Post #4930 · Tue 121204 153339
Originally posted by Montas1992
The ROM is basically the original file itself. It can be played in a PC emulator but it won't have any music since the sound is split into a PCM file.
Interesting. Is the sound any different than the original game? I'm not sure what advantage there would be to splitting it into a separate file instead of emulating it... possibly a speed hack? Or some kind of copy protection trick, similar to NES arcade hardware's scrambled palettes, to prevent people just grabbing the ROMs out of the VC images and using them, but I think they could do a lot more than just cut out the sound in that case.
The other file is the VAR file which basically makes any changes to the original rom. One example is on F-ZERO, the VAR file modifiers the game so the screen doesn't flash black every time you hit a wall.
This is especially interesting... so the ROM is patched to disable sounds, but there's also a separate patch file? That especially seems like the only reason to modify the ROM itself would be for anti-piracy purposes. Or are these not simple patches, but something else?
Some of the VC releases like Donkey Kong Country do have the original rom in there as well (aka the .smc / .sfc file) and actually play fine on a PC emulator. However they just take up more Wii blocks and can actually be deleted and repacked.
...then they go and include the unpatched ROM as well, and don't even use it? WTF Nintendo... don't tell me they use .smc extension and copier header too. :V
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