A Satellaview research blog.

It’s been a long time since a new Soundlink game ROM was released. Was it worth the weight?

Alright, time to prepare another one of the ROMs I put money down on.

Wait, I said one, right? Well, one of them is the one I put money down on. And the other goes along with it. There’s a two-in-one today! One of these was provided by sanmaiwashi, while the one I paid for was an anonymous contribution.

I’m always pumped up when one of the Soundlink games gets found, and was proud to contribute to this, even if it may be one of the less notable ones to many.

So what is it? Let me pop up my video recording here…!

A sumo sports game! Let’s grab some info on this off the archive of Satellaview History Museum. From the list of Soundlink games:

1996/06/02
～
1996/06/07 タカラ杯　大相撲　衛星場所
〔初場所〕 VTR
1996/06/09
～
1996/06/14 タカラ杯　大相撲　衛星場所
〔春場所〕 VTR
1996/06/16
～
1996/06/21 タカラ杯　大相撲　衛星場所
〔夏場所〕 VTR
1996/06/23
～
1996/06/28 タカラ杯　大相撲　衛星場所
〔秋場所〕 VTR

1996/06/02
～
1996/06/07 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[First location] VTR
1996/06/09
～
1996/06/14 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[Spring location] VTR
1996/06/16
～
1996/06/21 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[Summer location] VTR
1996/06/23
～
1996/06/28 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[Autumn location] VTR

What we have is… well “Takara-hai Oozumou Eisei Bashou” is a bit of a mouthful, huh?
The title translates to “Takara Cup Satellite Sumo”, so I’ll be referring to it as “Takara Cup” for the remainder of the article.

This game is based on the retail Super Famicom game Oozumou Spirits.
Comparing the Soundlink broadcast game to a let’s play I found of the retail release, the similarities are pretty apparent. Takara Cup effectively converted that game wholecloth to the Soundlink format.

You may want to try learning how to play the retail Oozumou Spirits before going any further. When I tried looking for any guides to this game, this reddit post was what I found.
I played to a pretty decent level myself, but my strategy for matches was typically to mash B + X…. Awkward.

This release will be for the “Natsubashou” and “Hatsubashou” episodes. The video above is the Natsubashou episode. I also recorded Hatsubashou here.

Both episodes are pretty similar; in fact, LuigiBlood has provided a text document with a simple PAR code to access other episode’s content within the Natsubashou ROM and a link to another site:

0xC1A = 00/01/02/03

https://ameblo.jp/satebo/entry-12624412078.html

The site link has good information on episode differences and screenshots from undumped media that is related to the broadcast. As for the differences, they mostly amount to some changes in player characters/stats and some intermission graphics.
(This site and God-bird.net probably need to be added to the links section on the bottom of the page. Expect that within the week.)

The structure of the game is split into two distinct halves:
The first half is all statbuilding. You start the game by assigning some stat points to your new sumo wrestler (see the guide for info on the stats). Then you accumulate more by going in quick matches against many other opponents. A long win streak gives you bigger and better stat rewards, which you can add to your sumo wrestler either when you finally lose, or if the win streak is big enough that the game just forces you back on the stat screen.

After a set amount of time (It’d be a bit before 20 minutes into the broadcast, meaning the clock setting when you start the ROM factors into this), you’ll be booted out of this mode and go into the actual tournament. There will be a few automatic battles before you take control. The opponents here will be significantly more difficult than the ones you were using to build stats, and will defeat you quickly if you don’t adapt to the mechanics. That said, one defeat is not an instant loss in the tournament, and you will partake in many matches regardless of your win or loss streak. There are many long pauses between matches, some of which include a screen which shows you how to do some special inputs.

Also, this ROM dump has the advertisement at the end.

The ad is for Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei-ō, another Super Famicom game from Takara.

If you want a gist of how the Soundlink audio was for this broadcast, kukun kun has an archival recording of the Hatsubashou premiere.
BTW, that event plaza is among the ones in my reconstruction WIPs a few posts! If you want to recreate the broadcast in your Satellawave emulation setup, you can get it pretty close with that!


タカラ杯　大相撲　衛星場所 〔夏場所〕 | Takara-Hai Oozumou Eisei Bashou – Natsubashou
ROM Download

タカラ杯　大相撲　衛星場所 〔初場所〕| Takara-Hai Oozumou Eisei Bashou – Hatsubashou
ROM Download

(SILLY BONUS INFO:

The player character name for the Hatsubashou episode is 山天牡 – apparently read as サンテンボウ (Santenbou) according to the Soundlink audio, which gives the sumo wrestler a name that sounds phonetically very similar to Satebo (サテボ) from BS-X.
The player characters from other episodes have different names.
Since this is significant to the Soundlink audio it’s thus safe to presume that the other episodes had distinct soundlink audio from each other.
As thus, I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to help finding the missing Soundlink audios.
Thank you in advance!)

NEARBY MILESTONE ROM RELEASE: The Penultimate Puyo. (Last one will drive me Madou I swear)

While Danyl still works on that big batch, I’m gonna take a few notable chunks and release them separately. This is, obviously, to keep the page active, and also to hopefully make Danyl’s job a bit easier with a smaller amount of ROMs necessary to work with.
(NOTE: Danyl has done some edits to the article. Please excuse any unusual changes in formatting or writing style.)

I’m gonna start with one I spent a sizable amount of my own monies for. Now, it’s been a while since I did that, partly because I really shouldn’t be doing that with how broke I am, but this dump is a tad important. You know why?

Let me recap the prior Puyo Puyo-related ROM dumps on Satellablog. This is useful especially if you’re new to this blog, which may well be the case considering it’s almost as old now as the Satellaview was when it was first made…

PRIOR RELEASES.
Super Puyo Puyo
Super Puyo Puyo Tsuu BS Ban
Super Puyo Puyo Tsuu Remix BS Ban
Super Nazo Puyo
Super Nazo Puyo Tsuu For Satellaview
ALSO Super Aleste

You might be thinking “Wow, you got every Puyo Puyo game!”
But you’d actually be wrong!
There’s two more to add this set… the one of theses last games is in the “Madou Monogatari” line that is on the Super Famicom.
That’s “Madou Monogatari – Hanamaru Daiyouchienji”.

It, in fact, did have a Satellaview download demo!

Here’s a video of the demo in action. It’s a pretty long video, though, so I’ll leave some text info for the tl;dw crew.

Among of the quick notes:
1) The game starts right away, even if you press nothing on the title screen. There is no save menu. The game restarts from the opening cutscene on player death.
2) The game goes through the first study session and a little bit of exploring the Forest of Light, seemingly stopping in it’s tracks right when you would get the Ribbit Boots and leaving you softlocked.
3) You are not able to go anywhere outside your home town or the Forest of Light.
4) While there’s not a lot of known differences, there is a pretty notable difference in the Forest of Light battle BG. Here is the one used in this demo:
BG
(I unfortunately was not able to recruit any dataminers for further assistance in spotting differences.)
5) The download date on the header is 2/11. As a frame of reference, the retail game’s release date is January 12, 1996. As such, this is likely from a broadcast that came after the retail game’s release.
6) According to Kameb’s Satellaview history museum site, which has a section on games featured on various Game Tora no Ooana broadcasts, Madou Monagatari had features on 12/28/1995 and 1/18/1996 respectively:

12/28(木) 新作ソフト(魔導物語はなまる大幼稚園児)
秘伝ソフト(もってけｏｈ！ドロボー)

(Translation of relevant portion: “New software (Madou Monogatari Hanamaru Kindergarten)”)

1/19(金) 今週のお買い物情報(1/19)
秘伝ソフト(魔導物語)
リコちゃん電話(嫌いなジャンル)

(Translation of relevant portion: “This week’s shopping information (1/19) Secret software (Madou Monogatari)” )

Here’s an (abridged I guess) broadcast list provided by danyl:

1995/12/28 – 1996/01/10 (broadcast 2 times per day)
1996/02/01 – 1996/02/11 (maybe 12th ?) (broadcast 2 times per day)

The 8M Dump was, according to LuigiBlood, sent by an anonymous contributor.

Madou Monogatari BS-X Ban
魔導物語 BS-X版 | Madou Monogatari BS-X Ban
ROM Download

And with that, NOW did we got every Puyo game on the Satellaview ?

Not really we have to find a last one which is an Sample Version of Super Nazo Puyo Rulue no Roux where you can play the trial course with 6 levels.

Here the list of broadcasts provided by danyl:

1995/06/05～1995/06/11 （2 times per day until the 9th after, this is 3 time per day）
1995/07/17～1995/07/23（3 times per day）
1995/08/14、1995/08/18、1995/10/22 (??? times per day)

Also it’s had been mentionned on the “かべ新聞ニュース” of June 2, 1995 (which can be found on this spreadsheet realised by Danyl:

「す～ぱ～なぞぷよ」秘伝ゲームで放送決定！！

★５月２６日に発売されたばかりの最新ソフト『す～ぱ～なぞぷよ』（バンプレスト）が、
６／５～６／１１の虎の大穴 秘伝ゲームとして登場するぞ。
★続いて今月のオンエア予定を教えちゃおう。
『超原人２』『ミスティックアーク』が６月中に登場予定。
乞うご期待。
Translation by Danyl:

“Super Nazo Puyo” will be broadcast as a secret game ! !

★The latest software “Super Nazo Puyo” (Banpresto), which was just released on May 26th, will be released as a secret game of Tiger’s Long Hole from 6/5 to 6/11. ★Next, let me tell you about this month’s on-air schedule. “Genjin 2” and “Mystic Ark” are scheduled to be released in June. stay tuned.

Of all the milestones I hoped to achieve, this will be probably the most unexpected one

I take it fans of Compile really loved the retro Puyo Puyo games, as I’m certain this would not have been possible without the most hardcore of them preserving their 8M packs!

I remember seeing other old media, like manga publications, and it seemed like in the old days you’d see Arle side-by-side with Mario and Pikachu in terms of iconic video game characters.
The era of Puyo Puyo Tsuu and Sun must have been a magical time for them…
I hope I am helpful in reliving your memories!
BS SUPER MARIO COLLECTION NEXT, GUYS? :3 (Spoilers: No, but we got some other Soundlink stuff incoming.)
BY THE WAY: Since we also got Super Aleste, that leaves one Compile-devved Super Famicom game without a 8M Pack dump. That is Jaki Crush, released in 1992, published by Naxat Soft. (This is assuming Spriggan Powered doesn’t count)
Credits :
Writter : Kiddo
Research : Danyl

On matters regarding future updates + ROM hack craziness.

Hello, it’s Cabbusses again. Just wanted to give a note on future updates, because they should be coming soon.

For various reasons, LuigiBlood has not been able to do updates. I’ve been trying to pick up the slack, but it’s been pretty overwhelming, so at present, danyl has been recruited to work on the followup to “The Biggest Batch So Far”.

That said, that was back in March, and now it’s April.

I may have to take bits of the batch and release them in chunks along the way. I’ve been accumulating screenshots and video for this, but due to circumstances it’s been taking longer than I expected.

So in the meantime, let me post about some personal hacking and tinkering I’ve been doing, or had done and forgot to post about it.

I’m going to do this in chronological order:

First, a WIP on an attempt to create BS Zelda: Inishie no Sekiban’s PSRAM data (Download link is here)

This is not particularly far along, but you can actually use it in conjunction with certain BS Zelda: Sekiban patches to play the ROMs on Satellawave with indoor tiles. Ideal end goal is a complete recreation of missing data, but having something that plays with an unpatched ROM would be a good idea for the future.

BS Zelda “Roto for Satellawave” WIP – Map 1 – download
Map 2

A project with the end goal of making a BS Zelda that can play start-to-finish on a Satellawave setup, based on Roto’s old work. Some things were disabled or re-eneabled to make things work. The clock system can bug out on a reset. Map 2’s ROM doesn’t have music enabled and I forget why… dagnabbit, I should had posted about these when I first made them.

WIPs on Event Plaza recreations, useful for Satellawave:
Falcon Flyer
BS Fuurai no Shiren

BS Bokujo Monogatari
BS Spriggan Powered
BS Tantei Club
BS Ihatovo Mongatari
Takara Sumo
BS Shin Onigashima
Derby Stallion Breeders Cup
Mahjong
Star pirates
BS Zelda
BS Draque
BS Super mario USA
BS Fire Emblem
BS Zelda Sekiban
Bass tournament

Right-Click -> Save As is enabled here again so you are free to do that to save these.

Or you can grab them here.

More may come later! Also, these may be updated to improve accuracy.

Alright, what else did I have?

Ah, yeah.





I hacked BS Super Mario USA to find Worlds 3 and 6.

3000C in any of the BSSMUSA ROMs sets the episode. Using values outside the expected ones can give chaotic results and crashes, but with a clock-disabling patch you can access the dummied out worlds. They are missing Mario Statues, but are pretty playable otherwise.

BS Super Mario USA – Dummied World hacks – download

The biggest batch so far (Part 1)

Hi, LuigiBlood here. I’m late. Very late. Happy Pride month, by the way!

Since the last post in February of this year, a lot of things happened. Anytime I was getting a decent batch, it kept growing up, and delayed it even further. It became almost daunting to manage, especially after a certain anonymous benefactor just dumped like… 40 Memory Packs for me to check since then. Then I kept getting plot twists.

So it got to about 25 things to release. That’s too many to release at once, so I seperated in two batches for me to release some things faster.

I will start with some of the most important stuff, because 2 of these releases has been funded by people:

We actually have been looking for this for a long time. This is the last one of the 3 Dezaemon games that we dumped for a while.

For more context, Dezaemon is a shoot ’em up game editor, released for Famicom, Super Famicom, Playstation, Saturn and Nintendo 64, and with the Super Famicom version, there was also a trilogy of games broadcasted on Satellaview.

This one from the Sugoi STG series was created by Riko Kushida (櫛田理子) from the Game Tora no Ooana (虎の大穴) team, a weekly Satellaview radio program usually coming with a magazine supplement. The name is Jintai (人体) which means Human Body, and boy… does it show.

We finally completed the Satella-Shooting Trilogy, and this one needed some fundraising, and I need to credit the following people who were happy enough to donate money for this:

  • Video Game History Foundation
  • Jonas Rosland
  • cmstar0
  • dillydylan
  • Hiccup
  • History of Hyrule
  • Ballz
  • Matthew Callis
  • Hubz

Amazing STG – Human Body | 凄いSTG 人体
ROM Download

 

We had known about this one for a while, but we finally have it.

Bounty Sword is one of the very few real time strategy games on the Super Famicom and was released in stores, on a cartridge, the ROM is actually 3 Megabytes!
Considering that the Satellaview Memory Pack only allows 1 Megabyte of storage, this means this is a cut down version.

I’ve left the research to ChronoMoogle, who liked the base game, and was more than happy to help explain differences between the retail and BS Version:

  1. The titlescreen lacks its intro / background animations and has the subtitle “Satellaview Special Time Attack Version”.
  2. The save file menu is missing, it jumps straight into the game after pushing start on the title screen.
  3. The story cutscenes are extremely simplified and only show text.
  4. The map screen and other features between chapters are missing.
  5. Each chapter gives you a time limit of 2 minutes.
    -> If a chapter is beaten within these 2 minutes, the game advances to the next one.
    -> If it reaches zero, the game goes back to the titlescreen without any saved progress.
  6. Dialogue during chapter gameplay seems to be mostly the same, but the player will be reminded how much time is remaining periodically.
  7. It is pretty tough to even beat Stage 1 within 2 minutes, so cheats would probably be needed to check how many chapters of the game are actually in the data.

As this also needed money, I would also thank ChronoMoogle for the funding of this release as well!

Bounty Sword BS Version | バウンティ・ソード BS版
ROM Download

 

This one is identical to the retail release except for 2 bytes. This is Soreyuke Ebisumaru Karakuri Meiro – Kieta Goemon no Nazo!!, a spinoff game of the Goemon series from Konami, where you guide Goemon’s sidekick, Ebisumaru, to the goal, through a 3D isometric labyrinth by changing the arrow panels as he walks through them.

This was dumped by an anonymous benefactor.

Soreyuke Ebisumaru Karakuri Meiro – Kieta Goemon no Nazo!! (Retail) | それ行け エビス丸からくり迷路 消えたゴエモンの謎！！
ROM Download

 

This one is also identical to the retail release, it also has no starts left so it won’t show up on the BS-X menu by default, but that can be easily bypassed!

This is a Super Famicom version of one of the games of Activision’s Shanghai series of Mahjong Solitaire, where you just match two identical tiles together to make them disappear, until it’s empty. It’s playable alone or with 2 players competitively.

This was also dumped by an anonymous benefactor.

Shanghai – The Great Wall (Retail) | 上海 万里の長城
ROM Download

 

This is another retail identical thing, this time however, it’s Lufia & The Fortress of Doom! This one has 2 starts left.

There’s not much to say, it’s the first game of the Lufia RPG series from Taito. I know there’s a lot of retail identical titles for this batch, but Satellaview is also this, a bunch of retail rereleases with limited amounts of starts sometimes, think of them like demos but with the full game.

Huge thanks to Hubz who managed to get this.

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (Retail) | エストポリス伝記
ROM Download

 

Okay, we still have some more games that were released on retail, but I promise, this time it’s a bit more interesting:

This is a cut down playable demo version of Supapoon DX! If you leave the game on the title screen, it would show gameplay demos, but also advertises the full game’s content, such as 100 stages in Story Mode, that you can have fun with everyone in Versus Mode, and ends, with, of course, a “Coming Soon!”

It’s a fun breakout clone game that can played in both single player and multiplayer!

The final game is 1 MB, but they actually made a Satellaview demo version with half the size, 512 KB instead.

Huge thanks to sanmaiwashi for sharing this! And thanks to danyl as well for remotivating me to get back in touch with him!

Supapoon DX (Demo) | すぱぽーんＤＸ 体験版
ROM Download

 

This is a non playable demo showcase of Elfaria II – The Quest of the Meld. Yes, non playable. This is a pretty substancial and very long showcase of the game’s story, characters and RPG gameplay elements, and ends with credits info and the release date and price of the game. This game was never released outside of Japan.

Again, thanks to sanmaiwashi for the dump!

Elfaria II – The Quest of the Meld (Demo) | エルファリアII ザ・クエスト・オブ・ザ・メルド デモ版
ROM Download

 

Okay, the retail stuff are out of the way for this part 1 of this batch, now back to unique Satellaview content.

More content in the Satellaview magazine format! Freud’s Challenge 11th time. Except it’s literally the same as the 2nd version, 95% of the data is identical, just seems to be sorta recompiled.

Freud’s Challenge is a series of psychological tests (putting aside how Freud isn’t really the best example of our time), where you’re put through a bunch of situations, with a question to answer with several choices, or maybe an image to pick through. It’s certainly one of the many oddities of the Satellaview.

There are dumps of 1 through 6 already, and the fact that 11 is basically 2 is certainly feeling more like a rerun.

Freud’s Challenge – 11th Time (Magazine) | フロイトの挑戦状 第11回
ROM Download

 

This is data to be used for Same Game Tsume Game. It’s basically custom graphics to select for Same Game. This is named “User Same Game” in the BS-X menu, there are editors for custom graphics for it, but this is… weird. I don’t actually know for certain if it’s user data or a download. I have absolutely no context for it, but I wanted to release an example of addon data for Same Game that isn’t the usual kind from retail stores.

User Same Game (Same Game Data) | ユーザーさめがめ
ROM Download

 

There were several dumps of BS Nintendo HP. HP stands for Homepage, it’s a Satellaview magazine version of the Nintendo website, where they shared a lot of news about the future of their consoles, incoming games and everything. It used to be deleted via BS-X, so it was “undeleted” to be usable. This means as a result that the data integrity cannot be certain.

The music is also something to behold. This is from February 21st, 1999. Super Smash Bros. even has a full featured menu to explain the game, characters and all!

It’s interesting how late this is, considering Nintendo was about to pull the plug for new Satellaview content support in a month then, leaving St. GIGA alone at the helm after a bad fallout, only able to rebroadcast content.

This dump is brought to you by, again, sanmaiwashi!

BS Nintendo HP Issue 2/21 | BS任天堂HP 2/21号
ROM Download

BS Nintendo HP Issue 2/21 | BS任天堂HP 2/21号
SPC Music Download

 

I brought you Cheap de Gorgeous Vol. 5 last year, well here’s Vol. 4, dumped by Denizbkg01!

This one was not deleted this time, so the data integrity is totally fine. As a reminder, this is a cooking magazine with recipes and food talk.

The music is the same as Vol. 5, so the music SPC rip is not really needed here.

Cheap de Gorgeous – Vol. 4 (4/26) | チープdeゴージャス Vol. 4 (4/26)
ROM Download

 

This next one, we owe you an apology. We had this dump since 2019. It seems that in the process of research at the time, the release just was completely forgotten.

A wrong now fixed. This is “Derby Stallion 96 – Nintendo Breeders’ Cup National Betting Championship Tournament 3”, a soundlink title of horse racing where you can bet on horses… for pretty much already predefined races and results for each, you can watch the original broadcast from back then thanks to kukun kun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt2n2l4DLAo

This dump, unfortunately, was corrupted. The download includes both the original dump and a modified version to make it playable.

Derby Stallion 96 – Nintendo Breeders’ Cup National Betting Championship Tournament 3 (Corrupted)
ダビスタ96 任天堂ブリーダーズカップ　全国馬券王者決定戦３
ROM Download

 

And, finally, the last one for Part 1:

This is sort of an insane one because we had UNDAKE 30 Same Game Mario Version before. And that was it. There were more UNDAKE 30 titles, such as this one.

This is UNDAKE 30 Ura Game Daisakusen, on a similar principle to Same Game where you make all objects attached to the one you selected that are the same disappear, except there’s a twist that some of them change when you select them before it registers. There’s also a hidden golden 7 that makes you gain more points.

This Memory Pack also includes a redump of Kouryaku Casino Bar Kinyoubi – Slots.

UNDAKE 30 Ura Game Daisakusen | UNDAKE 30 うらがめ大作戦
Kouryaku Casino Bar Kinyoubi – Slots (Redump) | 攻略カジノバー金曜日 スロット
ROM Download

 

Part 2 will come as fast as I can, there’s really a lot of dumps to deal with. You should not wait too long, there’s still interesting stuff to release.

Wario’s First Event and Pirates that beeps

Hey, LuigiBlood here, and happy new year, because I got a nice batch of redumps but also a bunch of new stuff.

I’ll just put the redumps out of the way from an anonymous person, first.

These are all identical to what was dumped in the past so I won’t really explain much, just rely on the included txt file to help you figure out.

BS Marvelous – Time Athletic Course 1 | BSマーヴェラス　タイムアスレチック　コース1 (Redump + “Fixed” header)
ROM Download

F-Zero (Retail, Redump)
ROM Download

Super Bomberman (Retail, Redump)
ROM Download

Now, the cooler stuff:

From Ballz who got us a nice Memory Pack with a new version of WaiWai Check, dumped by our nice Matthew Callis 🙂

It’s basically a series of spot the difference under a time limit game, which can be played up to players, and of course you can have a password to send via postcard.

These have gotten different versions dumped in the past, but this one is from a different date, and names itself a rerun, so this seems interesting. It’s a pretty fun game, actually.

The Memory Pack also contains Kouryaku Casino Bar Nichiyoubi – Roulette but it’s actually corrupted.

WaiWai Check! 11/15 Rerun | わいわいチェック！ 11/15 再放送
ROM Download

 

Now all the rest are from people who prefers to stay anonymous:

This is Jissen! Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! Yamasa Densetsu. This is just the exact same data as the retail game, but it is technically new because we had never found this one on Satellaview before. The music actually impressed me a lot when I tried it (and then didn’t understand how to even play).

There’s really a lot of casino and pachislot games, aren’t there?

Jissen! Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! Yamasa Densetsu | 実戦パチスロ必勝法！山佐伝説
ROM Download

 

This one scared me. The file name is actually different, but it’s STILL BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 Practice. But it’s… weirdly different in the data itself that I thought it deserved a bit of attention because of the Password screen actually showing up this time, according to TCRF this screen does not really show up normally, but I played this and it does show up here.

I couldn’t tell any other difference otherwise, but I’m sure some F-Zero fans could maybe check.

BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 Practice (6/7)
ROM Download

 

I asked ChronoMoogle to help me figure out this new magazine, and he wrote a nice summary:

Zubari Sangatsu Gou (Concise March Issue) is a month-themed magazine by St. Giga.

It features the following sections:
1. A section looking at cultural customs, dishes, events and such of March
2. Holidays of the month – Vernal Equinox Day (Shunbun no Hi) in this case
3. Advertisement for the flower store Shimojima with related present raffle
4. Music Charts – Consisting of the “current” Top 20 most sold CDs in Japan and a International Top 20 curated by St. Giga
5. New book recommendations, advertising Kodansha
6. Advertisement for seasonal sweets from Toraya
7. Horoscopes of the month

The magazine uses fonts from the BS-X BIOS, but the graphics (mostly backgrounds and pixelated photos) and more importantly, the music appears to be stored in the ROM, so there might be some original BGMs in there.

The other thing that the anonymous person made me pay attention on, this magazine released around the time when Nintendo would stop support for the Satellaview entirely, as they dropped around that time after a pretty complicated to explain debacle between Nintendo and St. GIGA’s future planning…

Again, thanks to ChronoMoogle to help us figure this out 🙂

Zubari Sangatsu Gou | ずばり３月号
ROM Download

Zubari Sangatsu Gou | ずばり３月号
SPC Download

 

Wario’s Woods on Satellaview is kinda weird, it had a lot of presence somehow, we got several versions of it, but I believe this is the last one to find: this is Wario’s Woods Event Version 1.

We had Version 2 before, and if you wonder who are these people, they’re part of Bakusho Mondai performers and they’re Satellaview personalities who show up on the radio on Satellaview.

There are changed menus and stuff, but the naming of the file is weird. “Event Wario 5/18 Version 2” which is… very unclear. I’m not entirely sure of the context here, but I’m glad that we have sort of completed the Wario’s Woods Satellaview collection.

Wario’s Woods – Event Version 1 | ワリオの森 イベントバージョン Ver. 1
ROM Download

 

Now the real star of the show:

After many many years, we finally got Pico Pico Pirates! It was a game that we knew the existence of for a long time, but simply could never find it until today.

The developer is not really listed, there are rumors that it was made during a seminar, but there’s no definitive source for that. The game kinda feels like Super Scope 6 in some way, but make no mistake, it isn’t.

This is basically a game where you shoot pirates from a flying Super Nintendo controller, and of course, you have to press the buttons where they show up at. It gets really crazy after several stages of this, it is difficult to finish.

But this isn’t the only thing that we could find from this specific Memory Pack…

There’s another RPG Maker Super Dante game in it, which a portion of the data was overwritten by Pico Pico Pirates.

After comparing with other Satellaview Super Dante games, I found out that this is actually completely recoverable, and while we cannot confirm the full validity of the data, this meant this could be made playable, and lucky are we when I found out there’s a video of this specific RPG on YouTube:

The intro seems to fully correspond to what I have, so I made the header data correspond to the video. This is the first time that I have recovered something in this way, and I’m glad that it works.

This is called Sugoi RPG? (could be translated like “A Great RPG?”, this seems to be the second and final part of it, where visibly a lot of events happened and seems to be a game that doesn’t take itself seriously featuring Famitsu and its staff.

Here’s the download to get both:

Pico Pico Pirates | PICO PICO パイレーツ
“A Great RPG?” -Last Part- | 「すごいRPG？」ーこうへんー (Recovered)
ROM Download

And there you have it folks, I’m very glad that we got a bunch of previously undumped Satellaview content today, and here’s to have more of them in the future!

A huge thanks to everyone involved for these releases!

Final dumps and redumps of the year

This is my final Satellaview dump post of the year, from LuigiBlood 🙂

I’ve accumulated a bunch of dumps and redumps in the past few months, and it’s way overdue again to give the updates, so I’ll seperate it the post in three parts, from three different dumpers.

 

From j4m13c0, we got a Memory Pack dump of two things:

This memory pack contains Kanaderu Score, and is ACTUALLY DOWNLOADED as it is dated, and it actually contains a song from Ryoma de Yuku, one of the RPG Tsukuru 2 games!
So you could edit and see the composition of it, which is a nice bonus.

Then there’s a magazine called Yusuke Akamatsu Theater, it seems to be a story written by Yusuke Akamatsu, and ends with an advertisement of an album by the same person, published by Shinko Music Entertainment.

The download includes a seperate version of the magazine, and the full Memory Pack dump with the Ongaku Tsukuru content. Both were originally deleted, but were recovered, so we cannot confirm if the data is actually good, but it seems to be alright.

Yusuke Akamatsu Theater (5/7) | 赤松裕介劇場 (5/7)
ROM Download

 

From PsyKo, we got an interesting dump:

This is a demo of Harvest Moon, which was previously dumped, but the data was originally considered bad, this one however has not been deleted, and its integrity is confirmed intact. It is slightly different from the other dump, but 99% of the data is identical.

This is worth it just to have some confirmed intact dump of this demo.

Harvest Moon (Demo) | 牧場物語 (Demo)
ROM Download

 

Then, the rest of this post are all dumps from PrincessBeef, who has been really busy buying a bunch of these Memory Packs, and we cannot thank her enough.

First of all, let’s begin with a bunch of games that came from retail builds:

This is Air Management II, aka Aerobiz Supersonic in the US, this is 100% identical to the japanese retail Super Famicom build except for the header, of course.

Aerobiz Supersonic | エアーマネジメントII 航空王をめざせ
ROM Download

This is self explanatory, this is Space Invaders – The Original Game, the remake for Super Famicom, also known for having a smaller version inside the Game Boy version for the Super Game Boy.

This is also 100% identical to the japanese retail Super Famicom version, except for the header again.

Space Invaders – The Original Game
ROM Download

Next, some magazines with some extras:

First, another magazine of Yuuki Nae no GE-MU no Tsubo (Yuuki Nae’s Game Jar in english) was dumped from a different date, with different funny drawings based on games, a profile of a game developer, in this case, it’s Hideki Konno, as well as a presentation of Konae-chan no Dokidoki Penguin Kazoku, which is actually the game where Yuuki Nae stars in!

And then includes another dump of Konae-chan no Dokidoki Penguin Kazoku in it, which was already recently dumped and released by Forest of Illusion, it’s a different version of the game that isn’t an Event version!

There’s also some leftover data of what looks like graphics but I couldn’t figure out more about, but I left it in the full Memory Pack dump included.

Yuuki Nae’s Game Jar + KONAE-chan’s Pounding Penguin Family (12/22) | 裕木奈江のGE-MUの壺 + ＫＯＮＡＥチャンのどきどきペンギン家族 (12/22)
ROM Download

Now this magazine has confused me a lot. I’ve just shown… all of it in these 3 images.

This is apparently Lily Franky Theater (which was origniall, titled Manga here, but… there’s nothing? It just says “Discarded”. I cannot seem to find anything more about this…
Maybe it was something that was promised and then it didn’t happen and made the most useless content data ever?

It also contains a lot of leftover data in the full Memory Pack dump of what looks like Wario’s Woods, but it’s not placed the same way, so this might be something undumped…?

Lily Franky Theater / Manga (5/13) | リリーフランキー劇場／まんが (5/13)
ROM Download

Cheap de Gorgeous Vol. 5! What was previously dumped was Volume 1, this is a cooking magazine, with a bunch of recipes and sometimes people talking with each other, it was unfortunately “deleted,” but we fixed it.

Cheap de Gorgeous Vol. 5 (5/7) | チープdeゴージャス Vol. 5 (5/7)
ROM Download

Cheap de Gorgeous Vol. 5 (5/7) | チープdeゴージャス Vol. 5 (5/7)
SPC Download

Next, some redumps, these next two are identical to previous dumps except the dates so I won’t bother writing much about them.

Wario no Mori Futatabi (Redump, 6/16) | ワリオの森 再び (6/16)
ROM Download

SD Gundam G-NEXT Unit & Map Collection (Redump, 02/09) | ＳＤガンダムＧＮＥＸＴ ユニット＆マップコレクション (2月9日)
ROM Download

And I kept what I feel is the best for last:

We got another RPG Tsukuru 2 game, BS KureKure Mou Race! A game that you have to finish to then get a password to send via post card and receive prizes on a first-come, first-served basis.

This seems to be the February version, as the name might suggest, but seems also to be the second one.

BS KureKure Mou Race – 2 Tsuki-Gou | BSくれくれ猛レース 2月号
ROM Download

And that’s all of them!

Thanks again to j4m13c0, PsyKo and PrincessBeef for their time to bring these dumps to the public!

New dumps and redumps, and name corrections.

It’s time for another Satellaview post from yours’ truly, LuigiBlood.

We’ve got a bunch of dumps to share, some of which I should have shared earlier again but I’m here to make it right.

Coming from an anonymous source, another redump of Wario’s Woods Futatabi which the date is 8/11 this time.
It is identical to what is already dumped in the past.

Wario no Mori Futatabi (8/11) | ワリオの森 再び (8/11)
ROM Download

Then all of other dumps come from PrincessBeef, and there’s a lot of them:

It turns out that we got another dump of Bakushow Mondai no Totsugeki! Star Pirates, the other one was Week 1, this one is Week 3! It is a quiz show hosted by Bakushou Mondai performers and others, all Satellaview personality.

That said the dump was unfortunately corrupted, so the Download link will provide the original bad dump, and a version where the checksum is manually fixed, but make no mistake, we don’t know what has corrupted and we cannot fix it for certain.

Bakushow Mondai no Totsugeki! Star Pirates – Dai-3-wa | 爆笑問題の突撃！スターパイレーツ　第３回 (Bad)
ROM Download

 

Then another set of magazines, both of which are undumped volumes of magazines we’ve dumped in the past.

Do-Re-Mi de Faa~! is a magazine dedicated to music, Top 20 of CD sales, and other things, this is Volume 9 from 5/25.

Then there’s BS Famitsu Magazine Kawara-ban Issue 5/24, which was named Weekly Famitsu Express but this is not really the right name.
It turns out the name Kawara-ban would mean like, Tile Print, from the Edo period, and would be considered like Prospectus, it is something that really hammers home how it is a smaller version of Famitsu magazine.

Both came from the same Memory Pack, which I have included in the Download.

Do-Re-Mi de Faa~! Vol. 9 – 5-25 Gou | ドレミでふぁ～！５／25号　Vol.9
ROM Download

BS Famitsu Magazine Kawara-ban 5/24 Gou | ＢＳファミ通マガジン　かわら版 ５／２４号
ROM Download

 

Now, another issue of… okay so we said “Machi Magazine Idol Diary Media – Strawberry,” but the name is woolly inaccurate, a proper name would more be like “Future Idol Development System – Media Strawberry”, where… there’s no volume number, we can only rely on the date which is 4/17. Another issue we got was 3/22, which is Volume 12, so this should be dated after, in theory.

The first screenshot explains what kind of magazine it is, courtesy of Google Translate which seems to fairly translate what it is about:

このマガジン型番組は、明日のスターを夢見る、若き乙女たちが続々と登場する、エンターテイメント・アイドルカタログである。
This magazine type program is an entertainment idol catalog in which young girls dreaming of becoming stars of tomorrow appear one after another.

The memory pack also contains some leftover data which I couldn’t decipher, but I’ll include it anyway.

Mirai-gata Idol Kaihatsu System – Media Strawberry – 4/17 | 未来型アイドル開発システム メディアストロベリー 4/17
ROM Download

 

Another Memory Pack with several things in them. The first is a magazine program I’ve never seen before: Satella Yokochō, which we could translate like, Satella Street?

It seems to include a bunch of information about BS-X lore involving the characters and their names! It seems to talk about the local rumors and whatnot, but my knowledge of japanese is still limited and would rather not go too much into the things if I don’t think I understand them easily, but this is cool to have!

And then, a full Super Famicom title: Super Soukoban! And it is absolutely 1:1 corresponding to the retail release, the only thing different is the header part.

The full Memory Pack dump is included with both, it includes leftover graphics from something else, but I couldn’t figure out what it actually is.

Satella Yokochō – 8-24 Gou | さてら横丁8/24号
ROM Download

Super Soukoban | スーパー倉庫番
ROM Download

 

And last, but not least, from Hard4Games, an anonymous source and PrincessBeef, a collection of RPG Maker 2, Sound Novel Maker and Music Maker user content!

Collection of Maker Series User Content dumps (2022-08-28)
ROM Download

I may as well because it is still pretty entertaining to check them out.

Dispelling confusion about Satellaview

Hey, LuigiBlood here.

It occured to me that I talk a lot about Satellaview in places that don’t really make you easily find this information, so I hope to solve this in this blog post.

No subscription

In the past few years, I spoke with people who actually played the Satellaview back then. One of these informations I stumbled upon is that the Satellaview never ever had a subscription.
I was told that the signal was descrambled when the Satellaview service was in effect (more on that later).

I tried to source this information and looked at Wikipedia, the JAPANESE Wikipedia, and it turns out it explicitly mentions that during the time soundlink programs are broadcasted, that the audio becomes a “free non-scrambled broadcast.” You can also assume this for the data portion of things. However it does not really tell me a source but I did find a Satellaview flyer presenting the features, and it does explicitly say ノンスクランブル (Non-Scrambled) about the audio, which really means this was not scrambled, and therefore can be accessed by anyone owning a BS Tuner and the other necessary equipment.

Source for the flyer (the black & white one mentions the non-scramble): https://twitter.com/Suterovich/status/835430133112635393

This also means that like, the thing about the subscription numbers is actually a different thing, and I feel like we don’t actually know the amount of players who played the Satellaview back then.

No upload, no Internet

I saw a bunch of people saying the Satellaview could do Internet, online multiplayer and stuff like that…

This is completely wrong. This is even impossible with the Satellaview hardware.

The only thing the Satellaview can do is tune in to a continuous signal from the sky that contains the audio and data. The Satellaview hardware handles the synchronization by itself; but that also means it cannot send any data through anything. This isn’t the Internet, this is a completely different technology.

This is also why you had to tune in at specific times to play and download content. This is like the radio or TV, a user cannot tell a service what to access (this is where upload would be used), you have to wait until you can get what you want.

The japanese satellite signal standard of its time was to have NTSC video signal with digital audio up to 4 channels and then a data channel modulated in together. Soundlink games merely only enable the standard audio channel that isn’t scrambled at this point and can be processed by the Satellaview hardware. This is why soundlink games are bound to their time as well, because the audio is streamed continuously.

You don’t necessarily need to understand the terms in detail, but I assume you should get the point by now.

EXT port

The Satellaview itself, which connects to the Super NES’s EXT port, also has its own EXT port for an expansion for the Satellaview.

Thanks to japanese patents, and newer research, we know what that port is for: A Hard Drive.
The hard disk drive would be used to contain content via regular ATA commands. The connector itself is a proprietary ATA variant.

The BS-X BIOS does not contain any code to access the EXT hardware, unfortunately, which is why we could only find this information ourselves.

We however know that it cannot contain or play Soundlink audio, the patent never seem to mention anything about that.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/JP3615588B2

Is Preservation doomed?

Honestly… yes. For many reasons.

The thing with Satellaview is that it is a lot more than about what’s contained in Memory Packs, which is its own can of worms, since we pretty much just buy them blind and hope for the best, especially for those that are treated as empty because we know that we cannot trust the BS-X BIOS for this.

Thank god for kukun kun and the others to have recorded VHS tapes of their playthroughs of Satellaview games, as it also brings a lot of context but also a way to visualize how it was meant to be at the time, which is very hard to get sometimes. This stuff is more important than anyone can realize.

Some at the time also figured out how to record satellite signal through tricks, such as plugging BS bitstream output directly into a D-VHS recorder and then being able to play the tape directly into the Satellaview’s BS IN port. This, essentially, would have been the perfect playable preservation state I would have dreamed of as we would have been able to reproduce the entire experience. Unfortunately, these tapes were lost over time.

To give an idea of the data we are missing:

  • BS-X Town Data
    It is easy to ignore this, but Nintendo programmed BS-X in a way that they can customize the town. This includes custom NPCs as well, custom text, custom event building, shops info, and the likes.
  • PSRAM Program Data (for certain games)
    A bunch of Soundlink titles like Waiwai de Q / Satella-Q rely entirely on the PSRAM, none of the contents are ever downloaded on Memory Pack.
    There’s also the case of bigger games, like BS Zelda, BS Zelda Ancient Stone Tablets, BS Marvelous, Mighty Pockets and more, that first downloads a PSRAM program that contains the intro, ending and other screens. While the intro plays, it downloads the main game into the Memory Pack.
    Some games like BS Zelda Ancient Stone Tablets rely on PSRAM content to contain vital game data, which is why the original dumps always end crashing: THIS DATA HAD TO BE RECREATED FROM SCRATCH because it was not in the Memory Pack.
    A particularly sad side of preservation indeed.
  • Soundlink Audio (Clean)
    This is the obvious, soundlink games rely on those. It would have been great to preserve these in a clean state, at least to reproduce the experience more easily.
    Due to the standards of the time and how the audio was non scrambled, it was actually possible to actually listen in with a BS Tuner without the need of the Satellaview, meaning you could actually possibly record this audio seperately from the Super Famicom and therefore avoid any possible sound effects.
    Some people actually did this… and someone even has a collection of these. Unfortunately it is also very hard to negociate any access.

These are just examples, but what we can only preserve, at this time, are mostly Memory Pack content, and you can tell that’s really just a portion of the Satellaview experience.

I also could mention how Famitsu was important at the time for including a Satellaview schedule weekly.

Some people come in to upload their recordings as well, sometimes with more testimonials of the time from the japanese players who had the chance to play.
I recommend checking out https://ameblo.jp/satebo/ for that, includes a lot more context to parts of the experience. It is managed by Twitter user @Wifi_h1024.

Kukun kun is also a savior for bringing even more recordings, too bad that YouTube is so shitty: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuXH9J-zamUAOJPYc_nAQrA

…who stole the name of the town?

…it’s easy to forget that BS-X used to have a lore about “The Story of the Town Whose Name Was Stolen.”

Machi Magazine was among the few content we got about the NPCs’ names, but also a list of rumors, of which we could reveal the town’s name, as well as who actually stole it.

Upon asking the people who lived the days, I was told that this was never ever able to be solved and they don’t know the answer to that, and that at one point, the town lore was completely rebooted, with some NPCs changing names afterwards.

That’s kinda sad, hopefully we could eventually solve this.

 

I hope this post would dispel some confusion about the Satellaview with some nice information.