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Ripping Castlevania: SOTN from CD for the Randomizer
- Authors
- Name
- Keith Dechant
Fans of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and of video game randomizers in general, will probably know about the SOTN randomizer. I was eager to try it, but I ran into a blocker.
I have the game (specifically, the Greatest Hits edition) on CD, and I even ripped a .iso of it long, long ago to use with Bleem! and later ePSXe. The image worked fine with the emulators, and I've been using it for over 20 years now.
But, when I tried to use the image with the randomizer, it didn't work. The CRC32 didn't match the one on Redump, so the randomizer didn't recognize it as a vanilla .iso.
So, how exactly does one rip the CD to use with the randomizer?
AnyBurn and ImgBurn: Didn't work
Both of these can only create a single .bin image. The CRC32 doesn't match redump. (Or each other…)
So, onto the next attempt.
MPF / DiscImageCreator: Requires specific models of CD drive
This is the "official" way to dump CDs for redump, according to the Redump documentation.
This only works with a few specific CD drive models. It errored when I tried it with mine. The list of supported models is here.
RetroArch
Next, I tried ripping the disc using RetroArch (for reference, I did this on a Windows 10 machine).
This finally worked. RetroArch ripped each track to a separate .bin file. The CRC32 values matched the ones on redump.
Verifying the CRC32
Linux users can do this with the 'crc32' CLI command.
On Windows, the easiest way is with 7-zip. Open the 7-zip program and navigate to the file. Right click and choose CRC -> CRC32.
Using it with the randomizer
Go to sotn.io and choose the .bin file you created from Track 1 of the CD. You don't need any of the other tracks.
That's it. I'll race you to Galamoth.
(You'll probably win that race. I spend too much time farming for swords I never use.)