The Expedition Begins: Part I: The Tools

When trying to reverse-engineer the DDR series games, there are a few tools that I feel essential.

First thing I added to my arsenal: ImgBurn.  Great for ripping ISOs and burning to blank DVDs so far as the control over read and burn speeds, etc.  I used this exclusively when burning hacks of In the Groove PS2 to DVDs to test on my PS2 back a few years ago.  Also good to have:  Sony CD DVD gen tools - and IML2ISO, vital IMO for rebuilding PS2 ISOs after hacking the contents.

The next tool: the game I want to hack... or in this case, the games.  On my external hard drive, I ripped from the original disks my copies of DDRMAX JP+US, DDRMAX2 JP+US, and DDR EXTREME JP+US.

Since I did not need to break any encryption, and it is a backup copy from a legal copy for personal use, eat your heart out, DMCA - preferably off a tall building - and may the people who wrote such an overreaching bill - particularly the lobbyists - go fuck themselves off a tall building as well..

I ripped an ISO of each game to my drive AS WELL as copied the contents of the game disk to its own folder.  This way I can manipulate each file and see what is what, and figure out for myself how to rebuild ISOs, AND at the same time have an ISO image on hand so testing simple little hacks is as easy as editing the image in a hex editor and loading it up in PCSX2 to run.

I then downloaded the emulator PCSX2 [link right there].  If you have a good graphics card to take the load off the main CPU, and plenty of RAM, a computer w. a 2.2 - 2.5GHz dual core processor is ok if all you're doing is testing.

The next tool added to the arsenal: a hex editor.  I recommend if you don't want ridiculous bells and whistles, just a functional and good hex editor, that you use FRHed, the FRee Hex EDitor. [link right there].

I used IDA Pro to create a disassembly of the game - even though it is not a 1:1 recreation of the original executable, this will make it a LOT easier to figure out how the game works compared to reading bytes of hexadecimal.  On top of that, I can take the existing information on hacking DDR games, and use the disassembly to fill in holes, and fix information that was not exactly right the first time around.