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→Editing game programming
However, disassembly can easily fail, and you end up with garbage nonsensical code in the text file. Why? Just like hex editors with text display, or tile editors, when disassemblers try to interpret stuff that's not programming as such, it's a recipe for disaster. Another extra problem is that after reading garbage data, even if the disassembler stumbles upon some legit programming bits after that, it will no longer tell where instructions begin and end (remember they're all just bytes) and so there will be even more erronous interpretations.
That is, not to mention the numerous cases where the developers DON'T want you to look at their code: so it's either protected against disassembler tools during runtime (Denuvo on PC games), compressed then the game uncompresses just what it needs to the RAM and executes from there (Ys 5 for the Super Famicom), or most of the programming is written in another arbitrary programming language and the remaining 10% recognizable assembly code for that hardware is just the part which translates that arbitrary languages and not much else - this is also called bytecode and is used in many RPGs, with a quite infamously complicated variant being present in Earthbound (Mother 2) for example.
What you'll need to mod game programming, a.k.a. assembly hacking, is:
* GC/Wii: .elf files
* DS: ARM9.BIN, more rarely ARM7.BIN
Looking at the game's programming as it runs can also help you figure out tons of stuff, from how the game does the decompression for that insanely obscure compression scheme it uses, to how it loads level data, manages enemy stats and damage, display stuff and story events onscreen, and so on.
Studying the game's programming, coupled with some corrupting (random hex editing of select memory areas) to confirm observations, has led to most of the game specific level editors and similar tools out there. So instead of lamenting why your favorite game doesn't have a dedicated tool, you can figure this out all on your own and create (in case you know some computer programming language) a good tool serving exactly your needs and which can be adjusted in whatever way you want.
==Emulators for ROM hacking==
