Pokémon Colosseum - 60FPS Action Replay codes (all regions)

[Nerdzilla]

I've finally decided to share something I've been holding onto for a long time now; a 60FPS hack for Pokémon Colosseum with almost no downsides.

YouTube video showing it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q3c7dHgIUM

Using the hack in Dolphin is very simple. In the properties for the game, add an Action Replay code and paste the code for your region. (Don't add it as a Gecko code, or you'll break the game.) You will need at least a 200% emulated CPU overclock to cover most scenarios. Some moves may still cause dropped frames, so push it further if you want. Because of the overclock requirement, you won't get much benefit out of using it on an original GameCube. Playing through Nintendont on a Wii might be interesting, as the game will run with the Wii's higher clock speeds. Let me know how it goes if you try it!

The only downside I've found is that there are at least two cutscenes where a character will get stuck. I only knew about one when I covered the video, which is meeting the mayor for the first time. Briefly underclocking the CPU enough for the framerate to drop will get the characters unstuck, then you can change it back. There might be more I don't know of. (I have never actually finished this game!) I assume the same trick will work, but I would save often to be safe.

Now for the codes. Every region is supported with its own code. The PAL version can even use the same code for both 50Hz and 60Hz modes, so this can also be a 50FPS hack!

US: 04005D98 60000000
EU: 04005E90 60000000
JP: 04005CFC 60000000

If you encounter any issues outside of what's already mentioned, let me know. Other than that, enjoy!

How I came to discover this hack is an interesting story, but I'll spoiler it to hide the wall of text. TLDR: by trying to corrupt the game, I accidentally made it better.

Spoiler

Nearly two years ago, I was playing around with corrupting Pokémon Colosseum using the Real Time Corruptor. Basically, intentionally breaking/glitching games for entertainment. On one attempt, I found that the game started running at 60FPS without the game speed changing, and immediately knew I had something special.

After trimming the corruption to that one effect, I did some testing with an overclock. Except for the one cutscene with the mayor that I found, everything worked flawlessly. I was ecstatic. I could also see what memory was being hit to produce the effect. After some more investigation, I found that the code belonged to the main.dol file on the disc, which was fully loaded into memory from address 0x80003000. If you take 3000 hex off of 5D98 (look at the US code for reference), you'll get 2D98, the offset for where the instruction of note is. I mention this because I initially tried to patch main.dol, as I had no idea how to make cheat codes. Eventually, I managed to figure out codes though.

About a year later, I came back to this hack to port it from the US version to the EU and JP versions. With my previous knowledge of the code being patched, I had a look at the main.dol file for each region with a hex editor, and quickly found the offsets to patch. To my pleasant surprise, the EU code worked just as well in 50Hz mode, just at 50FPS instead!

Now I'm finally getting around to sharing this discovery somewhere. I didn't know where to go with it, so I just sat on it for all this time. I really do hope everyone who finds this enjoys it.