Nintendo GameCube Guide

Nintendo GameCube console

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Attribution: Evan-Amos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Definition

The Nintendo GameCube is Nintendo's first optical disc based console released in 2001. Discs for the Nintendo GameCube are Mini DVD-ROMs with a capacity of about 1.4GB. Nintendo licensed the hardware to Panasonic who released the Panasonic Q, a combo Nintendo GameCube/DVD-Video player, exclusively in Japan in late 2001. Datel released several unlicensed discs for the Nintendo GameCube that bypassed the console's disc detection. Discs for the Nintendo GameCube are not typically readable by normal PC DVD-ROM drives, but some drives like the OmniDrive can be tricked into reading them.

Comments

• <b>Internal Serial</b>: or [T:ISN]—This is the "Filename" output from Cleanrip or the "Game ID" displayed in dolphin.
  • Format is XXXXYY—XXXX is the normal 4 character serial printed on label, YY is the 2 character Publisher ID.
• <b>Internal Name</b>:—Can be obtained in Isobuster as volume label, in Cleanrip output, or in Dolphin.
• <b>Cover ID</b>:—This is the ID printed on the cover of the case (or sleeve). This is more useful for European discs than USA/Japan discs, as they can help determine between regional variants (France, Germany, UK, Scandinavia, etc).
• <b>Additional BCA</b>:—This is for extra BCA data from verifications. Only post the last line of the BCA as the rest are 0x00. Put the BCA in a <tt></tt> monospace formatting block, and separate BCAs with a new line and a dash.

Ringcodes

• 102E2205<tab>DOL-102P-0-0X JPN<tab>S0—The bold character indicates Revision number. Add revision to datname and version field if non-zero (Rev X)
• Second character in Mastering SID is a Q not an O.
• Mould SIDs follow the following pattern: IFPI V9xy where X is a letter and Y is a number. There may be outliers that don't follow this format, but by-and-large this is the format they follow.
• MADE IN USA<tab>PDSC.CA—This is a period, not a comma. (Needs confirmation)

Editions

USA/CAN

• Original -> Black spine, no Best Seller or Player's Choice
• Player's Choice -> Yellow spine, no Best Seller
• Original (Best Seller) -> Black Spine, "Best Seller" badge on the front cover
• Player's Choice (Best Seller) -> Yellow Spine, "Best Seller" badge on the front cover

Serials

Example: DL-DOL-G4BE-1-USA-02

• DL: Present only on Disc Label
• DOL: Generic ID for GameCube (DOLphin)
• G4BE: 4 character ID for specific game, breakdown below.
• 1: Can be 0 or 1, only present on 2 Disc games (Resident Evil 4)
• USA: Region identifier, guide below.
• 02: Label variant, does not guarantee data difference.

Game ID

XYYZ

If unique, (nearly) guaranteed to be unique dump.

• X
  • D: Demo
  • E: Demo, used because they ran out of combination of Game IDs starting with D
  • G: Game
  • P: Promo
  • U: Game Boy Player

• YY
  • Any combination of A-Z and 0-9
  • Specific per game

• Z
  • D: Germany
  • E: USA or NTSC-U
  • F: France
  • H: Netherlands
  • I: Italy
  • J: Japan or NTSC-J
  • M: Sweden
  • P: Europe or PAL
  • S: Spain
  • U: Australia
  • W: Korea
  • X: Europe (Alt Lang)
  • Y: Europe (Alt Lang 2)

Serial Regions

Different region does not mean different disc data.

• AUS: Australia
• DIS: Display (Kiosk)
• ESP: Spain
• EUR: Europe
• EUT: Europe (Alt?)
• EUU: Europe (Alt 2?)
• FAH: France and Holland (Benelux?)
• FRA: France
• HOL: Holland (Netherlands)
• ITA: Italy
• JPN: Japan
• KOR: Korea
• MSA: Latin America (Mexico / South America?)
• NOE: Germany (Nintendo of Europe?)
• SWE: Sweden
• UKV: United Kingdom?
• USA: United States

bca2txt

Python script for converting a .bca file to a .txt file for easy copy/pasting to Redump.

Save code below as bca2txt.py, and drag-and-drop .bca file onto script to produce FILE.bca.txt

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import os

if (len(sys.argv) != 2):
	print('usage: ' + os.path.basename(__file__) + ' <64-byte BCA file>')
	sys.exit(1)

bca_file_size = os.path.getsize(sys.argv[1])
if (bca_file_size != 64):
	print("BCA file is not 64 bytes")
	sys.exit(1)

bca_file = open(sys.argv[1], 'rb')
txt_file = open(sys.argv[1] + '.txt', 'w')
for x in range(4):
	for y in range(8):
		val = bca_file.read(2)
		txt_file.write(bytes(val).hex().upper())
		if (y != 7):
			txt_file.write(' ')
		else:
			txt_file.write('\n')