The FFVII Mobile Game Initiative (2004-2008 Era)

Radigar

Pro Adventurer
It's a huge finding! Thanks @NaoyaShinota for engage with this user and keep the research alive. I'm quite surprised at the quality with which Sousi were able to capture the video, do we know how did it? Is there any possibility of preserving for now your the demo version footage with the same quality?
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
It's a huge finding! Thanks @NaoyaShinota for engage with this user and keep the research alive. I'm quite surprised at the quality with which Sousi were able to capture the video, do we know how did it? Is there any possibility of preserving for now your the demo version footage with the same quality?
He used a P-06B phone to play that game. guess that is one more phone to add to the list of compatibility. Still stuck on the W51H dumping.

Status Update on W51H
The problem with the W51H and the other one half of the phones that have been dumped, is that the manufacturer used multichip packages. JTAG accesses the NAND\NOR chip which is the first in chain as provided by the manufacturer. To switch chips, a chip select pin (and sometimes a specific command) is used. Which specifically is that pin\command is defined by the chip manufacturer. Moreover, to which of the data i\o pins of the MSM chip that chip select pin is connected is defined by the phone manufacturer.

There was also a RIFF developper who we trie to get help from to investigate the board of W51H but could not find the chip select signal although he claims to have tried all the possible i\o ports with a command which is used by default.
So, either there was a special command to switch the chip, or he might miss some port, or the timeout should be different.

I also may have a way to record audio of Before Crisis and many other phones. But we will see.
 

rockmancosmo

Lv. 1 Adventurer
AKA
Cosmo
Yes, but if that's the case they could be obtained from the phone, either in flash memory somewhere or a CPU register or the register of some other chip. The OMAP 1611 does have hardware encryption, but I can't find a datasheet for it.

I have two P900iv phones (one black, one champagne) but neither came with a MiniSD card or any games other than the preloaded ones on the internal memory. It seems like my Y screwdriver is slightly too big, but I may buy a smaller one to see what kind of flash chip this has. If I knew that I could just dump the contents (this part is really easy) and hunt for an encryption key (this part is really hard, and I'm hesitant to pursue it without knowing for sure where the key is stored).

But it's impractical to dump the flash of every phone with a cool game on it, so maybe better to try and use the SDK to write something that can invoke machine code to do something. I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been more work on SD CPRM decryption, considering it's been conquered in the DVD world for some time.
A user from our Rockman project has detailed a way to dump the SD card with the protected partitions:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(do everything from a command prompt started with admin permissions, otherwise you'll get an error)
1. Make sure you have a card reader from Realtek (check in device manager) and you have drivers from Realtek (rather than generic ones from Microsoft) installed.
2. Insert the SD card 3. run wmic diskdrive list brief command. you'll see list of connected drives, find your sd card and copy the path starting with \\.\
4. Run these commands (replace \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 with the path found in step 3):
CPRMTool -dumpmkb -card \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 -out mkb9.bin -mkbid 9 CPRMTool -dumpmkb -card \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 -out mkb11.bin -mkbid 11 CPRMTool -dumpmid -card \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 -out mid.bin CPRMTool -dumppa -card \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 -out protectedarea.bin
The last command may show an error after dumping some sectors, that is fine .Zip the files up (mkb9.bin, mkb11.bin, mid.bin, protectedarea.bin and the SD card contents).
CPRM Tool can be found here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of the device keys are in there, but the rest are in the device's firmware (at least for our P-06C with Rockman DASH 5 Islands). Now we've just got to find a way to dump the P-06C's firmware. Also, that same user was able to find the s-box for our SD card. I'm not sure if this s-box can be applied to other games that have games stuck on SD cards.
 

rockmancosmo

Lv. 1 Adventurer
AKA
Cosmo
Tangentially related to this subject: I've been able to find a way to directly record audio off of these feature phones, so we can now have HQ rips of ringtones and game music. The first phone I tested my method out on was the P900iV, which contains four unique FF7 ringtones. They are "Aerith's Theme," "Melody from FFVII AC," "Fanfare," and "Fenrir." All of these tracks are uniquely arranged for this phone, with "Melody from FFVII AC" being "Cloud Smiles" from Advent Children. You can listen to my rips here.
 

MarkFeuer

Lv. 1 Adventurer
AKA
Mark Feuerborn
I recently stumbled upon this thread and wanted to chime in with some Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode news.

When I was a really young teen, I remember having that game on my Motorola KRZR. I downloaded it from Verizon V CAST. Regretfully, my parents took that phone away from me one time and then forgot about having it. We found it in the washing machine a few days later.

The phone never fully booted up again after that. If I remember correctly, the most it did was start vibrating when plugged into a charger. It may have even gotten to a startup logo, but would get stuck in a boot loop after that.

I'm currently looking for this KRZR because I still have it somewhere. There's probably no way that it could play DoC again, but it's possible that the game still exists on the phone's flash chip and could be extracted. I have no idea which of the three acts I had downloaded and was in the middle of playing again, but I for sure played through the full game at least once.
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
I recently stumbled upon this thread and wanted to chime in with some Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode news.

When I was a really young teen, I remember having that game on my Motorola KRZR. I downloaded it from Verizon V CAST. Regretfully, my parents took that phone away from me one time and then forgot about having it. We found it in the washing machine a few days later.

The phone never fully booted up again after that. If I remember correctly, the most it did was start vibrating when plugged into a charger. It may have even gotten to a startup logo, but would get stuck in a boot loop after that.

I'm currently looking for this KRZR because I still have it somewhere. There's probably no way that it could play DoC again, but it's possible that the game still exists on the phone's flash chip and could be extracted. I have no idea which of the three acts I had downloaded and was in the middle of playing again, but I for sure played through the full game at least once.
This would be the best place to ask
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
BCFFVII Website Guides

Recently I came upon these websites. They have information on Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII. It has more than Wikipedia can possibly have.

These websites tend to differ but they have

Chapter Guides

Menu Screen Info

Monster Data

Free Mode Guide

Location of items

Training Mode info

RP Exchange info

I can honestly go on and on. But please check this out. It Is in Japanese but you won’t be disappointed that’s for sure.

①FF7 BEFORE CRISIS完全攻略 様

http://www.geocities.jp/tststs0104/ff.index.htm

②BEFORE CRISIS -FINAL FANTASY VII- 攻略 様

http://bibo.sakura.ne.jp/ff7bc/mission/bcc01.html

③BC FF7 Online Capture 様

https://web.archive.org/web/20100314121422/http://marie.saiin.net/~ffpocket/data/ff7bc/pc.shtml
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
I have gotten a hold of 7 magazines for BCFFVII. 2 of them have a lot of info. The 5 other gave me a bit of info but not as much as I was hoping. I am finding out more and more of this. Mainly looking for more info on aspects of the game that we have no knowledge of

Also we have Torimaga which also talks about BCFFVII

What magazines might possibly have BC, AC, DC or CC info?

So far magazines in Japan that have been released from 2004-2007 have info on

Before Crisis
Advent Children
Dirge of Cerberus
Crisis Core

These are the names of the magazines
ファミ通(Famitsu)
ファミ通PS2( Famitsu PS2)
トリマガ (Torimaga): i am still researching this one)

You will have to search in Japanese tho

Q1: How much info is in these magazines?
A1: Some of them have as much as two pages for BC or just a small, brief tiny explanation of the game experience. So this is a bit of a gamble if you don’t know what you are buying.

Q2. How do I know if the magazine talks about BC?

A2. In Game Index Part 2 search for 携帯電話. Under this section would be ビフォアクライシスファイナルファンタジーVII

Note: the amount of info in this magazine is not specified in Game Index)

Q3: What dates to search for when looking for BCFFVII?

A3: Before Crisis was distributed new chapters and content from September 24th 2004 to March 31st 2006. Those are to this day the best dates to find info on BC.

Q4: Other games?
If you determine the name of the game, check the distribution date, look under game index, you will be able to find some info on that.

A4: So why bother with this?
At this moment it is the best I can think of to further the search for the original. The more info of this game that is made public to everyone, the higher chance of revival can happen. However that is merely wishful thinking. But who’s going to ask for something they don’t know about?

Nomura did state that he is not sure of the over seas knowledge of BCFFVII. Which means that it’s possible the game could have come back if more knew about it.

For now this is the best we can do for the game. Given the way the things work with Square Enix and Feature phone game of all subjects.
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
I am pleased to share with you the first mission in Episode Reno from Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII. This is from Sousi the same person who shared with us some never before seen footage of this game. He does have the rest of Reno and Legend. He has given me permission to share it. If you see him on Twitter please give him a thank you as this is hard to find.



 

makoenergy

Lv. 1 Adventurer
not sure if anyone else sent these (and i can't read japanese), so i thought i'd send them here
ff7-before-crisis-misc-1.jpg
ff7-before-crisis-misc-4.jpg
ff7-before-crisis-misc-2.jpg
 

makoenergy

Lv. 1 Adventurer
hi, i'm back! not really sure if this counts as "mobile game archive"-worthy, but i've gotten every square enix flash website to work, including before crisis's and lost episode's. i'm going to see if there are any in english, i've only gotten the japanese ones so far...
also, i am shocked and frankly not sure where to start with all these sites lol
 

makoenergy

Lv. 1 Adventurer
hi, i'm back! not really sure if this counts as "mobile game archive"-worthy, but i've gotten every square enix flash website to work, including before crisis's and lost episode's. i'm going to see if there are any in english, i've only gotten the japanese ones so far...
also, i am shocked and frankly not sure where to start with all these sites lol
before crisis's is so cool! you have to wait a few seconds, then the phone rings and you can enter the website...
bc-wait-4-your-call.png
bc-main.png

lost ep's main screen is classic and just so pretty too...
lost-ep.png

if anyone's interested, i will gladly send more photos( •ω• ) i'm not sure how helpful all this is, i just think it's nice to look at. it also took me a few hours of websurfing to figure out how to find these, so why put it to waste, right?
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
Nice to see someone adding to this forum. It is hard to keep this alive. Not sure if many even know of its existence. Not much can be done at this point. However, I do like that you are posting this.
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
At this point, i guess the only thing left to do is just wait for Ever Crisis to show us how much of Before Crisis they are going to put in the game. Hoping we see it in the beta. As that is what is the closest thing we have coming to us.
 

kainvinosec

Lv. 1 Adventurer
AKA
Kain
Hey, is this still a thing? Found your posts by accident when looking for something else FF related... So, I actually bought the Dirge of Cerberus Amp'd Mobile bundle. It came with a phone (the RAZR is the one I had), the game pre-installed (or maybe it was a code or something - I don't recall exactly on that), and a stock figure of Vincent (the PlayArts one like this: http://images.comiccollectorlive.com/covers/0bc/0bca16af-b3d5-4f6e-9082-6899a605f9c3.jpg).

The game was tricky though because it came in episodes, and you could only have one episode at a time downloaded to the phone. I remember it being so weird to play a high-quality game on a flip phone. Like, those graphics were insane at the time. Blew the NGage (which is actually the phone I had previous to this one) out of the water. When you completed an episode, it'd require you to wait until the next one was downloaded before you could continue, and it'd erase the current one in the process. But when Amp'd shut down, I still had one of the episodes downloaded to the phone and could replay that one level over and over. I do not remember which level though.

As for what happened to the phone, there is a very slim chance I may still have it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my possessions were stolen in 2008, but I recall seeing some old cell phones in some stuff as recently as 2016 when a lot of my things were put in storage. If ya'll are still looking for DoC: LE stuff let me know and I'll try to find some time to go dig through storage and see what I can find. I can't promise anything, but honestly, I need to go through storage and clean it up anyway.

Questions/Concerns:
Would the battery still work if charged?
Would the phone even still work? Is there anything in it that could degrade overtime even if not being used?
Have you found any on auction sites and are they actually worth anything?
 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
Hey, is this still a thing? Found your posts by accident when looking for something else FF related... So, I actually bought the Dirge of Cerberus Amp'd Mobile bundle. It came with a phone (the RAZR is the one I had), the game pre-installed (or maybe it was a code or something - I don't recall exactly on that), and a stock figure of Vincent (the PlayArts one like this: http://images.comiccollectorlive.com/covers/0bc/0bca16af-b3d5-4f6e-9082-6899a605f9c3.jpg).

The game was tricky though because it came in episodes, and you could only have one episode at a time downloaded to the phone. I remember it being so weird to play a high-quality game on a flip phone. Like, those graphics were insane at the time. Blew the NGage (which is actually the phone I had previous to this one) out of the water. When you completed an episode, it'd require you to wait until the next one was downloaded before you could continue, and it'd erase the current one in the process. But when Amp'd shut down, I still had one of the episodes downloaded to the phone and could replay that one level over and over. I do not remember which level though.

As for what happened to the phone, there is a very slim chance I may still have it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my possessions were stolen in 2008, but I recall seeing some old cell phones in some stuff as recently as 2016 when a lot of my things were put in storage. If ya'll are still looking for DoC: LE stuff let me know and I'll try to find some time to go dig through storage and see what I can find. I can't promise anything, but honestly, I need to go through storage and clean it up anyway.

Questions/Concerns:
Would the battery still work if charged?
Would the phone even still work? Is there anything in it that could degrade overtime even if not being used?
Have you found any on auction sites and are they actually worth anything?
We have a discord for these type of things.
It’s the Kahvibreak discord. A server dedicated to preserving old cell phone games of all kinds. Here is the invite.

 

NaoyaShinota

Pro Adventurer
Yes we a
Hey, is this still a thing? Found your posts by accident when looking for something else FF related... So, I actually bought the Dirge of Cerberus Amp'd Mobile bundle. It came with a phone (the RAZR is the one I had), the game pre-installed (or maybe it was a code or something - I don't recall exactly on that), and a stock figure of Vincent (the PlayArts one like this: http://images.comiccollectorlive.com/covers/0bc/0bca16af-b3d5-4f6e-9082-6899a605f9c3.jpg).

The game was tricky though because it came in episodes, and you could only have one episode at a time downloaded to the phone. I remember it being so weird to play a high-quality game on a flip phone. Like, those graphics were insane at the time. Blew the NGage (which is actually the phone I had previous to this one) out of the water. When you completed an episode, it'd require you to wait until the next one was downloaded before you could continue, and it'd erase the current one in the process. But when Amp'd shut down, I still had one of the episodes downloaded to the phone and could replay that one level over and over. I do not remember which level though.

As for what happened to the phone, there is a very slim chance I may still have it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my possessions were stolen in 2008, but I recall seeing some old cell phones in some stuff as recently as 2016 when a lot of my things were put in storage. If ya'll are still looking for DoC: LE stuff let me know and I'll try to find some time to go dig through storage and see what I can find. I can't promise anything, but honestly, I need to go through storage and clean it up anyway.

Questions/Concerns:
Would the battery still work if charged?
Would the phone even still work? Is there anything in it that could degrade overtime even if not being used?
Have you found any on auction sites and are they actually worth anything?
Yes we are still looking for DoC LE. Hope to find and dump it one day.
 
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