My Experience with GOWA, it is working fine from external 3.55. Downloaded the Duplex release, replaced the files from Duplex Eboot patch for 3.55 (Param, Eboot and TOPDIR) then from USDIR removed EXTRASCIN1.PSARC, EXTRASCIN2.PSARC, MP-RESOURCES.PSARC, MULTIPLAYER.PSARC. Open Archives with notepad edited the first line. 19 changed to 15 deleted the 4 lines (EXTRASCIN1.PSARC, EXTRASCIN2.PSARC, MP-RESOURCES.PSARC, MULTIPLAYER.PSARC).
I had tough time for extracting the duplex release what I have downloaded from usenet because some of the files CRC were not matching. However, by aldostools (checked for CRC integrity) managed to find out the defective rar files and fixed it.
Just my experience with GOWA (3.55 Kmeaw, 4.31 SEN spoof). I tried creating 0 bytes files for the 2 big psarc and those language psarc, but just that was not enough. Still need to delete those lines in the ARCHIVES and LOCALIZED_ARCHIVES in order to make it work. Hated the duplex screen but I could care less as long as the game is working. Now working fine in external!
good to know, I dummied up the same files but haven't tested yet. If it doesnt boot at least I know to change the ARCHIVE files, thanks
And the LOCALIZED_ARCHIVES file too, if you remove any language files. Although I won't recommend you do so, since all language files are only adding to 1GB total space, and sometimes I see some text "blank" because it might be using GREEK even when your language is english. I will put back my language files and see if that helps.
You don't even need the big file, as it's nothing to do with the game, it's a making of video, without that file, you can happily transfer it to an external and it will run fine.