So I bought one of the 2003 GameCube Catalog discs...

[Air Conditioner]

I feel as though my entire life has been building up to this. I got to the screen where you can download the character chao. I have an image link but Chao Island won't let me post it.

My GBA transfer cable arrives tomorrow... I'll keep you guys updated as to if you can transfer to an American SA2:B

[Mamkute]

This sounds really exciting. I am sorry you can't post any pictures- I believe you have to have made 5 or more posts to post images. I encourage you to make some (non-spammy) posts so that we may see this, because it sounds really cool.

Which character chao is this for? Both Knuckles and Amy, or just one? How did you obtain this, or is it a secret?
And definitely keep updated.

[Air Conditioner]

This will get you a Tails, Knuckles, or Amy chao via link cable. It apparently also gifts you 1000 rings upon the chao arriving in SA2:B.

[chaoadventures]

That's amazing! How'd you find that disk?
I remember we had a topic about the Character Chao being distributed through that disk.
But I never thought anyone would ever get there hands on it.

That also makes me think, how are you using that disk? Do you have a Japanese GameCube or something?

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

^According to a quick Google search, there is a boot disc for bypassing the Gamecube's region locking. The bigger issue is whether or not the Downloadable TCG is region locked.

[Air Conditioner]

I use a soft-modded Wii that allows for booting of custom software via an exploit in the Wii's main menu.

I was able to transfer the chao into a JAP copy of SA2B but not and American one :/ but! There is still hope. I'm going to try and find/create some Action Replay codes that will change the "region" of the game without changing the graphics etc.

It did work though it may just take a process.

[ChaoGardenBuster]

This is a nice find, if you can somehow in someway you can manage to get that on PC this would be great! I would love to do some experimenting.

[Air Conditioner]

I'd love to link you to this .iso but I don't have 5 posts yet XD I'll go put my opinions somewhere and come back. It'll be a few hours b/c I have to rip the .iso from the disc and then upload it.

[chaoadventures]

Hm. Does the Chao have to be in the downloaded Garden?

What if you could put the Chao in a copy of Sonic Advance (Or the other games with a Tiny Chao Garden) and then transferred it to
an English version of SA2B since the GBA itself isn't region locked. Or even used the downloaded garden SA2B gives you?

Or maybe SADX accepts the Chao? That doesn't seem likely, but it might work.

[Air Conditioner]

That's actually a really good idea to try SADX. I'll go test it

[Air Conditioner]

Tried SADX: no dice. My next test is to transfer the character chao from JAP SA2B to my American Sonic Advanced. I'm not too hopeful on this.

EDIT: I hope to have the GC catalog .iso dumped by tomorrow... I was very busy today and had no time. Thanks for the patience.

[Air Conditioner]

ALRIGHT as my third and final post for the night I include this video:
https://youtu.be/OHwFVmA69dc
It's just a minute long video of me showing the transfer from the 2003 catalog disc to my GBA.

Let's get on to the details

What I have tried and doesn't allow transfer to Ameican SA2B/SADX:
•Transferring to a copy of USA Sonic Advanced on GBA
•Transferring to USA SA2B from the catalog disk GBA TCG
•Transferring to USA SADX from catalog disk GBA TCG
•Transferring from catalog TCG to JAP SA2B and then to USA SA2B
•Transferring from catalog TCG to JAP SA2B and then to USA SA2B

What I would like to try/going to try:
•messing with the language settings on both JAP and USA SA2B and SADX
•trying Sonic Advanced 2,3 and Pinball party (whatever the pinball one is called) to see if possibly they could produce different results directly from the catalog disc of from the JAP SA2B/SADX because they have different TCGs
•try JAP SADX instead of JAP SA2B to see if possibly their TCG GBA files that are transferred are different (I just need to obtain a JAP SADX .iso)
•Trying EUR/international SADX and SA2B to see if I get different results. I'm going to find every different release and version of these games XD (this is a very possible solution imo)

"Cheating" last resorts to get it working:
•modify the internal regions on the .iso of the catalog disc, SA2B or SADX to trick it. (No clue how difficult this would be)
•ActionReplay/Gecko code that changes the region of the disc (kind of pointless being you can just hack in a character chao via AR and gecko codes) (also no clue how hard this would be.)

Im going to keep thinking of other possible ways of doing this and I'll add them as I think of them

PS: I don't own Sonic Advanced 2,3 or pinall party so if any of you tech-savy people with the means of loading the catalog .iso and a JAP SA2B or SADX when I upload the catalog disc (soon. hopefully this weekend) could try it with those games via link cable and the JAP copies of the game that would be awesome to rule them out or find a solution.

My rant before I go:
I would like to point out how insanely pointless and stupid it is that SEGA implemented region locking into the TCG. There is no purpose of doing this that I can think of other than to prevent this which I doubt they had in mind. Maybe Nintendo had a say in GBA linking and regions and if they did this, you make me upset Nintendo. With a simple click of the language button in the option menu, the JAP versions of the Sonic Adventure games instantly "transform" into the USA versions and vice versa. (Minus some very very small localization stuff). If you're going to go through the effort of including basically the JAP and USA version in both regions disks, it's extremely ignorant to block content exclusive to their regions, and especially things like this.

Okay I'm done with this post. Feel free to ask any questions.

[Crazo3077]

If you get the chance, i do recommend trying either Sonic Advance 2 or Sonic Pinball Party, because they use an updated version of the TCG, but it is the same as the downloadable version from SADX, with different mini-games.

My current speculation is that the region blocking wasn't intentional. It may simply be an incompatibility issue tied into how games are given their languages. I don't know if, for example, Japanese versions of Pokemon games can interact with English versions of the same Pokemon games, so I don't know if we can blame SEGA. They also might not have expected someone to have machines from the two separate regions, so it just wasn't something they tested for or cared to implement.

I wish you luck, because it'd be incredible to see this work out, but I also acknowledge that it won't be surprising if there isn't much success. I still speculate that we might sooner for hidden TCGs in other SEGA titles on Gamecube, like how PSO has the Tails Chao.

[chaoadventures]

If you do get a copy of Sonic Advance 2 or Pinball Party, make sure to get Pinball Party, because you have to unlock the Tiny Chao Garden in Advance 2, and anyone who's done that will tell you that's really far from enjoyable.

[DarkyBenji]

excellent ! i need that iso so i can export those special chao to PC on .chao file

[Air Conditioner]

https://mega.nz/#!UAtBmByY!NLHPiuD_UZtZ ... jFBThI2AJo

Here you guys go. This is the 2003 Catalog Disc. I had no time to test any other methods but I got a PAL SA2B.

[DarkyBenji]

https://mega.nz/#!UAtBmByY!NLHPiuD_UZtZ ... jFBThI2AJo

Here you guys go. This is the 2003 Catalog Disc. I had no time to test any other methods but I got a PAL SA2B.

thx for the iso ! now let's get those chao

[DarkyBenji]

alright so i have the iso, work great with Dolphin i also manage to get character chao with VisualBoyAdvance-M





with the iso of SA2B Jap, i extract those characters chao into my jap chao gc save
and convert the save, to the pc version





they start with A rank (normal and DNA) lvl 1, 250 points for all (like pso tails)
and +20 on happiness and sonic bond (not other characters for some reason)

the intelligence and luck have grade 255 (the max) and lvl 1, 250 points

successfully extract from the 2003 GameCube Catalog discs, let me share the download link
http://www.mediafire.com/download/21722 ... A2B+PC.zip

use fusion edit to import .chao file to SADX PC or SA2B PC

[ChaoGardenBuster]

It's gonna take awhile for my chao to get used to this...

[chaoadventures]

Wait. What if we put that converted file back on the NTSC/PAL game file?

Since we can transfer Chao between Steam and GC versions, that's probably not too hard right?

[DarkyBenji]

Wait. What if we put that converted file back on the NTSC/PAL game file?

Since we can transfer Chao between Steam and GC versions, that's probably not too hard right?

it's possible but kinda glitchy for pc to GC (work for all region)
but yeah now that i convert those chao to pc, we can get them by convert back to GC (for pal, ntsc-u)

[Air Conditioner]

That define let looks like a solution... I would still very much enjoy if it could be done only using Nintendo hardware without mods.

Really good job Benji :)

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

Presently, it sounds like Action Replay is still the most convenient method of obtaining Knuckles or Amy on US/EURO versions of the Gamecube games(And probably the most convenient for Tails even if PSO still works for a non-hacked method).

Here's a thought:
How is Gamecube region locking handled on the disc side? If it's something hardcoded into the discs themselves, there's probably not much that can be done, but if it's done via region coding in the ISO, we might be able to hack the iso the TC ripped to make versions compatible with US/EURO Gamecubes(This is of course, assuming a means of playing burnt discs on unmodded Gamecubes or unmodified Wiis in Gamecube mode exists). Granted, this likely won't fix the TCGs downloaded from the Catalog disc being incompatible with non-Japanese games, but I have an idea for that as well: As I understand it, Gamecube games with GBA downloads contain roms for each downloadable game. Perhaps if someone did a hexdiff on the downloadable TCGs that come from the same game but different regions, perhaps we could track down region coding that prevents one from say, downloading a TCG from SADXUS and then uploading the Chao to SADXJP or vice versa. This might allow us to hack the TCG roms on the Catalog disc to work with US or Euro versions of the Gamecube games. Combined, these things might allow us to created a hacked version of the catalog disc that would only need a burnt disc or ISO loader to get the Character Chao from the disc to the Gamecube games of the player's region. Granted, I have no idea how well this would work in practice, but at least it might mean we can avoid double conversion of the Chao's data.

[Air Conditioner]

Adding to this, since pretty much everyone would be downloading the catalog disc for general use other than myself it would be fix the issue from the root.

[Air Conditioner]

I just did a dump of the 2003 Disc .iso... They didn't seem to be fantastic at using Nintendo's libraries all of the assets are .png or .jog rather than gamecubes proprietary format which is .tpl I believe. It makes sense considering it was a mail-ordered disc lol. I've located the .tgc for the chao transfer and I'm currently dumping my personal copies of USA SA2B and USA SADX to dump those games as well go get their .tgc files and compare to hopefully edit their hex as suggested and make them compatible. I could also translate the images to make it a bit easier to navigate to the Chao transfer.

One last interesting thing, this disc maybe have an English option that I missed... Their seems to be English counterparts for the menus that I never saw.

More info to come.

EDIT: I may have been wrong in assuming the .tgc is the file that controls the GBA transfer but it is definitely related.