N64 Cart Dumping Now Works With a Flash Cart

For retro fans in the UK, this is a neat one, N64 cartridge owners can now back up their own games and saves using only a flash cart and an SD card. The new tool, N64 SwapDumper, was released by Moddermntorankusu and is aimed at making Nintendo 64 dumping far more accessible for preservation-minded players.

The tool is built on work from @Jhynjhiruu, @ppcasm, and @Modman, and takes inspiration from their sharksaver64 project. It was tested with a SummerCart flash cart, then used by swapping in the original N64 cartridge so the tool could copy the largest possible chunk of data into the console's RAM.

From there, the process is simple in principle, if a little hands-on. The user removes the original cartridge, puts the flash cart back in, and the tool writes that chunk from RAM to the SD card. The swap is repeated until the full ROM has been transferred. Moddermntorankusu has also added in-memory compression to reduce the number of swaps, although that part is still being refined and can slow things down for some games.

The developer says the aim is legitimacy as much as convenience. They believe it is important for the flash-cart community to have a practical way to dump cartridges, and the tool also backs up save data, which may be the most useful part for many owners. A save restore function may be added later if there is enough interest.

There is one important warning, though. Moddermntorankusu says they have tested the tool repeatedly without damaging hardware, but there is still a risk when swapping cartridges, especially on modified consoles that no longer have the region-keyed cartridge tray insert. Bare PCB flash carts or game cartridges can also increase the chance of misalignment and damage.

This report was first covered by Time Extension. For more on the latest retro gaming coverage, see our News tag, and if you are interested in preservation hardware, the Analogue Pocket OpenFPGA cores guide is a useful related read.