29 replies to this topic

[Professor-J]

After some lengthy MSN conversations with Jof we both agreed its about time somebody ripped this game to shits, the Saturn original was hacked to pieces and some pretty juicy stuff was found and considering the stupidly tight time limit this game was given there is bound to be some pretty nice leftovers just waiting to be discovered in the game disk. Sadly I'm no hacker myself but surely its about time we started to encourage people to start disassembling this game?

[NeoScriptor]

I'd totally be all over it. Except, I can't. I'm working on Samba De Amigo right now. (Am I really the only one who wants custom samba songs?) But, if/when I finish that project, I'd gladly pick this one up next and just mess around with it to see if I find something. Might be a long while though, Samba is taking forever.

[DiGi Valentine]

I know nothing of hacking either.

I do know one guy who was hacking the original game but i don't know if he'll be interested in this one. I could have a word with him but i don't know how busy he is nowadays. He's good at his work though and very tidy with it too. You may have seen his videos on YouTube where someone had been rebuilding Soft Museum. That would the guy.

Anyways, if you guys can't find anybody to give this a shot then i'll ask him but let's not pin our hopes on just one guy. As i said, he might be busy.

I too agree that there must be a few things left in there due to the game being rushed. I don't think it would be anything major but it would certainly be cool to see what comes up.

[Murasaki Doku]

As far as I understand, though, hacking Wii games is a barely touched territory. The only Wii hacks I've seen is on Twilight Princess.

[DiGi Valentine]

I guess that would be all the more reason to do it! XD ...unless there's a reason Wii games don't get hacked a lot.

[Professor-J]

As far as I understand, though, hacking Wii games is a barely touched territory. The only Wii hacks I've seen is on Twilight Princess.

Not at all, Super Smash Bros Brawl was blasted open in record time, in only a day of it being released in Japan somebody had created a file viewer that allowed us to see all of files within the disk which revealed to us unused characters, stages and music. Not long afterwards people started started creating tools to rip textures from the game which is a pretty big breakthrough for a Wii game.

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games was also hacked, people at Sonic CulT managed to create a character swapper which discovered 4 unused characters within the game.

So its entirely possible, we just need the right people to do it.

I'd totally be all over it. Except, I can't. I'm working on Samba De Amigo right now. (Am I really the only one who wants custom samba songs?) But, if/when I finish that project, I'd gladly pick this one up next and just mess around with it to see if I find something. Might be a long while though, Samba is taking forever.

Awesome, thanks, the more the merrier!

[DiGi Valentine]

Ah yeah, i remember reading the stuff they found on Brawl. A bunch of characters had been planned but removed.

I did not know they hacked Mario and Sonic. I should look up on that. Thanks for letting us know.

As for this JoD hacking project. If you're going to get a team together to go digging through this thing then would you like me to contact Suri?
As i said he may be busy but if you're going to be in a team then i'm pretty sure the more people you have working on this the better. And he knows his stuff too.
No guarantee's he'd be able to do this but it's worth a shot in asking him.
Let me know.

[Rhapsody]

I'm a newbie to hacking, but I am getting into a program at my school that revolves around computers and video games, and I think when I was shadowing there they mentioned a video game hacking class. Other than that, I seem to be an unintentional magnet for glitches, barrier/boundary breaks, and instant kills in games (particularly JoD and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle). I have been trying to use my unintentional magnetism to my advantage, though, and have gotten some - strange - results in JoD...

[Dreamer#96]

Not at all, Super Smash Bros Brawl was blasted open in record time, in only a day of it being released in Japan somebody had created a file viewer that allowed us to see all of files within the disk which revealed to us unused characters, stages and music. Not long afterwards people started started creating tools to rip textures from the game which is a pretty big breakthrough for a Wii game.

i didnt even know they had the tools to hack wii games,i wonder what those tools are,i would like to know,considering i dont care about my sonic and mario at the olympic games disc much to get it hacked

[TRAViS]

Oh man...I'd love to see what JoD looks like on the inside. If I had more hacking experience (my expertise is in programming, not decompiling) I'd lend a hand but as of right now I'm useless.

On that note, I vow never to try and obtain an ISO of JoD...I tried doing so right before the game's launch, and the same day it finished downloading my hard drive failed. To this day I still think of it as a sign to not meddle in the affairs of SEGA.

[iLLViLLAiN]

I bet fake money that Jackle files are in there. I bet you. I bet you.

[EZEKiAL]

I bet fake money that Jackle files are in there. I bet you. I bet you.

I SECOND THAT.

And also, what characters were unused for M&S?
I know the Brawl ones already (Dixie Kong, Toon Zelda, Mewtwo)

[DiGi Valentine]

Actually. There is one thing i'm really quite interested for you all to be on the look out for when you start hacking this open.

Back when we first heard that Elliot and Claris were going to be unlockable characters we also heard that NiGHTS would wear his old costume when you switched to the old dreamers but due to some random issues that caused the game to crash whenever you tried to Dualize with NiGHTS in his old costume Sonic Team removed that feature. Now, as far as i was aware, Elliot and Claris were added to the game quite late on in development meaning that if Sonic Team did remove NiGHTS' old costume to stop it from crashing then they probably didn't do a full job due to the time frame they needed to release JoD in.

I'd like to think that maybe leftovers of NiGHTS' old costume could still be in there. I don't think Sonic Team would have had time to properly remove it from the game entirely. That would be something worth looking for.

[tinfoil]

I SECOND THAT.

And also, what characters were unused for M&S?
I know the Brawl ones already (Dixie Kong, Toon Zelda, Mewtwo)

I saw a video from the Sonic Cult forums, they were, Goomba, Cream, Donkey Kong, and Jet. They all worked except for Cream.


Yes, start hacking! I need juicy files that were left in! Selph anyone?

[Meggiemaccat]

I bet fake money that Jackle files are in there. I bet you. I bet you.

That would make my brain explode with happy; I wonder what Iizzy would've done to overhaul Mr. Invisible Nudity (another reason he might've been kicked out aside from that... well... he's second class...).

[Professor-J]

I saw a video from the Sonic Cult forums, they were, Goomba, Cream, Donkey Kong, and Jet. They all worked except for Cream.


Yes, start hacking! I need juicy files that were left in! Selph anyone?

Actually they were Donkey Kong, Birdo, Silver the Hedgehog and Jet the Hawk, the others were simply model swaps using models that were used elsewhere in the game (for example Cream is merely a referee but by swapping her model with a playable characters it can be made to look as if Cream were playable).

I bet fake money that Jackle files are in there. I bet you. I bet you.

Thats most likely true actually, I imagine Jackle was probably planned as a story character. Infact theres evidence to suggest the entire storyline was rushed and thrown together at the last minute. Sonic Team usually write quite deep plots for their games, Phantasy Star, Sonic and even the original NiGHTS had MUCH more complex stories than JoD and something Jof mentioned to me I found interesting, when you defeat Reala in Bell Bridge in JoD he just dissapears and is never mentioned again, not even an "I'll be back" or an "ARGGHHH", hes just gone, if that isn't evidence enough to show the story was tampered with then I don't know what is. Perhaps within the disk we might even find a goldmine like some of the original cutscenes (that is, if the story really was messed with last minute) seeing as how its ALOT easier for game developers to leave unused content within the disk than it is for them to remove it completely.

[DiGi Valentine]

Thats most likely true actually, I imagine Jackle was probably planned as a story character. Infact theres evidence to suggest the entire storyline was rushed and thrown together at the last minute. Sonic Team usually write quite deep plots for their games, Phantasy Star, Sonic and even the original NiGHTS had MUCH more complex stories than JoD and something Jof mentioned to me I found interesting, when you defeat Reala in Bell Bridge in JoD he just dissapears and is never mentioned again, not even an "I'll be back" or an "ARGGHHH", hes just gone, if that isn't evidence enough to show the story was tampered with then I don't know what is. Perhaps within the disk we might even find a goldmine like some of the original cutscenes (that is, if the story really was messed with last minute) seeing as how its ALOT easier for game developers to leave unused content within the disk than it is for them to remove it completely.

*sigh* Jackle "could" have been planned for the game but i can guarantee you that he never made it in to in-game development if he was. And as far as i knew Jackle had never been planned for the game so get rid of that idea now, eh? If you go in there looking for Jackle and you don't find anything then you're gonna be dissapointed.

And as far as Reala goes, i highly doubt the story was tampered with by that point but Sonic Team just cut corners of the story.

If you all remember a really nice little bundle of facts we threw you in the early days when we had our inside sources talking to us, NiGHTS JoD not only had a different game title but was planned for 360 and PS3 with a bunch of other masks and contained a storyline that involved the 'Great Mother' archetype as well as Wizeman tricking Will into being some kind of father figure to him.

Truth is, it wasn't the story that was tampered when it came down to JoD's final version. It was the fact that Sonic Team obviously had a huge storyline to begin with and trimmed it down and simplified it due to those legendary 'time constraints' that they seem to get.

I reckon if you're going to hack this thing then do it properly. Don't do it because you want to find 'missing story elements' because chances are you're not going to find it. Sonic Team don't build that big anymore.

Go digging for unused items because that's most probably all you're going to find from this.

[NeoScriptor]

Amen. Hacking is about finding those little things you didn't expect, not expecting a lot and coming up empty-handed. That takes the fun out of it!

[Professor-J]

*sigh* Jackle "could" have been planned for the game but i can guarantee you that he never made it in to in-game development if he was. And as far as i knew Jackle had never been planned for the game so get rid of that idea now, eh? If you go in there looking for Jackle and you don't find anything then you're gonna be dissapointed.

I never said we definatly WOULD find some evidence of Jackle but if you knew how sloppy Sonic Team were when came to leaving things in the game disk you'd know it was entirely possible, look at Sonic 2006 for example, another of Sonic Team's exceedingly tight deadlined games and look at what was discovered inside the game disk, by extracting text we found that Metal Sonic was once planned as a playable character and if we can even find extra characters in Mario and Sonic and Brawl whos to say that we can't find some mention of extra characters in JoD? We found an unused boss in the original NiGHTS and for all we know Jackle could have been planned as a boss in JoD (I know its unlikely since the chameleon was too similar) but until somebody does hack this thing we'll never know, but its not too late to count it out just yet.

[DiGi Valentine]

Fair enough. I hear what you're saying. But what i'm saying is games like Sonic are released on a regular basis and they're always trying to include different content for each game to keep the series fresh. When they hit their 'time constraints' then a Sonic game gets stuff removed from it that won't get completed in time and is not too important for the games structure. Super Sonic was planned but removed, for example. Not a story aspect but rather just a neat little feature.

With NiGHTS you're playing a very different ball game here. This was not a game that Sega had been making year after year but rather them resurecting one of their classic titles. As far as story goes, what we got in the final product is pretty much solid. The fact that Reala suddenly 'vanishes' after that last fight does not mean there was supposed to of been a cut-scene there that was removed. Sega had planned it that way because they had a deadline to meet.

The main things that were removed that i 100% know of was that NiGHTS had his old outfit when you switched to Elliot or Claris but for some reason would crash the game whenever the kids dualized with him. So his old outfit was removed. These are things you'll be finding in the game if Sonic Team have not tidied up after themselves.
But as far as storyline issues goes you really won't find anything on this one.
And as far as Jackle goes i highly doubt they brought him in for this. If anything is on there that is of Jackle then it was maybe from them porting any stuff from the old Saturn game over for reference work perhaps.

Look, as i've said before. You wanna do this then i'm backing the project all the way but don't go in there set on finding something when there really is a high chance that it won't be in there. Just go in there willing to find anything that was covered up.
I'll be interested to see what you find either way. And of course i would be happy to see removed story sections too. I just don't think you will find anything in that department.

[iLLViLLAiN]

Hm, so that's why NiGHTS's old costume wasn't in the game. By any chance, does anyone know why SEGA has so many time constraints that they can't finish up games the way it was planned? You'd think that the rep that SEGA has nowadays all time constraints would be removed so they can get back up there at least with Capcom and Konami.

[viperxmns]

Thanks for that tidibt, DiGi, so I see the plan was for NiGHTS's outfit to revert.


I hate SEGA for rushing out JoD. Whoever made that decision should be fired. If we could at least get a patch or something. *sigh*

[Hoban]

Yeah, seriously... if we saw this game in its full completed form, it'd be one of the greatest games of all time. It has so much potential!!

[DiGi Valentine]

Ok, since this topic is beginning to slooooow down and eventualy looks like it's going to go nowhere, i want to see an actual show of hands of people who are actually doing this thing.

Who's hacking JoD?

[charlie]

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but it's pretty hard to hack a wii game isn't it? Unlike the Saturn discs, which you could stick in your PC and get access to the files, you can't do that with a Wii disc (at least not easily). After doing a little research it looks like you have to own a certain model of dvd drive just to get the image of the disc on your PC.

I'd love to do it...but I don't think I have any way of getting the files onto my PC...unless I look for a bit torrent file and I'm not to fond of doing that sort of thing.

Am I wrong on this?????

[NeoScriptor]

Yes, you are correct. I have no problems downloading a torrent, since I own the game and the reason it's hard to copy is NOT because of copy protection, so it's perfectly legal in my mind. Grr.... Sadly, I won't be able to find time to hack it, at least not for another month or two.

[EZEKiAL]

I never said we definatly WOULD find some evidence of Jackle but if you knew how sloppy Sonic Team were when came to leaving things in the game disk you'd know it was entirely possible, look at Sonic 2006 for example, another of Sonic Team's exceedingly tight deadlined games and look at what was discovered inside the game disk, by extracting text we found that Metal Sonic was once planned as a playable character and if we can even find extra characters in Mario and Sonic and Brawl whos to say that we can't find some mention of extra characters in JoD? We found an unused boss in the original NiGHTS and for all we know Jackle could have been planned as a boss in JoD (I know its unlikely since the chameleon was too similar) but until somebody does hack this thing we'll never know, but its not too late to count it out just yet.

METAL SONIC?! -squee- I <3 M.S.! -sigh- I wish they had left it in...

[Dreamy NiGHTS]

Maybe you guys can find out why the

Spoiler

NiGHTS into Dreams soundtrack is in there?

Is there any specfic reason, or just for fun?

EDIT: How does one hack a game? I mean I would do it, just i don't know how? What kind of DVD drive do we need? I'm thinking of getting a new computer, so maybe I'll keep an eye out for that has that drive. And I also have no problem downloading torrents. I just don't have the experience, but I do have the time.

[Sand3]

Apparently this is called 'necroing' a thread (i learned a new word today?)

I am not a hacker (sorry) I have no skill at all for that, I'm dyslexic so programming is not a thing I'm well equpipped for. Where I thrive is in the 3D, and so I am very interested in getting hacks for the game because I was not happy with the video quality of the cut-scenes (except for the opening and closing ones, of course) and I want to basically remake a lot of the cut-scenes in high-poly for the purposes of AMVs... If somebody could get me into the geometries and motion-library of the game, I would totally turn around and share back what I create starting with those as a base (I would probably be rebuilding most of the character meshes from scratch, but using the originals as a guide for proportions and such.)

On a similar note, it has been stated in this thread a couple of times that there are hacks around for the Saturn game and I was wondering if anybody could direct me more precicely towards one and maybe give me some tips on how to use it, for the same reasons. I have the Saturn disk easily at hand, so if it can be accessed with a standard CD/DVD drive, I should be able to make short work of it. If anyone would help me with that but does not want to publicly say 'OH HEY, LET ME HELP YOU DO SOMETHING ILLEGAL!' you can give me a PM and I would love you forever.

[Jof]

Hmm. Yeah, this thread has been dead for a pretty long time, so I'd rather it was left there TBH. As for the hacking scene, we actually did it. Well, Malan and Kentilan did it as far as I know. We got a whole bunch of unused plot points, cutescenes and missions out of it. If theres something in the game you want a closer look at, they two are to folks to contact (however I think Kentilan has since left the board).

I'll try and find the thread where this all happened, but for now I'm locking the topic. If you want to continue this idea, start up a topic in the creative forum