Dumping Nokia N-Gage games

General No-Intro related discussions.
Post Reply
StriderSkorpion
Posts: 9
Joined: 08 Apr 2025 05:31

Dumping Nokia N-Gage games

Post by StriderSkorpion »

I was just curios what might be considered the proper way of dumping N-Gage games. The old DAT by SolidSnake just hashes the individual files while the file in the WIP DAT on the Dat-o-Matic used dd. I've personally used Win32DiskImager to make full images of the cards. I don't have Worms World Party, so I can't compare exactly, but I noticed that its first 240 bytes are all 00h while all the games I've dumped start with:

Code: Select all

FA 33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C 8B F4 50 07 50 1F FB FC
BF 00 06 B9 00 01 F2 A5 EA 1D 06 00 00 BE BE 07
B3 04 80 3C 80 74 0E 80 3C 00 75 1C 83 C6 10 FE
CB 75 EF CD 18 8B 14 8B 4C 02 8B EE 83 C6 10 FE
CB 74 1A 80 3C 00 74 F4 BE 8B 06 AC 3C 00 74 0B
56 BB 07 00 B4 0E CD 10 5E EB F0 EB FE BF 05 00
BB 00 7C B8 01 02 57 CD 13 5F 73 0C 33 C0 CD 13
4F 75 ED BE A3 06 EB D3 BE C2 06 BF FE 7D 81 3D
55 AA 75 C7 8B F5 EA 00 7C 00 00 49 6E 76 61 6C
69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61 62
6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E 67
20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65
6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74
69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 00 00 00 00 00
I just want to make sure there aren't any issues before I attempt to submit the games to the database. If there is a better or more reliable way to do this on Windows, please let me know.
sCZther
Posts: 155
Joined: 16 Jun 2014 21:09

Re: Dumping Nokia N-Gage games

Post by sCZther »

I know there is some security metadata that only AARU supports for dumping and only on a certain chipset of readers. But it still errors with some of the early games (eg. tomb raider).
StriderSkorpion
Posts: 9
Joined: 08 Apr 2025 05:31

Re: Dumping Nokia N-Gage games

Post by StriderSkorpion »

So, I compared my results to Aaru dumps found on Archive.org converted to RAW disc images. I also compared the Worms dump with the one in DoM. I found that the images matched, it's just that the Aaru images also contain the CID, CSD, and OCR from the MMC. Is this information utilized in the copy protection? If so, then I don't think one could make a 1:1 copy of the game on another MMC card. This is because I believe, and correct if I'm wrong, (most of) that information is set by the manufacturer. Of course, I don't know if these Aaru dumps are missing any necessary information or not. On a side note, the difference with Worms and my games must be specific to the games themselves and not the backup software.

Edit: Of course, I'm not saying that information shouldn't be collected. Though, it's overall importance really depends on if it is indeed used for copy protection or not.
Post Reply