Huge Nintendo data breach yields game source code and assets for legacy systems

Important: please only link/embed to material hosted elsewhere

Couldn't see a thread for this (probably becuase I didn't bother looking :datass:

).

A while back Nintendo had a data breach, and an anonymous poster has put some of that data online. This chunk contains:

Contents of the leak:
Full development repository for Ensata official DS emulator
\20100713cvs_backup.tar\ensata\

Full development repository for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
\20100713cvs_backup.tar\pokemon\pm_dp_ose\

Full development repository for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, ending in March of 2006
\20100713cvs_backup.tar\pokemon\pokemon_dp\

Full personal development repository by a Diamond and Pearl dev
\20100713cvs_backup.tar\pokemon\yama_work\

Full development repository for NetCard (cancelled GBA peripheral)
\netcard.7z

iQue GBA stuff

Full development repository for Game Boy Advance BIOS
\other.7z\agb_bootrom.zip\agb_bootrom

Full development repository for Game Boy Color Boot ROM
\other.7z\agb_bootrom.zip\cgb_bootrom

Full master ROM database (America and Japan, NOT Europe) for Famicom and NES including the ROMs (and I mean everything - there’s even Nintendo World Championships 1990 and gooseberry fool like that)
\other.7z\NES
\other.7z\HVC

Master ROM of Super Mario RPG

Source code to Star Fox
Source code to Star Fox 2
Source code to Link’s Awakening DX
Link’s Awakening DX bug reports
Source code to Wild Trax / Stunt Race FX
Source code to Yoshi’s Island
Source code to Mario Kart
Source code to F-Zero
Source code to TLOZ A Link to the Past
TLOZ A Link to the Past dev stuff & bug reports
Source code to Super Mario All-Stars (including Mario World?)
Source code to the Wii VC Game Boy Emulator
Some weird prototype game (“super_donkey”, from early 1993 - Yoshi’s Island style)
Super Mario Kart prototype(s)
Full development repository for a tool to upload titles to the Wii Shop Channel
“WallPaperPasswordMaker” source code
Random test program source code
Seven early 1990s tape backups
Several Super Mario World 2 prototypes - “Super Mario Bros 5: Yoshi’s Island”
eTicket signing keys for an unknown system
Private and public keys for “various arcade manufacturers”
Game Boy Advance and Iris (early 2003-era DS prototype with 1 screen) board documentation
Tons and tons of CAD documents in general relating to Nintendo products
Wii private keys?
ES/FS source code (IOS) (also a p2p/voice chat lib?)
P2p lib:
/netcard.7z/gba/depot-offline/sw/common/sdks/p2p
IOS Arm Toolchain patches:
netcard/gba/depot-offline/sw/devroot/tools
Hamtaro Ham-Hams Unite! debug build
other\CGB\B86__ハム太郎 2\Master\USA\ham2usa_020807
SuperFX Test Program (1991)

Excuse the lazy link to another site, but I'd urge you to start on page 1 of this and read through, it's absolutely fascinating.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/update ... pg.254724/

Website

Nintendo has this amazing library of classic games that gamers still want to play some two decades later and would gladly pay money for either as they were or upgraded - but they have done nothing with them.

This is a serious data breach and I would like to know the story of how this happened and why now? Perhaps the ROMS were being readied for an N64 mini.

I think this breach is from the ique player side, and they had all this data sat there as they were using some of it to port the n64 games across.

There must be some brilliant stories in here, I'd love to see the Link's Awakening source code

Been following this for a while now, some fascinating stuff coming out already. I always enjoy exploring these kinds of things - dropped content, stuff that was abandoned but still exists in some source files tucked away

Me: I don't really see what will be so interesting about a bunch of unused assets

Me 2 years hour later: THIS.IS.FASCINATING.

Nintendo are an odd company.
They have a loyal and huge fanbase that will gladly pay for re-releases and remasters and Nintendo just seem really reluctant to capitalise on that for whatever reason.
Surely they notice how much goodwill and positive feedback Microsoft are getting by putting effort into back compatibility and Nintendo could easily do the same and the fans would go bonkers.

Peter Crisp wrote:Nintendo are an odd company.
They have a loyal and huge fanbase that will gladly pay for re-releases and remasters and Nintendo just seem really reluctant to capitalise on that for whatever reason.
Surely they notice how much goodwill and positive feedback Microsoft are getting by putting effort into back compatibility and Nintendo could easily do the same and the fans would go bonkers.

I'd love to understand their thinking behind this decision. It is bonkers.

This has expanded to include a few GBA titles and N64 as well (SM64 and OOT/MJ, Waverace, F-Xero X and some others) btw, along with various official documentation and prototypical/beta builds of both hardware and software, with some documents referencing dates as late as 2016 there could be much more recent material as well.

It's pretty massive. For example some of the original art assets printed in books like Hyrule Historia are now available and you can 1:1 high resolution SGI workstation versions of user interface assets with the downscaled, compressed in-game versions, for example.

There's much more "internal" stuff in there too like SLR camera images of developers in the office, prototype electronics boards that aren't even close to working and more.

There's even the entire uncompressed audio library of Starfox 64, F Zero GX (although previously released as an official soundtrack CD), and things like that. Usually only the versions compressed for playback on the N64 in low sample rates can be obtained by decompiling the ROM.

The original cubemaps for the Ocarina of Time pre-rendered backdrops including areas that were never included in the ROM have been unearthed, as well as in-game scenes/assets from old Spaceworld demos that were never released and previously only known by fuzzy images in printed magazines in the early 90's.

That GameCube image is a prototype Wii controller for example. (I still remember Nintendo talking about "peripherals to add life to the GameCube" later in its life in NGC magazine.) I could go on.

All that said:

These assets have been illegaly obtained via hacking, social engineering or other and are Nintendo's private intellectual property originally shared under extremely strict confidence/developer NDA contracts. Given how famously litigious Nintendo are please if you must only link to material hosted elsewhere or on Twitter/social media networks etc because I don't exactly fancy an e-mail directly from Nintendo's lawyers when they swoop down to clean up this cataclysm of strawberry float that's unfolding for them as we speak, something that could happen at any time including long into the future. Discussion is 100% fine.

I think we can all agree that the best thing to come out of this is access to this wonderful piece of uncompressed audio:

Peter Crisp wrote:Nintendo are an odd company.
They have a loyal and huge fanbase that will gladly pay for re-releases and remasters and Nintendo just seem really reluctant to capitalise on that for whatever reason.
Surely they notice how much goodwill and positive feedback Microsoft are getting by putting effort into back compatibility and Nintendo could easily do the same and the fans would go bonkers.

Well, the massive rumour for this 'holiday season' is that there will be a Mario All-Stars 2 which includes a full-on Mario 64 remake.

The stuff being found now is so interesting. A Zelda Mario kart 64 track, medallions for OOT, links awakening colourisation prototypes.

Peter Crisp wrote:Nintendo are an odd company.
They have a loyal and huge fanbase that will gladly pay for re-releases and remasters and Nintendo just seem really reluctant to capitalise on that for whatever reason.
Surely they notice how much goodwill and positive feedback Microsoft are getting by putting effort into back compatibility and Nintendo could easily do the same and the fans would go bonkers.

See also: Sony, but they never get brought up in this argument for some weird reason.

Mafro wrote:See also: Sony, but they never get brought up in this argument for some weird reason.

Fair point.
I do think Nintendo have more opportunity to make money from past titles out of the two companies though.

Sony have done more than Nintendo at least

(read: I have all the ND Jak games on PS4 so I'm happy)

I'm still annoyed at how shoddy the emulation quality is for the Jak games though, Sony definitely should have done better

I've found them fine, but then I attempted to play the Vita port of the HD trilogy so I think anything else seems fine in comparison. What's the issue with them?

OrangeRKN wrote:I've found them fine, but then I attempted to play the Vita port of the HD trilogy so I think anything else seems fine in comparison. What's the issue with them?

The vita ports were so frustrating. I love the first game, and I couldn't wait to play it yet again on dat screen. The state of the input lag :dread:

Oh man, uncompressed announcer audio from F Zero X.

OrangeRKN wrote:I've found them fine, but then I attempted to play the Vita port of the HD trilogy so I think anything else seems fine in comparison. What's the issue with them?

Main issue for me is that the frame rate is not as consistent as the original games were, it's incredibly jarring in some places. There are also some straight up emulation errors as well - the final boss in Jak 2 has various graphical artefacts for example, nothing game breaking but enough to frustrate!

Huge Nintendo data breach yields game source code and assets for legacy systems

Who is online

Affiliates