Earthbound Zero Question

[Avenger]

SO I'm playing Earthbound Zero on my Emulator right now, and I know about the issue regarding the game freezing up at about 80% and saying something about playing an illegal game...well my question is, if this does happen to me, can i use the save file i have with this verison of the game, and use it with the fixed version? and also is there a quick way to figure out if this is game is gunna mess up later on or not?

[AB Positive]

if it's messing up now, it's probably going to continue to do so.

I would imagine that the save file wouldn't matter which version you're playing, but I could be wrong. I don't do much in the way of emulation.

-AG

[poe]

I remember playing that right after it came out, and running into the same issue. My NESticle save states transferred over fine, but with the emus out now, I can't say for sure, and I don't recommend Nesticle anymore.

[Avenger]

wells its not messing up now and hopefully it wont. i just ill just leave it be until it starts screwing up, if it ever does. i wouldnt see why the save file wouldnt transfer over anyways

[Li Wang]

Yeah, it'll transfer fine.

The places you'll get the Nintendo nastygram if you have the original hack are:

- the first XX stone

- before the song at the Live Club

[Avenger]

thanks for the info now i can enjoy playing the game without worrying....well...enjoy it as much as i can :P...ill keep those points in mind i havent reached either of them yet

[Immutable]

Where can I find a decent copy of Earthbound 0? PM if you have to. :)

[rbudrick]

My understanding is that if it says "zero" on the title screen, you have the fixed version. Roms w/o the "zero" are probably the original version that displays the errors.

My memory is fuzzy...anyone care to elaborate?

-Rob

[GarrettCRW]

My understanding is that if it says "zero" on the title screen, you have the fixed version. Roms w/o the "zero" are probably the original version that displays the errors.

My memory is fuzzy...anyone care to elaborate?

-Rob

When the game was dumped, someone changed the title screen to add "Zero", which screwed up a checksum somewhere. Then, later on, someone went in and fiddled with the checksums so as to prevent the message.

[rbudrick]

Oh...my understanding was that there was already a checksum error in the original (in addition to the "Zero being added" checksum error) that appears in two key parts of the game. There wasn't?

-Rob

[SoulBlazer]

I've kinda wondered this also, as I have like three versions of the Earthbound ROM I got from somewhere and I wondered which version was the 'corrected' one. One says Earthbound, another says Earthbound Zero (1st ver) and the last says Earthbound Zero (2nd ver).

[Jorpho]

Interesting...

Feed http://demiforce.parodius.com to the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org , and look at the page back in 2002; you'll be able to download the "official" ROM from there. For some reason the download contains two versions; one with a CRC32 of EF228C11 and another with 6A5E39E2.

[leonk]

lostlevels.org had an article about this.

Here's the reader's digest version of the problem:

- game gets dumped
- game doesn't play well on then emulators
- game gets hacked to play on emulators
- hacked game crashes
- hacked version gets hacked somemore to not hang

the alternative to getting the most recent hack is to find the original dump and play it on current generation emulators that play the game well rather than require the hack.

Hope this helps.

[XxMe2NiKxX]

My understanding is that if it says "zero" on the title screen, you have the fixed version. Roms w/o the "zero" are probably the original version that displays the errors.

My memory is fuzzy...anyone care to elaborate?

-Rob

When the game was dumped, someone changed the title screen to add "Zero", which screwed up a checksum somewhere. Then, later on, someone went in and fiddled with the checksums so as to prevent the message.

Just thought I'd point out, there is one checksum. What it is is exactly what it sounds like.

[rbudrick]

OK, so the actual original cart didn't crash in a real NES?

-Rob