Hacking ROM Hack Help reverse engineering snes games

Fleshypi64 · Apr 4, 2024

Recently I've taken an interest in reverse engineering, I am more of a hardware guy but I've made a little progress in finding stuff in "spankys quest" for SNES in a hex editor. I'd like to see the ASCII code in a less jumbled and more readable format. If anyone has any tips or pointers, they would be greatly appreciated!

JaapDaniels · Apr 4, 2024

About everything there is to know about the snes is: https://wiki.superfamicom.org/
Then there is https://github.com/snesrev?tab=repositories who reimplemented 3 snesroms to pc code.
The system is a modified µ-controller, about all games are built in assembly.
There is no OS layer, not even a bios layer, it reads the cardridge straight when the powere is supplied, only security in the snes Was the CIC, it has a 4 bit key region lock.
Some games introduced thier own security by checking the ram to match the game design.

rahcchi · Apr 4, 2024

Kwyjor · Apr 4, 2024

Fleshypi64 said:
I'd like to see the ASCII code in a less jumbled and more readable format.

There is no "ASCII code". There is a compiled binary, which can be blindly* "disassembled" into equivalent assembly instructions, but those instructions in turn can only be meaningfully labelled through an excruciatingly tedious process of reverse-engineering and guesswork. If you were going into this expecting something other than jumbled and unreadable data, then you should revise your expectations.

*Disassembly typically does not distinguish between machine code and game data. In the end it's all just numbers and sometimes even figuring out what is machine code and what is not supposed to be interpreted as machine code is yet more guesswork.

I suggest DisplacedGamer's "Behind The Code" videos and Retro Game Mechanics Explained if this is all completely unfamiliar to you. Of course they don't all relate to SNES games, but many of the principles apply to all platforms.

JaapDaniels · Apr 5, 2024

JaapDaniels said:
About everything there is to know about the snes is: https://wiki.superfamicom.org/
Then there is https://github.com/snesrev?tab=repositories who reimplemented 3 snesroms to pc code.
The system is a modified µ-controller, about all games are built in assembly.
There is no OS layer, not even a bios layer, it reads the cardridge straight when the powere is supplied, only security in the snes Was the CIC, it has a 4 bit key region lock.
Some games introduced thier own security by checking the ram to match the game design.

I forgot about: https://github.com/alekmaul/pvsneslib no good for reversing a game, but a great starting point for making your own game.

Hacking ROM Hack Help reverse engineering snes games

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