Shikigami no Shiro II memory card problem

[rapuparvi]

hello all

I just bought Shikigami no Shiro II and freeloader 1.06B. My GC is PAL-version.
First I loaded the game without memory card in cube. Everything worked as it should: freeloader asks to insert game, I put shikigami in, screen flashes blue and almost immediately black and whee, game's up and running.

Then I wanted to be able to save. I erased every save from my old 4mb official nintendo memory card(saves were all PAL; I haven't ever before played a ntsc-game), and tried to load the game with freeloader again, this time the memory card inserted... freeloader accepts the game disk, and starts to load, screen turns blue and stays that way.
This happens with all the three boot-modes.
oh, I tested the memory card today with my PAL-games, it worked fine.

So, does anyone have any idea what could be the problem? Freeloader manual speaks about re-formatting the memory card before playing japanese games. I don't have a clue how to re-format memory cards, and GameCube manual doesn't give any working advice either...
it's not as bad as one might think not to be able to save, but still, I'd really, really would like to be able to do that.

[charlesr]

If the game is not formatted for the game region, it should ask you if you want to format it. But this sounds like freeloader is getting spoofed by the pal region card. If you have any friends with a jap cube, you could get them to format it for you (booting the GC without a game in it and using the menu). Failing that, send it to me in the post with a few stamps I can put on for the return journey and I'll do it for you. PM me if interested.