Sonic Chronicles leaked...

Apparently an ARM7 patch from Sim Creations fixes it, but I wouldn't have a clue on what that means.

 

I know what it means. I'll try to fix it real quick.

 

Maybe tinkering around with the save sizes might help?

 

Would you be able to upload it after? Preferably on some personal space rather then megaupload or something? that would be awesome.

 

So... any good?

 

You guys should probably play this game. It's REALLY good.

Also, so far I've heard Tidal Tempest Past and Diamond Dust Genesis remixes.


As for the game itself: Awesome art, awesome conversations (Bioware <3), excellent & suprisingly fast paced battle system (at one point, I fought 3 enemies. After killing 2, the last one runs, and you CHASE after him in a running minigame, whereupon the battle continues if you caught him), tons of references to all games in the series, old and new. This is everything I wanted from a Sonic RPG. Count me in as satisfied.

Bioware strikes gold yet again. I will be buying this for sure.


Oh, also the encyclopedia in the game explains how Angel Island got up in the air. Rad.

 

Trust me Shade, we are all TRYING to play this game right now D=

 

To anybody with an R4, having problems: Tried upgrading it to the latest firmware? Always solved the problem for me.

 

1.18 is the latest, and it doesn't work. It definitely needs that sim ARM7 patch, I've seen people talk about it's success on other sites with Sonic Chronicles.

 

Alright! Got it working.

If anyone wants it, I'll try uploading it later. Right now my internets are on the fritz.

 

So DimensionWarped, it needs the ARM7 file swapped for the one in the Sim Creator? Is that what you did?

 

Got it working, was using no$GBA v 2.5, you need 2.6 or higher to get it to run right, plus you gotta fix the save mode, but, that was already explained earlier how to, so, I am not gonna reiterate it, but, it is working fine for me now with the newer version and is very fun. Not traditional sonic, as it is an RPG, but, a very faithful conversion of it into an RPG format and a very good game

 

All well and good for emulators, at least.

 

The same trick has been used to get other games to work, another that I can think of is Zelda when that first came out.
Official developers aren't allowed to run code on the ARM7, games always use Nintendo's binary from the SDK which controls sound, wifi and other hardware. So Sonic Chronicles is probably using a newer version of the SDK that has some protection against flashcarts that haven't been updated.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that you don't need to take the ARM7 from the Sims. You should be able to use the ARM7 from any other official ROM you have lying around and provided it's new enough the binary will be similar enough to work. When Zelda game out there were quite a few games you could take the ARM7 from, and someone even wrote a tool that would do everything for you. (You give it a rom, it extracts the ARM7 and replaces it in another.) So if you don't have the Sims, go ahead and try some other games you've got, preferably something new-ish.

Edit: Oh, tested and works fine on DSTT with latest firmware.

 

Disregard, sorry. Seems to be the emulator causing me problems, and not the game.

 

Not me. Not like this. I'd either have to get a DS and flash cart, or wait until DS emulation becomes feasible.

 

Tiyuri just registered here to let us know how to do it.


"I just signed up to the forum so I could explain to everyone how to patch Arm7 in sonic chronicles.
Unfortunately the admins of this forum apparently require me to jump through validation hoops, complete with condescending messages in order to do so.
So I've decided not to bother.

However, I'll PM you the fix, so you can pass it on.

Basically you need a number of things.

1. Sonic Chronicles rom
2. DS lazy (requires .net) - http://blog.dev-scene.com/ratx/archives/category/dslazy
3. Patched arm7 file - http://holidaygamerz.zoomshare.com/files/MaxCrassMethod.zip MIRROR: http://www.mediafire.com/?tcbcmilyjnw


Now all you do, is run DSlazy, open your sonic chronicles rom file in it, and click "unpack".
This will unpack the .nds file and allow you to access all the individual files in the rom.
DS lazy will automatically open the directory it has unpacked too.

You will see arm7.bin in the root directory. Replace this arm7.bin with the one linked above.
Make sure you leave DSLazy open.
Then click the Pack button, DSlazy will repack the files into an NDS rom and prompt you for the file name.

Pick a file name, toss it on your microSD and plonk it into your R4, make sure you're running firmware 1.1.8

This worked for me, no reason it won't work for you.
Good luck"

 

Too bad that I validated him and he decided not to post despite having the ability to.

 

I'll post to let you know that the game is surprisingly entertaining.
This is coming from someone who hasn't enjoyed a single modern sonic game, and generally doesn't enjoy RPGs all that much either.

The game has a very "classic sonic" feel to it, which is interesting.

The graphics are great (though the screen scroll seems somewhat jerky, but its not that big a deal)
The text is wonderful and goes a long way to making the game what it is (typical intelligent bioware dialogue)
The music is good
The sound effects are irritating

The battle mechanics are interesting, the fights are pretty cool, the "chase the enemy" thing is too simplistic, but it's not irritating enough to spoil it.
I'm wondering if the fight mechanics will become monotonous after a while, but right now its fresh and interesting.

All in all, I was expecting a trainwreck and instead I got something worth playing.
One thing that amuses me, is the feeling I get that bioware has better defined the personalities of the newer sonic characters, in the first 20 minutes of the game than sega has managed too in several years.

Oh, and bioware need to learn to use some anti aliasing on their 2d portrait images, especially with the white outline, holy hell.