emulation on PCs was mostly a pipe dream at the time.

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pandaman
UltraHLE (N64 emulator on PCs) came out in 1999 [1] Banjo-Tooie - came out in
2000 [2] And yes, there had already been Internet at that time too.

N64 game cracks were desirable even without emulation though. There had been
"universal" carts (e.g. Doctor V64) that would enable running a game image on
a retail console.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE>
[2]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo_Tooie>

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sliverstorm
It was a much smaller scene though, nothing like game carts for the GBA or DS.

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pandaman
It was. Yet not that much smaller to dismiss this is as a good counter example
to the claims that every DRM will be cracked immediately and if something is
not cracked then it just means there is zero interest in crack.

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mwill
This has me interested, what did this protection actually preclude? What's
possible now that it's cracked?

I know 1964 and Project64 could already play BanjoTooie (Although I think with
some crashes) so if wasn't detecting flashing or emulation what was it doing?
Or if it was, how did these emulators get around it without the specific game
being "cracked"?

Or is it just the sort of thing an emulator...emulates?

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someperson
I believe it's useful for the flashcard scene. All current Nintendo 64 flash
cards (64Drive, everdrive64 etc) require a hardware CIC chip. I believe
there's a different lockout chip between NTSC, PAL and certain games like Jet
Force Gemini.

All flashcards have either the CIC required to be soldered on (destroying some
genuine N64 game) or has a port for a cartridge to be plugged in (so the CIC
maybe accessed non-destructively).

Once the lockout algorithm is discovered, they possibly no longer need the
dedicated chip. (not sure about this part)

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mwill
Cool. It's funny to think there's still an active N64 flashcard user base,
since emulation for the N64 has always been pretty decent. My first foray into
console hacks was with thick first gen PS2's, and all the ones I've bought
over the years have basically died of old age, even with manual maintenance
and cleaning, so I sort of stopped caring about the hardware. Makes sense that
the older consoles with a longer shelf life would still have a lot of people
who care about the real hardware.

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zanny
When I read the size allocation for the static arrays, and they set the size
in hex 0x10 rather than just 16, my mind always blows up because it is amazing
how people in the emulator / virtualization world work so much with hex they
probably can think it like decimal.

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goloxc
does this mean we can finally do something with those eggs, the key, and the
door in the desert?

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ahelwer
I think they implemented the stop'n'swop functionality on the xbox live arcade
versions, did they not?

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JonnieCache
They did. Kinda ruined the fun of it though. Who remembers when those people
extracted the debug codes from the ROM that let you actually get the eggs, on
the n64 version? It was years after the game came out iirc.

I must admit I also clicked the link expecting something to do with eggs and
crystal keys.

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mikedmiked
> Who remembers when those people extracted the debug codes from the ROM that
> let you actually get the eggs, on the n64 version?

I'm so glad somebody else remembers that.

It was years after the game came out, and was perhaps just a side-note in the
videogames magazines, meaning that nobody believed my childhood self when I
claimed to finally obtain the eggs.

FYI a spiritual successor to _B-K_ appears to be in very early stages of
development. <https://twitter.com/MingyJongo>

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dav-id
I do hope there is another Banjo Kazooie - not the nuts and bolts kind but a
classic platformer even if it is not published by Rare I would still love to
see it!

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drivebyacct2
Now if they just get the ability to emulate SW: Rogue Squadron and Donkey Kong
64, I could die a happy man...

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dnuggets
FINALLY!

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nathanpc
Interesting article.

