We have figured out the compression algorithm of games by Monster Games, a company Nintendo contracted to develop games for Nintendo, and the following games have been figured out.
This was hard to figure out because we didn’t know what compression algorithm was used until we determined that it was QuickLZ by discovering a QCLZ marker in the code. When we had gotten the code to work, we found it decompressed improperly. This was because of the endianness that it uses, so we had to remove the code which checks if you’re using an x86_64 processor.
We’re quite familiar with the RST format that the compressed data is stored in. There’s a table of contents and this is used to extract it.
The current goal is to make a tool to extract and mod data in ExciteBots: Trick Racing, which is a game that’s enjoyed by a close knit community. The code we used to compress and decompress in QuickLZ 1.2.0 and 1.4.0 are here. You will have to decompress at 0x90 in the file.
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D was cracked open in 2015 but back then it was not known that it used QuickLZ and was assumed that it was a custom compression algorithm which Monster Games created. More documentation will be available here. http://metroid2002.com/retromodding/wiki/RST0_(File_Format)
Credit goes to Gamebuster which is going to work on modding ExciteBots and Aruki which originally reversed engineered the format
- Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
- ExciteBike: World Rally
- ExciteBots: Trick Racing
- Pilotwings Resort
This was hard to figure out because we didn’t know what compression algorithm was used until we determined that it was QuickLZ by discovering a QCLZ marker in the code. When we had gotten the code to work, we found it decompressed improperly. This was because of the endianness that it uses, so we had to remove the code which checks if you’re using an x86_64 processor.
We’re quite familiar with the RST format that the compressed data is stored in. There’s a table of contents and this is used to extract it.
The current goal is to make a tool to extract and mod data in ExciteBots: Trick Racing, which is a game that’s enjoyed by a close knit community. The code we used to compress and decompress in QuickLZ 1.2.0 and 1.4.0 are here. You will have to decompress at 0x90 in the file.
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D was cracked open in 2015 but back then it was not known that it used QuickLZ and was assumed that it was a custom compression algorithm which Monster Games created. More documentation will be available here. http://metroid2002.com/retromodding/wiki/RST0_(File_Format)
Credit goes to Gamebuster which is going to work on modding ExciteBots and Aruki which originally reversed engineered the format
Last edited by Larsenv,
