1/25/2020 N64 Decompiling with Ghidra · RetroReversing
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Home / Nintendo 64 / Decompiling Nintendo 64 Games
N64 ROM Decompiling With Ghidra - N64LoaderWV
N64 Decompiling with Ghidra
Edit on Github | Updated: 25 January 2020
Importing a Nintendo 64 ROM
Download and Install Ghidra
Before following the steps on this post please make sure you have a working
Ghidra environment setup.
So you should be able to run the script ghidraRun (contains .bat on windows)
and it should start up Ghidra.
Download the Loader
Ghidra doesn’t support Nintendo 64 ROMS out of the box, presumably because
not a lot of malware was written for the N64 and thus the NSA would never
need one.
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Luckily a user known as Warranty Voider
Retro has created a loader module which
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enables us to import N64 ROMS like any other executable 1 .
You can find it here: GitHub - zeroKilo/N64LoaderWV: Ghidra Loader Module
for N64 ROMs
On the GitHub page you need to either select clone or Download as zip , we
would suggest just downloading the zip for now.
You only need to clone if you are planning on contributing, but even then you
would probably fork first and then clone.
Import a ROM file
Find a .z64 file and import it into the project, it should come up as “N64 Loader
by Warranty Voider”, but if it comes up as “binary” then it has not been
installed correctly.
If the N64 Loader option doesn’t appear for you then you probably don’t have
JDK 12 or higher, you can either install JDK12 or build the plugin yourself on
jdk11 which is what I did and works just fine :)
Detecting N64 API signatures
After importing the game into Ghidra you will notice that all the functions have
default names that start with: FUN_ .
These names are not very helpful and we know that the games were compiled
with a version of the Official Nintendo 64 SDK, so if we could find those
libraries in the binary then we can give them useful names and help start
solving the puzzle.
Downloading pre-generated Signature files
Over on AssemblerGames there is a pack of Signature Files for N64 SDK
libraries. You can think of these as a sort of regular expression for compiled
function code. It is not always accurate but it is a great start, you can download
them from assembler games Here
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Using IDA Pro’s Signature files with ApplySig
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After downloading you will notice that these were created for the competing
Disassembler called IDA Pro . So in order to open them in Ghidra we need a
plugin, the plugin we are looking for is called ApplySig.py .
However currently the plugin ApplySig.py doesn’t work with the N64 Loader
due to the addresses as it gives the following error:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid address
0x80000450L
In order to get ApplySig to work you need a patch to ApplySig from user
celophi which is available here: Update ApplySig.py by celophi · Pull Request
#7 · NWMonster/ApplySig · GitHub
To run it you need to put the script in your home/ghidra_scripts folder and run
the “Script Manager” tool, select the checkbox beside ApplySig then click the
green run icon.
It will then ask for the *.sig file to open, make sure to select one of the sig files
that you downloaded earlier 2 .
Importing N64 Types
If you have a version of the N64 SDK then you can use the Parse C Source
feature of Ghidra to automatically import structs/classes/defines etc from C
Header files. This can save a lot of time from creating them all manually.
If there are any errors with the parsing of the C files then you will need to
locate the generated file called: CParserPlugin.out . Normally it is generated
in the current users home directory so you can run:
cat ~/CParserPlugin.out
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Setting up the memory map
By default the ghidra loader only loads the .rom, .ram and .boot, but there is
much more to the N64 memory map than these sections, and in fact your game
will use its own sections too. So it is important you know your way around the
Memory Map editor which can be viewed by selecting: Window -> Memory Map .
Here are a few default sections you might want to add:
Show entries
10 Search:
Name Start Address Length
MI_BASE 0XA300000 0x100000
RI_BASE 0xA400000 0x100000
Showing 1 to 2 of 2 entries Previous 1 Next
References
1. N64 ROM Decompiling With Ghidra - N64LoaderWV - YouTube ↩
2. Assembler Games N64 Signatures ↩
introduction tutorial n64 ghidra decompiling
0
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Name
kataxeb • a month ago
I love N64 games, like a little kid my parents buy me the console
and I play Super Mario a lot, now I play the same games but with
N64 emulator and downloading N64 ROMs. This is ana amzing
d ti l id f l i th N64 ith hid
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Importing a Nintendo 64 ROM
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Download and Install Ghidra
Download the Loader Retro Reversing
Import a ROM file
Detecting N64 API signatures
Downloading pre-generated Signature files
Using IDA Pro’s Signature files with ApplySig
Importing N64 Types
Setting up the memory map
References
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