The Unexpected 2021 Nintendo Leak

Edit on Github | Updated: 19th December 2024

On the 20th July 2021 the Nintendo Leaks (aka Gigaleaks) continued after a long hiatus, the content was obtained by Zammis Clark and then leaked online by anonymous individuals.

Files Leaked

The files that were leaked on the 20th July 2021 are as follows:

datasheet.7z - Low level hardware information for Switch Game cards and Gamecube memory cards
DIAG4RVL.7z - just contains DIAG4RVL.zip
DIAG4RVL.zip -Contains the source code for A Wii/Gamecube Diagnostic tool know as DIAG4
pmEME_US20050207.7z - Pokemon Emerald Localisation from Japanese to Other languages information
ique_player_common_tickets.7z - Collection of 86 tik and tikmd files for the iQue player (N64 version)
haishin_20130912.zip - Pokemon X/Y Distribution event Software
bb2.7z - Information and Verilog source code for the BroadOnBoard 2 a planned Chinese version of the gamecube
gen4_era_protos.7z - Diamond and perl prototype roms and the source code
teru-sama_mail_2006.7z - A dump of the personal email inbox of Murakawa Tsushin

Switch Game Card Hardware Datasheets (Datasheet.7z)

The contents of the Datasheet.7z archive are documented in a separate post that you can access below.

Nintendo Switch Game Card Leak

For more information on the low level hardware information about the Nintendo Switch, including Lotus3 Game Cards reader and the Game Cards themselves check out this post.

Honestly the Datasheet.7z probably won’t be of interest to most people, unless you really like looking at hardware data sheets about physical storage. It will also not be particularly useful for homebrew or emulation purposes either.

Chinese Gamecube (BroadOn Board 2/iQue) (bb2.7z)

The leaked BB2.7z archive contained documentation and source code for an unreleased console for the Chinese market with the codename BB2 (BroadOn Board 2).

It was planned to be a Gamecube with support for standard DVD playback at a cheap price point, but got cancelled as the team was moved over to work on the Nintendo Wii.

The contents of the BB2.7z archive are documented in a separate post which you can find a link to below.

iQue Gamecube Leak (BB2)

For more information about the planned Chinese Gamecube console check out this post.

Pokemon Gen 4 Era Prototypes (gen4_era_protos.7z)

/gen4_era_protos

This folder contains Nintendo DS Rom files for Pokemon Diamond and Perl in the almost retail stage of development from 2006.

Each build is distributed as an .SRL file which is Nintendo’s naming extension for .NDS ROM files, so they can be opened directly in any Nintendo DS emulator without modification.

The files in this folder are listed in the table below:

File Name	Extension	Description
PokemonFushigiDS1006	.zip	Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Nintendo DS ROM
adjust	.xls	List of adjustments to make to diamond/perl mainly related to localisation
dia060813en	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 13th August 2006
dia061005	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 5th October 2006
dia061031	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 31st October 2006
dia061031_2	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 31st October 2006 (duplicate)
dia061114	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 14th November 2006
dia061115	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 15th November 2006
dia061120	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 20th November 2006
dia061121	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 21st November 2006
dia061124	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 24th November 2006
dia061127	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 27th November 2006
dia061208	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 8th December 2006
dia061212	.zip	Diamond ROM built on 12th December 2006
dp060807	.zip	Diamond and Perl ROMs built on 7th August 2006
dp060809	.zip	Diamond and Perl ROMs built on 9th August 2006
dp060816	.zip	Diamond and Perl ROMs built on 16th August 2006
pokemon_dp_VER20060816	.zip	The Source code to Pokemon Diamond and Perl
readme	.txt	Describes each of the builds very briefly (mainly tells the user to read adjust.xls for the exact fixes in each build)
rtceditds0620	.srl	Nintendo DS ROM to change the System time for real time clock, probably used to test out day/night or special day events

In my opinion the most interesting file here is the source code to Diamond and Perl located in the archive pokemon_dp_VER20060816.zip.

Unless you are a big fan of Diamond/Perl the slight modifications of each prototype are not particularly interesting as they are near the retail version and fix slight issues that come up while localising to western languages.

iQue Player Common Tickets

The Chinese iQue Player was a plug-and-play Nintendo 64 console with an online shop for purchasing N64 games. Each of these games were signed with a ticket so that only the purchaser can install the game on their console.

However the file ique_player_common_tickets.7z which was leaked on 20th July 2021 contains all the tickets for each of these purchases.

There are two files for each game a Ticket (.tik) and a MetaData file (.tikmd), each game has its own TitleId.

So the files in this archive are the titleID followed by either of those extensions depending on the file type:

One interesting thing about iQue Title ID’s is that the last 2 digits are the version of the game, so if the game has been patched multiple times it could theoretically go up to 99.

iQueBrew has a list of titles and each has a field called “Has Ticket”. The tickets that are in this leak and marked as No in that table are as follows: 2101902, 2102902, 2106101, 4101104, 4101902, 5201902, 5202902, 6101902.

For the list on iQueBrew check out their page: Titles - iQueBrew

Pokemon Emerald Localisation Emails

pmEME_US20050207

This folder contains localisation documentation from around the time when Emerald was released in Japan but was undergoing changes for the Overseas markets.

It also contains a Pokemon Emerald ROM called BPEE072D.srl, but not sure if there is anything different in it. Will link to an article if TCRF or another website documents the differences in the build.

Apart from the ROM file, I wouldn’t recommend downloading this archive as it doesn’t provide any more information than is already of the internet. It is a much better idea to download the source code for Pokemon Emerald and play around with that.

File Name	Extension	Description
BPEE072D	.srl	Pokemon Emerald ROM
localize	.txt	Japanese Text Document discussing the changes in the overseas version of Pokemon Emerald
北米EMトレーナーヒル案(最新版）_	.xls	North American EM Trainer Hill Proposal (Latest Version) - details about the Trainer Hill area in Pokemon Emerald

The most interesting file in this folder is definitely localize.txt as when you translate it to english it provides some interesting information about changes between the Japanese and English versions of the game. Although nothing that hasn’t already been documented on Bulbapedia already.

The Spreadsheet is data about the area known as Trainer Hill which involves battling Pokemon one after the other in a sort of time attack mode. The document contains all the Pokemon used and details such as their available moves.

You can view information about it on Bulbapedia: Trainer Hill - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia

Email history (/メール履歴)

メール履歴

This folder name translates to Email history and as the name suggest it contains emails exported to html format.

There are 4 email threads exported in this folder which are:

Emerald Question (About Quiz Sister) - Questions about localising the Quiz ladies questions (she can be found in Pokemon Center)
About item data corruption - There was a bug in the Japanese version where if the power was turned off during a specific start of the save it would cause corruption, this thread is talking about fixing it for overseas versions
Notice of correction update for overseas version - Contains the differences made to the source code for the overseas version. Contains some C source code!
There is a bug in the Pokemon Coliseum. (Pokemon Box) - Description of a bug in Pokemon Coliseum where if the Pokemon has a name longer than 10 characters the screen becomes garbled

The most interesting thread from a programmers point of view is by far the Notice of correction update for overseas version as it even contains some source code examples. But it can be hard to read the translated version so not sure I would recommend downloading this archive just for this content!

The files in this folder aren’t that interesting, the main file is emerald_mails.html that can be opened in any web browser.

File Name	Extension	Description
emerald_mails	.html	The index page, open this to view the emails which loads in the _menu and _cont html pages in frames.
emerald_mails_cont	.html	The contents of the emails
emerald_mails_menu	.html	The menu list of all emails included in the dump
tree1	.png	Image used to draw a file tree in the html menu
tree2	.png	Image used to draw a file tree in the html menu
tree3	.png	Image used to draw a file tree in the html menu

Pokemon X/Y Distribution Tool (haishin_20130912.zip)

This archive contains data for the Pokemon X/Y Event Distribution tool, this is where Nintendo would host events where users with a 3DS could get special gifts by connecting to a kiosk.

The kiosk is really just a development tool that can install .CIA files (Citrus Installable Archive) and acts like a 3DS. To install the CIA file a SD card is used or alternatively there is an eShop version according to the documentation.

It connects to participants Nintendo 3DS systems using Infrared or wireless.

Name	Description
ResetSV.cia	3DS Installable Archive that resets the Distribution Tool
haishin_text.xlsx	Localised text for the distribution tool in Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, Korean and Spanish
xy.cia	3DS Installable Archive of Pokemon XY Distribution tool to be run on the Kiosk
xy_debug.cia	Debug version of the xy.cia file
配信ツール説明.txt	Delivery tool description
変更点_.txt	Change log for the distribution tool (xy.cia)

For more information on the Pokemon X/Y Distribution Tool : Distribution devices - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia

Wii/GC Diagnostic Tool (DIAG4RVL.ZIP)

The archive DIAG4RVL.ZIP contains the source code for the Internal Wii Diagnostic Tool known as DIAG. There is also gamecube diagnostics in the tool as it was initially created during the Gamecube development process and the Wii is based on its hardware.

The contents of the DIAG4RVL.ZIP archive are documented in a separate post which you can find a link to below.

Nintendo Wii Diagnostic Disc Source Code

For more information about the DIAG tool source code check out this post.

Also inside DIAG4RVL.zip was the source code to the SDK provided to Nintendo by ArtX/ATI when developing both the Gamecube and Wii graphics hardware, we have a post covering it linked below.

ATI Low Level Wii SDK

For more information on the leaked low level ArtX/ATI SDK check out this post.

Murakawa Tsushin Hidemaru emails (teru-sama_mail_2006.7z)

The teru-sama_mail_2006.7z archive contains an email dump of the inbox of Murakawa Tsushin who was in charge of Pokemon localisation at Nintendo of Japan.

Nintendo Hidemaru Mail Leak

For more information on the leaked emails check out this post.