N64 ROM Loader for Ghidra by Warranty Voider

this is a loader module for ghidra for N64 roms (.z64, .n64, .v64)

• fixes endianess (little, big, mixed) at loading
• loads ram, rom and boot section into ghidra
• it can use a signature/pattern file to scan for symbol hints for ghidra

this allows a rom to be labeled, disassembled and decompiled

Function discovery and runtime-loaded code

The loader creates the N64 memory map and marks the ROM entry point. Ghidra then discovers functions reachable through direct references; importing a ROM does not prove every function boundary. Code that the game decompresses, relocates, or loads as an overlay is not present at its runtime address in the initial ROM-to-RAM image.

For those games, capture an RDRAM dump after the code of interest has been loaded and select it with the RDRAM dump file loader option. Dumps must be exactly 4 MiB (base memory) or 8 MiB (Expansion Pak). The loader maps the interrupt vectors at 0x80000000 and the remaining bytes at 0x80000400 without padding the dump. A dump represents one runtime moment, so overlays that reuse an address may require separate projects or snapshots.

The Signature file option can also consume an N64sym address/name file or a byte-pattern file to seed known functions. These inputs are hints for Ghidra; they do not establish that every possible function has been found.

Headless imports can pass the same inputs as -loader-rdram <path>, -loader-signature <path>, -loader-pif <path>, and -loader-modem <path> after selecting -loader N64LoaderWVLoader.

credits:

• blackgamma7 for fixing memory layout stuff, adding register symbols and various small changes see merge commit
• dmattia for adding build instructions for mac
• jeremyw for fixing RDRAM handling

Ghidra 12.1 requires JDK 21. Use the JDK version required by your Ghidra release.

Build from Source (Mac)

brew install java
brew install gradle
brew cask install ghidra

export GHIDRA_INSTALL_DIR=`brew cask ls ghidra | grep ghidra | sed 's/^.*-> \(.*\)ghidraRun.*/\1/'`

Then whenever you're ready to build, run

gradle

and it will create a zip file in /dist that you can use that file as the extension in Ghidra