Regional differences between replay files

[JoselleAstrid]

I was asked about getting my RAM watch Cheat Engine framework to work with the Japanese version of GX, since I only made it work with the North American version. The idea was to watch Japanese-version replays using the RAM display which reveals the replay's saved inputs.

I thought of another avenue: converting a Japanese-version replay to work with the North American version of the game. I wasn't able to pull this off though. Here's what I tried:

• Change the game ID at the beginning of the file: GFZJ8P to GFZE8P. This resulted in the replay menu showing "Corrupt File".
• Change the value at address 0x42 from 0x0503 to 0x0504. (It's 0x0504 for NA version replays, and has other values for different kinds of GX files like emblems). Then recompute the checksum at address 0x40. This allowed the replay menu to recognize and load the replay. However, the replay faded to white on "Go!", indicating either a desync, or a version-related check that we don't know of.

There are a lot of unknown fields in the replay file format, so any one of those could be a version indicator or similar. Or, maybe different versions have minute differences in starting positions (but I hope not).

I tried with custom machine and non-custom machine replays, for the record.