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Almost Fifteen years later Nintendo's iQue Player has been hacked.

competentcuttlefish

competentcuttlefish

Member
Oct 25, 2017
632


A console ROM release group known as SUXXORS released not only the iQue Player's SDK, but the 14 commercially available games plus a fifteenth game whose identity was previously unknown. The games are:

Wave Race 64
Star Fox 64
Dr. Mario 64
Super Mario 64
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Mario Kart 64
F-Zero X
Yoshi's Island
Paper Mario
Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Earth
Excitebike 64
Super Smash Bros.
Custom Robo
Animal Crossing

Star Fox 64 is notably because it received brand new voice acting. This version of Ocarina of Time is also popular in the speedrunning community, if I understand correctly, because text boxes are faster than any other version of the game. The fifteenth game is an unreleased Chinese Traditional translation of Ocarina of Time. This suggests that the iQue Player was planned for release in Taiwan although those plans never materialized.

In addition to decrypting the ROMs, it looks like homebrew software is possible now.



So what does this all mean? Not much imo. But the iQue Player is a part of Nintendo's history that hasn't been explored very deeply so it's great to see this work being done.
 

Pokémon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,681
I am surprised that they haven't hacked it earlier. That's nice though, I guess you will now be able to play all N64 games.
 
Kiddo Cabbusses

Kiddo Cabbusses

Member
Nov 3, 2017
376
BS-X
I've been fiddling around with these. I'll give some notes on some things you may want to know before checking them:

1) From what I can tell, besides StarFox, the one other game I noted that has distinct voice acting is, of all things, F-Zero X. iQue Mario 64 uses the USA version's voice acting (even including the English version of Peach's letter.), as does Smash Bros. (including USA-version specific "cartoony" sfx, and Sin and Punishment is likewise voiced in English.)
2) The games all also came with their manuals. From what I've managed the manuals can open in 1964 and MAME.
3) Compatibility is a bit messy. Project 64 can boot Star Fox, F-Zero X and Dr. Mario. Mupen can boot many of the games P64 can't. It seems for some reason nothing can boot Paper Mario. And...
4) Currently it is not possible to SRAM save on anything. Remember to use savestates!
 
Pein

Pein

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,235
NYC
I've never even heard of this thing lol

So that's dope that they're doing a really niche system, I understand why there wasn't a emulator for this though, it's basically a n64 in a controller? So you could cut to the chase and do the 64 version, but this is geek mode to the max and I gmdig it for that reason alone.
 

FormatCompatible

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,071
Man, that's really awesome to see.

I wonder if the iQue roms can be booted in a N64 with everdrive?
 
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