Another day, another extracting ROMs from GameCube titles mini-tutorial. This time it’s the PAL Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker Bonus Disc that I recently purchased from Kraków, Poland. This disc contains two N64 games: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the “Master Quest” version of Ocarina of Time. Let’s extract those ROMs from the GameCube ROM so we can play on other emulators.

Going from a GameCube disc to an ISO ROM is the usual process, for me that means using the FlippyDrive Disc Backup Utility but CleanRip on a GameCube or Wii also works. To extract the individual files from the ISO open the ISO in Dolphin, right-click the ISO, Properties, Filesystem, and extract the zlj_f.tgc file into your working directory.

According to The Cutting Room Floor both N64 ROMs are included in the file zlj_f.tgc. TGC is an archive format that Nintendo uses often in this generation of games. Thanks to resources like No Intro we have the known-good ROM lengths and hashes for both Ocarina of Time and Master Quest for all regions. Using this information (along with the N64 ROM header) we can find the embedded N64 ROMs within zlj_f.tgc without understanding the TGC format at all.

The script which I’ve included in the full blog post knows about the ROM hashes for the PAL revision of the Bonus Disc, so if you see Unknown ROM (...), don't panic! You can search the MD5 you receive on No Intro by filtering on hash-data to discover whether the ROM is correct and add the value to ROM_HASHES in the script.

With my Master Quest ROM in hand I can load the game into Delta Emulator and play on my iPhone:

I won’t be playing much because I have never played Ocarina of Time before and want to play the upcoming remake for the Nintendo Switch 2 with a completely blank slate. I’m excited to try one of the most universally acclaimed games ever made for the first time soon! :)

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Pokémon cards were on the mind the past few weeks! My brother is a collector so we've been discussing the different artists and sets that he's interested in. While I was doing research I came across two websites that seemed useful for this: collating Pokémon set symbols and Pokémon card artwork by artist. A comedic graphic design YouTuber “Elliot” also published a new video about Pokémon’s graphic designs which I found entertaining.

I purchased “htmx 4: the game”, the first JavaScript library published exclusively to the Nintendo Game Boy platform. The package (hah) arrives today and I plan to post about the experience with the game and discussing the form factor as a software distribution mechanism, look forward to that blog post soon.

I found a Game Boy Link Cable to internet adapter hardware project which looks intriguing if you've got friends that are far away that you still want to play Generation 3 Pokémon with (Pokémon Emerald forever). This hardware enables trading, battling, record mixing, and more by pretending to be your peer in a GBA Link Cable connection.