User blog:The Plant Developer/B3313 ROM Dump Story

In July 2020, a guy by the name of Christopher Rios Lillo, who’s currently living in Chile, began searching for SM64 prototypes on eBay, in hopes of finding a cartridge that was used in Spaceworld 1995. However, during searching, he found a “holy grail of all Super Mario 64 prototypes” known as Super Mario 64 build 3313 with the price of US$69,999.00 (CLP$59,656,647.75 in Chile) and the seller who goes by the name of squid.billies, and he had to buy it fast because there’s only one stock remaining, and no “holy grail” cartridge was found to be sold. As of now, the user and the product is nowhere to be found. The only evidence of squid.billies we have is the Squidward profile picture (seen on the top right), which was taken from SpongeBob SquarePants season 5 episode 4b titled Boat Smarts. Fast forward to October 1st, 2020, this afternoon he attempted to dump this “holy grail”, only for it to fail at 20%. No matter how many times he attempted, it would just spit the unfinished version because the Personalization A.I. knows that he is dumping the cartridge. Screenshot attached on top right. After countless times he just “gave up” and then modded his N64 to log any copy from the ROM to RAM, which is also known as a DMA along with the full data as well. Turn the console on? It worked, he is finally “dumping” it. The first few attempts, which he labeled based on the amount of data that he thought he had each resulted in a playable, but buggy and unpolished-looking version of the Super Mario 64 build. The first public and playable release was 0.4 (pictured top right), with roughly 40% of the ROM filled up. There was some missing code he had to import from the final release, and at the time, he only managed to get Luigi to load in. Mario would just completely crash for some reason, and would only start working once he had 60% of the data. Weird. More and more of the data was dumped throughout 2021 to 2023, with the fully working character switch being working once he had 70% of the data dumped. Screenshot attached on top right. He wanted it to release on March 13th, 2023 but the Personalization A.I. stops it from doing so and he eventually gave up on May 29th, 2023 with the release of B3313 0.9. On that same date, he gave the cartridge to one of his former friends, now enemies who goes by the name of Benedani. This would fill it’s 10% of its dumping process and on July 31st, 2023 he eventually managed to “dump” only 9% of the data, with 1% missing. And in order to fully “dump” the ROM, the adjustments had to be made including altering/removing music just so that the ROM can be fully “dumped”. And on August 28th, 2023 Benedani has managed to “dump” the final 1% of the ROM, which leaves the ROM dump to be “100% complete”, with no holes left in the data and almost no padding at the end either, released under the name of B3313 Unabandoned. Screenshot attached on top right. There are still some problems left like the inevitable fate of all binary hacks.

Note left from Benedani when the ROM dump is 100% complete:

"Finally. I have managed to fully dump this dumb cartridge.

''For some reason, trying to simply just dump the ROM always resulted in the connection being cut. It works perfectly fine on the Nintendo 64, but when Christopher tried to dump it... it's as if the game knows that he is trying to copy it onto my PC.''

However, he and I didn't give up that easily.

''Christopher decided to mod his N64 to log any copy from ROM to RAM (also known as a DMA) it does along with the full data. This would be invisible to the cartridge, since all it knows is where it's reading the data from. He then booted the game up, and success! Christopher got a bunch of data on his PC that he could attempt to build a .z64 out of.''

''The first few attempts, which he labelled based on the amount of data that he thought he had each resulted in a playable, but buggy and unpolished looking version of the Super Mario 64 build. The first public and playable release was 0.4, with roughly 40% of the ROM filled up. There was some missing code he had to import from the final release, and at the time, he only managed to get Luigi to load in. Mario would just completely crash for some reason, and would only start working once he had 60% of the data. Weird.''

Anyways, this time, Christopher and I believe both of them have managed to dump 100% of the game - there are no holes left in the data anymore, and there's almost no padding at the end either.

Enjoy."