Homebrew 3DS Banner Language (JAP 3DS with USA CIAs)

[Lashiing]

I, like many of you, have purchased a Japanese 3ds and installed CFW.
After installing a few USA CIAs I've noticed that some titles show their banner in Japanese, although the game does play in English.
Examples of this are Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and a few Pokemon titles.

What is the current method for changing these banners to English?
To be clear, I do not want to region change the entire 3DS, just the animated banner on the top screen when selecting the game.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Lashiing]

Small out-of-region banner fixing guide.

We are interested in .bcmdl files, it is different for each region and language. Here is the list:

• banner1.bcmdl - EUR_EN
• banner2.bcmdl - EUR_FR
• banner3.bcmdl - EUR_GE
• banner4.bcmdl - EUR_IT
• banner5.bcmdl - EUR_SP
• banner6.bcmdl - EUR_DU
• banner7.bcmdl - EUR_PO
• banner8.bcmdl - EUR_RU
• banner9.bcmdl - JPN_JP
• banner10.bcmdl - USA_EN
• banner11.bcmdl - USA_FR
• banner12.bcmdl - USA_SP
• banner13.bcmdl - USA_PO
• banner14.bcmdl - CHN_CN
• banner15.bcmdl - KOR_KR
• banner16.bcmdl - TWN_TW

Now what to do whit it:

• Create a copy of game .bcmdl file from another region. Select one that is displayed correctly on home screen. I think the best bet here is banner from native region for your game.
• Rename this copy to region you need (list of names-regions is above).
• Open your .bcmdl file in hex editor and go to 000011D0. We are interested in the selected text (in this case, JPN_JP). Change it, for example, to EUR_RU. Save changes.

View attachment 185463

So after a few hours of digging I found this guide to follow.
Could someone help me understand exactly what files in which folders are to be edited and put where?
I have a JPN 3DS and USA CIAs so the banners are displaying in Japanese but I would like them in English.
I can't seem to make sense of any of the extracted files in Hex Editor.

 

[Jrogas]

Made an account for this forum just to post this here for you and any other future homebrewers with strong enough google-fu looking to get their Japanese 3DS and games looking as English as possible without region change. I spent an embarrassingly long time addressing (almost) this exact problem. Hopefully region change will have no risk or loss of features in the future and this post becomes irrelevant, but here it will sit in case we're in the bad timeline. So here goes a very detailed outline of the steps I took to get my desired result. To start Here is a list of things you will need.

1. The CIA file(s) of the game of your choice (obviously)
2. Ba-GUI-nnertool: gbatemp.net/threads/release-create-2d-3d-banner-smdh-with-ba-gui-nnertool.406433/
2a. To avoid throwing an error using this tool, you need the specific file vcruntime140d.dll to go into the root ba-GUI-nnertool folder after you extract it to your desktop [IT VERY SPECIFICALLY HAS TO HAVE THE D AT THE END OF THE FILENAME]: vcruntime140d.dll This is the debug version if Microsoft 2015 visual C++ redistributables, because the regular one doesn't work for some reason.
2b. To avoid the OTHER error you get from this tool by default, get an all-in-one Microsoft visual C++ redistributables installer to to make sure you have the rest of the files. Don't worry about shoving any more files from these directly into the tools folder.
3. GM9 installed on your Homebrewed Japanese 3DS. (if you followed 3ds.hacks.guide you already have this.)
4. Some kind of hex editor. (I used Hex Editor Neo as its free and has an eyeglass search function to look for the "USA_EN" Part in the hex that you need to change to JPN_JP)

My objective was to just have SOME KIND of Banner for the Mario and Luigi games. The .cia(s) I had on hand for the US version of these games have several banners packaged but apparently didn't come with the Japanese ones, so no banner displayed at all on the 3ds when selected. When I reached the point in using the tool where I needed to rename the USA banner(Banner10), there was no banner9.bcmdl extracted from the decrypted cia to begin with, so I just saved my edited banner10 AS banner9 and by the time the install was done it worked exactly as intended.

The main tool to accomplish changing the banner in any way is of course the banner tool. READ ITS 'HOW TO PDF" IN ITS ROOT FOLDER. THIS ALONE WILL HELP A LOT IN UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU NEED TO DO AND HOW IT WORKS. Also be sure to read the creators shortened how-to on that same original forum post as well. Your objective is basically to extract the banner files from your decrypted cia, manipulate them as necessary, and rebuild that .cia to then re-install the game back onto your 3ds packaged with the edited files. Specifically for our purposes you'll be changing the English banner10.bcmdl file with a hex editor to be tagged as JPN_JP instead, and then renaming it to banner9.bdmdl (Delete any existing banner9 when you first extract from your decrypted cias, because that's the original Japanese banner). This tricks your Japanese 3ds into displaying the English banner thinking its the Japanese one (because its looking ONLY for banner9 and making sure its tagged correctly). The tool works similarly to other cia extractors/builders, but it was way easier to use for me. Just don't get caught up in the missing .dll stuff and get 2015 (Or all for that matter) Visual C++ and that annoying specific .dll file sorted.

Making further mockery of brevity, lets get to my exhaustive and specific step-by-step for fixing M&L Paper Jam.
1. Download and put that annoying .dll directly into the ba-GUI-nnertool folder I just extracted to my desktop
2. Downloaded every Visual C++ redist that exists with an all-in-one installer
3. Put my freshly decrypted "decryptedpaperjam.cia" file into the "Projects" folder
4. Opened the bannertool application
5. In the "tool box" tab, selected "Browse" under "Extract and build CIA", and Selected my CIA I put in the "Project" folder
6. Tool does its thing [IF YOU GET ERRORS HERE REFER TO TEXT ABOVE ABOUT THE VISUAL C++ STUFF]
7. selected the rom.0000.xxxxxxxx file in the new folder that it just made in projects -> cia -> dectrypedpaperjam.cia folder.
7a. May have to do this twice with some games?
8. When done, opens up several windows showing where it dumped the various files to. (Also opened Ohana3ds, just closed it) From this point I did not move any of these files around. All I had to do was an edit, a rename, and a single replacement. I also DID NOT KILL THE TOOL YET. Doing this I believe will make sure the cia rebuilds correctly.
9. The banner files are all in Projects -> Banner -> decryptedpaperjam.cia folder (Your folder it makes will be named different based on the name of the cia you feed it). This is where all the .bcmdl files are
10. Made the small change to the banner10.bcmdl file (This is always the English banner) in hex editor (Changing USA_EN to JPN_JP) and renamed it to banner9.bcmdl (If you already have a banner9.bcmdl here, just delete it. That's always the Japanese banner)
11. Went back to the tool under the "Banner" tab and selected "Browse" under "Create banner" next to "Banner bcmdl/png"
12. Here I navigated to that Projects -> Banner -> decryptedpaperjam.cia folder and the only option to select was banner0.bcmdl, so I selected it (It asks you to make sure all banner components are in that same folder with it, I.E the English one I just edited and renamed, so I think this is just like an empty "Master Banner" or something)
13. Let it do its thing
14. It spit out a banner.bnr file into Projects -> Banner -> Output
15. I replaced the banner.bnr file in the Projects -> Banner -> decryptedpaperjam.cia -> exefs.O folder with the new one it just output
16. Back on the banner tool on the "tool box" tab there is a "Build" option under the "extract and build cia" section now.
17. Hit build and bam, I got a new CIA ready to install via FBI on my 3DS. When the install is complete it had the English banner.

I cleaned up all the output files and ciafilename.cia files the tool made before moving on to the next game and just repeated those steps for the rest of the M&L games.

Important footnote: The cia you browse to with the tool that you place in the "project" folder must be decrypted but more specifically STILL BE A .CIA. Other decrypted formats wont work. That's why you need GM9, because it lets you directly decrypt cia files in-place on your 3ds itself to then bring that same but now-decryped file back to your computer. Depending on how many games you want to do this with be prepared for a lot of back-and-forth with the SD card from the 3DS to your computer unless you preemptively decrypt a bunch of games the first time.

You can also save time if you're interested in changing the titles of these games as they show up in various menus and storage from Japanese to English too before you rebuild your new cia to install. To do this you edit the icon.icn file in the same place as your banner.bnr file that gets built into the new cia along with your edited fake-Japanese English banner. Its pretty much the exact same process as the banner editing but way simpler because all you need to use is Every File Explorer tool that's built in to directly make the change instead of a hex editor, and don't need to rebuild the icon.icn unless you want to actually change the image I guess.

 

[rcpd]

Hate to necrobump this thread, but I have more useful info for anyone wishing to use ba-GUI-nnertool with Windows 11. That currently isn’t possible if you’re planning to use this tool to extract a decrypted CIA file.

You need to follow the previous posters advice. You’ll need another DLL file dropped into the root folder for the tool. That file is called "ucrtbased.dll" otherwise CTRTool will throw errors. But even that isn’t enough.

Go here: https://github.com/3DSGuy/Project_CTR/releases

Grab the latest release for your Windows platform. Extract the ctrtool.exe folder into “ba-GUI-nnertool/Datas/Tool” folder replacing the original.

Run ba-GUI-nnertool. Everything should work as expected now. Hope this helps you guys extract and repack CIA files easier now!

 

[flmlsq02x]

I have the same issue.
Here's what I did:

Decrypted the .cia file using GodMode9.
Obtained the decrypted .cia file from the SD card on PC.
SD:\gm9\out

Extracted all files from the .cia using DotNet.3DS.Toolkit.v1.4.6.
Moved the "ExtractedBanner" folder to "HackingToolkit9DS\PackHack\"

Used EveryFileExplorer to browse "HackingToolkit9DS\PackHack\ExtractedBanner\banner9.bcmdl" and found:
\Model\JPN_JP
\Textures\Joker_gemelogo_jp

Used EveryFileExplorer to browse "HackingToolkit9DS\PackHack\ExtractedBanner\banner10.bcmdl" and found:
\Model\USA_EN
\Textures\Joker_gemelogo_US

Next, copied a duplicate of banner10.bcmdl.
Opened "banner9.bcmdl" and the copied "banner10.bcmdl" with a hex editor.

Review "banner9.bcmdl" and search for "JPN_JP" and "Joker_gemelogo_jp".

Review the copied "banner10.bcmdl" and search for "USA_EN" and "Joker_gemelogo_US".

Edited copied "banner10.bcmdl" to change "USA_EN" and "Joker_gemelogo_US" to "JPN_JP" and "Joker_gemelogo_jp".

Deleted "banner9.bcmdl" and renamed the copied "banner10.bcmdl" to "banner9.bcmdl".

Created a new banner.bin using HackingToolkit9DS.

Then replaced the "DotNet.3DS.Toolkit.v1.4.6\RawFiles\ExeFS\banner.bin" with this new banner.bin.

Repackaged RawFiles to obtain a new .cia file.
Then placed it on the memory card and directly installed the .cia file using FBI.