Theory on Gamecube compatibility issues for imports (GC and WII)
I have owned GC imports (from Japan) in the past, and yesterday I got my first Japanese Wii import. However, there is a common problem that I feel I must address to the community, one that I think is most likely a dead end.
You see, there has been some issues getting GC imports to properly function on a system, whether it be a GC with Freeloader or a softmodded Wii with Gecko OS. I willl cite three examples from experience.
Cubic Lode Runner
Seems to boot OK and runs fine, but the titles of save files and some of the system messages are scrambled on US/EU systems.
Mr. Driller: Drill Land
Same issues except the garbled text is to a much greater extent here, and more importantly, the memory card must be formatted in the Japanese language to be usable. However, it still runs OK.
Shikigami no Shiro II
This one was totally broken. I tried it on both a US Gamecube and a US softmodded Wii. The former worked somewhat with Freeloader, although I can't remember if it required a memory card format, but it too suffered from the garbled text issue, and occasional crashing. However, on Wii softmod the situation is much worse: the game has all the same issues but there is no music and will usually crash immediately before starting a game or even during the save/load screen. Usually a system reboot is required.
From what I've learned, Gamecube systems only contain the font/text of their respective region, with no universal standard pre-installed. It leads me to believe that some games are so dependent on the fact that certain text strings in the game data must be read in a specific encoding that only a Japanese BIOS supports, so that they will refuse to load certain functions entirely. However, this is not always the case.
Wii contains but also recycles Gamecube components for its respective region, thus the font problem still exists.
But what about Gecko OS? I found that the Language Switch during its boot menu is only applicable to Wii imports which appearantly contain the essential text/fonts pre-installed on the disc. Thus it is independant of the system itself, at least to an extent, but this function never worked for me regarding the Gamecube games in question.
P.S: I thought I'd suffer a similar problem with playing Wii imports when I load my copy of Earth Seeker into my Wii with Gecko OS. I loaded it with default settings and got a scrambled system message. Exited the program then tried again with the language set to Japanese. The iOS displayed Japanese text in the in-game system menu, but still the same message. I suspected that it may be asking me to plug in a compatible controller (in this case, the Classic Pro) and it did indeed boot normally afterwards. Not sure if the language settings made any difference. However, aside from the bootup system message, everything in-game looked fine with all text in Japanese as should be, and even the save file on my Wii displays the title in visible kana.
You see, there has been some issues getting GC imports to properly function on a system, whether it be a GC with Freeloader or a softmodded Wii with Gecko OS. I willl cite three examples from experience.
Cubic Lode Runner
Seems to boot OK and runs fine, but the titles of save files and some of the system messages are scrambled on US/EU systems.
Mr. Driller: Drill Land
Same issues except the garbled text is to a much greater extent here, and more importantly, the memory card must be formatted in the Japanese language to be usable. However, it still runs OK.
Shikigami no Shiro II
This one was totally broken. I tried it on both a US Gamecube and a US softmodded Wii. The former worked somewhat with Freeloader, although I can't remember if it required a memory card format, but it too suffered from the garbled text issue, and occasional crashing. However, on Wii softmod the situation is much worse: the game has all the same issues but there is no music and will usually crash immediately before starting a game or even during the save/load screen. Usually a system reboot is required.
From what I've learned, Gamecube systems only contain the font/text of their respective region, with no universal standard pre-installed. It leads me to believe that some games are so dependent on the fact that certain text strings in the game data must be read in a specific encoding that only a Japanese BIOS supports, so that they will refuse to load certain functions entirely. However, this is not always the case.
Wii contains but also recycles Gamecube components for its respective region, thus the font problem still exists.
But what about Gecko OS? I found that the Language Switch during its boot menu is only applicable to Wii imports which appearantly contain the essential text/fonts pre-installed on the disc. Thus it is independant of the system itself, at least to an extent, but this function never worked for me regarding the Gamecube games in question.
P.S: I thought I'd suffer a similar problem with playing Wii imports when I load my copy of Earth Seeker into my Wii with Gecko OS. I loaded it with default settings and got a scrambled system message. Exited the program then tried again with the language set to Japanese. The iOS displayed Japanese text in the in-game system menu, but still the same message. I suspected that it may be asking me to plug in a compatible controller (in this case, the Classic Pro) and it did indeed boot normally afterwards. Not sure if the language settings made any difference. However, aside from the bootup system message, everything in-game looked fine with all text in Japanese as should be, and even the save file on my Wii displays the title in visible kana.
Comments
I was thinking of modding my GC to play other games myself, but after hearing this, I might save up the few extra shipping to get an import console.
Would doing a region mod on a game cube console have the same results with those games listed as well? I've yet to dabble with imports on NGC or Wii.
Most compatibility issues actually result from running games under conditions their developer didn't intend. Though there are of course problematic converters, like on SNES lacking the pins for Super FX.
In the case of GC, its region switch between English and Japanese is an official feature of NTSC devkits. Just restores functionality your console had all along.
Other than that a few will display japanese text. Notably Star Fox Adventures and Xenoblade.
Edit: replaced "language setting" with "region setting", because that's what it is. Sorry about that!