How Is Spyro YOTD USA Detecting PAL?

General Programming help in C, C++ or ASM, Compiling / Debugging, and R3000A Central Processing Unit (CPU) information
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alexfree
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How Is Spyro YOTD USA Detecting PAL?

Post by alexfree » May 22nd, 2023, 12:47 pm

The idea is, some games are completely disabling their anti-piracy protections when detecting a PAL BIOS. You can literally run Spyro YOTD USA with a PAL BIOS and it runs 0 AP code (at least at startup, that's all I've looked at so far).
It is simply reading for the BIOS region byte and disabling the code.
Last edited by alexfree on September 12th, 2023, 5:33 am, edited 2 times in total.

alexfree
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Post by alexfree » May 22nd, 2023, 2:30 pm

This could apply to other games as well since they share the same behavior

alexfree
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Post by alexfree » September 12th, 2023, 5:32 am

MottZilla looked into this and indeed this is exploitable. This is sort of how the Spyro YOTD bypass codes we came up with work, but for other games it is a bit different. MottZilla wrote a patch sequence that I did automate successfully so far:
patch.png
success.png
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alexfree
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Post by alexfree » September 12th, 2023, 3:31 pm

This is literally amazing. I just tested every single known protected USA game, and with the exception of Spyro YOTD, Vandal Hearts II and Dino Crisis every single game is patchable by faking the BIOS region byte read using my and MottZilla's new automated method (not yet released). Those exceptions however have a different method that allow them to work as well, so really Tonyhax International can finally support playing every single protected USA game on non-stealth mod-chipped consoles now with this new patch. All known protected games (Europe and Japan included) can already be played on stock, non-stealth mod-chipped consoles with International but this brings a huge amount of support for those non-stealth mod-chip consoles (I actually have one, a SCPH-5501)

Dino Crisis USA - NO
Breath Of Fire 4 (Beta) - YES
Crash Bash - YES
Cool Boarders 2001 (Retail/Demo) - YES
Disney's The Emperor's New Grove - YES
Grind Session - YES
Legend Of Dragoon - YES
MediEvil II - YES
MLB 2002 (USA/Demo) - YES
MLB 2003 (USA/Demo) - YES
MLB 2004 - YES
NBA Shootout 2001 (Retail/Demo) - YES
NBA Shootout 2002 (Retail/Demo) - YES
NBA Shootout 2003 - YES
NBA Shootout 2004 - YES
NCAA Final Four 2001 - YES
NCAA Game Breaker 2001 (Retail/Demo) - YES
NFL GameDay 2001 (Retail/Demo) - YES
NFL GameDay 2002 - YES
NFL GameDay 2003 - YES
NFL GameDay 2004 - YES
NFL GameDay 2005 - YES
NHL FaceOff 2001 (Retail/Demo) - YES
Resident Evil Survivor - YES
Spyro Year Of The Dragon - NO
Strider 2 - YES
Tomba! 2 - YES
Vandal Harts II - NO (code does generate but locks up game)
Wild Arms II (Retail/Demo) - YES
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories - YES

Also, as a side effect of how the existing Dino Crisis and Spyro YOTD bypasses work in International already, I'll be able to implemented a 100% USA protected games working compatibility on non-stealth mod-chip consoles. The 2 games that don't work with this method already completely skip the anti-piracy routines!

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