Satellablog

Intro by Cabbusses: So the ol’ SMG4-spread saying goes, “Mama ****er!”

Today, on Mar10, we reveal to you, we finally got one of the volumes of the most infamous comic series on the service.
I’m not entirely sure how much I can explain in regard to just how sought after these are, but I can at least say this much: Much of the reason these are so infamous is their frequent portrayal of Mario characters doing family-unfriendly activities. Especially physical abuse. Lots of physical abuse.

At present, we don’t know of any radio programs that directly tie into the comics.

Oh, and there’s also a little treat for the Squaresoft fans.
Square Magazine was both a radio program and a ROM magazine with information directly supplied by Squaresoft.
The ROM that has been recovered of that is one for an episode that is not on kukun kun’s YouTube channel.

Both of these are recovered from deleted data.

Do note that for both of these series, this is just one of many, so please continue to support us if you want more of them recovered!

I’ll let Danyl take it from here:

This memory pack includes an Square Magazine about Square news AND a F#CKING episode of Lily Franky Theater ! (Precisely the 34th one from December 4th 1995)

Before to talk about the plot of this volume I am going to give some context :

let me tell you that there were 2 versions of Lily Franky Theater between April 24, 1995 and March 30, 1996 :
a Manga version (まんが) which had begun the April 27th 1995 was called until July 1995: “人として” in this version, Lily Franky in person makes surreal gags about human life.
Also there is a Live-action version (実写版) which has begun April 24th 1995 and will be called by fans “下町人情劇場” which is rather close to the truth because it was first called “下町人情物語” the content of which I do not know and history the only proof I have of its existence is a mention in May 1995 Satellaview Tsushin. It got a 2nd version called “下町人情劇場 親方っ” which tells a love story between Mario and Peach.
During the summer there were 2 summer programs for the 2 versions : リリー夏休み作品 特集! (Manga version) Lily Franky shows comics created by random fans and マリとピノ公の美女評論 (Live-action version) here Mario and Toad criticize random women according to fans suggestions.
but after August 1995 the Live-action version returned with “下町人情劇場 親方っ ２”  (which continue the Mario & Toad plot) and the Manga version with “週間ＢＵＳＳ” (which was called “週間ＢＵＳＵ” during its first broadcast) in addition to “２００１年宇宙の人として”, “リリー・フランキー劇場 ＴＵＲＢＯ” etc. there was a Manga called “Cinco Show” by Rie Fujiwara which we learned in the broadcast of September 6, 1995 that it is a sister for Lily Franky. and the drawing part of the last episode of Shitamachi Ninjo Gekijo is actually the last episode of “週間ＢＵＳＳ”.

here some pictures footage than I found :

Now, here’s the plot of this:
After escaping the jail, Mario & Toad have ended up in Brazil and are trying to go back home… by building an pipe ? (I am surprised by the ability of this program to always take an unexpected direction.)

Thanks to techknight for this.

Square Magazine (1995-12-5) + Lily Franky Theater – Live Action Version (1995-12-4) / スクウェアまがじん (1995-12-5) + リリーフランキー劇場／実写版 (1995-12-4) ROM Download

(Now back to Cabbusses to add some stuff)

Now let’s move on to some less amazing, but nevertheless Mario-themed (?) dumps.

First, some new “builds” for Wario’s Woods.
Here’s an alternative build of “Event Version 1”. How is it different?

It starts out with the same Sava Data manager screen that the Event Version 2 ROM dumped prior does.

Oh! KureKure Mou Race 1996-4 Tsuki-Gou is also included!

Some additional notes by Danyl :

It’s a rerun variant of the Event Ver.1 2nd Revision (our dump which had been aired during July 1995)

So that’s mean than our Event Ver.2 dump is the rerun variant and than we should still find the premiere one

I furnish here the broadcasts list of the Ver.1 rerun variant :

1995/09/06～1995/09/30（1～2 times per day）
1995/10/16, 18, 21（1 time per day）
1995/11/02～1995/11/05（1 time per day）
1995/11/13～1995/11/29（1 time per day）
1995/12/11～1995/12/17（2 times per day）
1995/12/25～1995/12/31（2 times per day）
1996/01/08～1996/01/09（2 times per day）

It’s had been also aired during the very begin of the weekly (or the 2nd broadcast) period :

1996/03/31～1996/04/13（1～2 times per day）

Wario no Mori – Event Version 1 (3/31) + BS KureKure Mou Race – 3-tsuki-gou (4/9)
ROM download

Here’s another Event Version 1. This one was recovered from deletion.
ワリオの森 イベント バージョン Ver 1 9/6 | Wario no Mori – Event Version 1 (9/6)
ROM download

And we’re not out of the woods yet! (Haaaaaaaaa…..)

Here’s some dumps of Futatabi that are labeled as early broadcasts. I’m not entirely sure how they’re different from the present dumps, mind, but nevertheless!

Some additional notes by Danyl :

It’s the original event version of Wario no Mori Futatabi which include password & event presentation screens.

In the code itself however, there are 15% – 20% of differences

I furnish here the broadcasts list :

1997/09/28～1997/11/01（3 times per day）
ワリオの森 再び 10/6 | Wario no Mori – Futatabi (Early Broadcast) (10-6)
ROM download

ワリオの森 再び 10/10 | Wario no Mori – Futatabi (Early Broadcast) (10-10) (Corrupted)
ROM download

A dump of Stadium 4 of Excitebike. This has an interesting header title….

Like other alternative builds, this has a different set of text here.

エキサイトバイク　ぶんぶんマリオバトル　スタジアム4 1/18 | Excitebike – Bunbun Mario Battle – Stadium 4 (Rerun) (1-18)
ROM download

We have a dump that on the surface, looks the same as Mario Paint BS Ban. But it turns out, a picture loads when you select “load” like in Yuushou Naizou Ban.
Except, this one clearly isn’t winning any contests.

At present, we believe this is user data, and the ROM is thus marked as such. If you happen to be the author of this picture, feel free to let us know! We can keep it a secret….

This is mostly of interest for being the first Mario Paint BS Ban ROM we found of this kind. Before this point, I didn’t even realize this was a feature…

User Mario Paint Data
ROM Download

For a slightly less Mario-y dump, here’s the Game Tora no Ooana Special that goes with this broadcast archived by kukun kun.
This is for the first half of the broadcast. The second half has a Part 2 magazine that is not recovered yet.

ゲーム虎の大穴スペシャル 1　1995年9月16日 | Game Tora no Ooana Special 1 (1995-9-16) (Deleted)
ROM download
This dump also has leftovers from Hameln no Violin Haki (Trial Version). Not runnable in it’s current state, but it may be of interest to dataminers.

And now, a wave of redumps! There’s a BIG release coming so we’re gonna ACCELERATE through these. Keeping with today’s theme, here’s 16 redumps of games with Mario characters!

Yoshi no Panepon 6/11
Yoshi no Panepon 10/30
Yoshi no Panepon 6/28
Yoshi no Panepon 5/30
Yoshi no Panepon 11/3
another corrupted Yoshi no Panepon

Wario no Mori Futatabi 7/28
Wario no Mori Futatabi 6/30
Wario no Mori Futatabi 4/9
Wario no Mori Futatabi 6/14
Incomplete Wario no Mori Futatabi

Incomplete Excitebike Bunbun Mario Battle Stadium 1

Dr. Mario 10/2
Dr. Mario 11/9
Corrupted Dr. Mario
Deleted Dr. Mario 6/29

For a while now, something perplexed me.

We had several dumps of BS Zelda ROMs. However, when trying to load them up into a Satellaview environment like with Satellawave software with SatData, many of them would refuse to read save data.

With the help of a few more additional ROM dumps, the answer is starting to click.

Let me start with the dump release in question. This way, it will be separated from some modified ROMs I will put up afterward.

BSゼルダの伝説 MAP2 第2話
BS Zelda no Densetsu – Map 2 – Dai-2-wa
ROM Download

Since we got this one, an episode 1 one, and an episode 3 one, I noticed that for some reason, all our Map 2 ROMs carried the save data over successfully, unlike the Map 1 ROMs. Then, I checked the broadcast dates.

The map 2 ones are in sequence: 3/3, 3/10. Now, 3/17 I admit is recovered, but since it managed to work in this set fine, that can go here too.

Now, I go back and check the Map 1 ROMs. There are problems here because we have a rerun of ep. 1, ep. 2 and 3’s premiere, and a rerun of ep. 4. But on top of that, the ep.1 and ep. 4 are from different rebroadcast periods.

So with this knowledge in tow, I then figured out where episode-modifier data is in each ROM (I’m working with rebroadcast builds, so they should all be the complete game, unlike the premiere builds)

I wrote some notes down here in a text file as I was working through this. One nice thing is that between Map 1 and Map 2, these notes both apply. This is for checking these in a hex editor:

Week’s Objective: 1BA00-1BCDF

Time Event Week: 5BC9B

Overworld Map is in the 90000s area, 9E5C0-9EFFF for Overworld Map differences between episodes

Thus, you can replicate undumped episodes by changing this data to match that corresponding episode’s data.

And since we very conveniently now have a “rerun” BS Zelda dump for every episode….

I attempted to make new modified ROMs with this knowledge.

This includes an attempt at an episode 4 for Map 2 and an eps. 2-4 for the BS Zelda Map 1 Ep. 1 rerun which is dated 1/1. (these are currently not considered “theoretical mockup replicas” in the off chance any theory here is proven wrong with a new Map 1 dump. Also the hacking WAS a bit sloppy, so I might have minor errors.)
There is also a modified ROM for the 9/28 BS Zelda Map 1 Ep. 4 build, and an attempt to make a Map 2 ep. 2 without referencing the actual confirmed dump.

Very pleasantly, I did a run of Map 1 where I played all 3 modified ROMs after the initial dump, and they played start to end with save RAM carrying the whole way through.

So what exactly is going on?

That’s still hard to say. But between the 1/1 BS Zelda Map 1 Ep. 1’s build and the 9/28 BS Zelda Map 1 Ep. 3’s build, here appear to be differences besides the ones in my notes above, including both large chunks of certain banks in the beginning, middle and end of the ROM and some seemingly random scattered bytes. There may actually be even more post-release build revisions than I initially anticipated. Perhaps one of them addressed the abnormally large amounts of in-game slowdown?

But, thinking about it more, it would make just as much sense that there’d be code to intentionally wipe out SRAM from a previous time period if it was there. After all, if you held on to a save from January to load it in September, you could in theory cheat to win a coveted event prize. Of course there’d be code to check for that!… I just wish I knew exactly what or where that code was.

Ah, speaking of new dumps in a series, here’s some more:

Another Satespo DX magazine. This time it’s the first volume. Did you not see the prior dump? Well, now you don’t have to, because conveniently the data for that one is in the same memory pack. In fact, I’ve been told this dump here is better anyway.

Refresher: Satesupo DX is a magazine made to track the results of Satellaview Derby Stallion 96 competitions. Like Ranking Magazine, you may see the winners and runner-ups of certain events in these.

Satesupo DX Dai-1-gou + Satesupo_DX Dai-4-gou
ROM Download

Also:

Woah, woah, woah, that’s a LOT of data. RPG Tsukuru 2 data, in fact. What’s here? There’s a Kurekure Mou Race 4… No, wait, LuigiBlood’s got me corrected there, it’s the April edition of Kurekure Mou Race 2. Aaaaah, this is gonna confuse me….

Jewel of Live 3 is probably one I should play, since I played 1 and 2. It’s interesting that it moved from Super Dante into 2. How many in this series are left?

Also in here is “Arf to Hakase no Daibouken”. But that isn’t even the entirety of what’s in there, so do check it out if you’re into these!

Not that many screenshots here, since I can’t exactly tell where custom assets were used yet.

RPG Tsukuru 2 Collection
ROM download

And after that:

This magazine is for another Houkago no Ousama radio program! To be more specific, it goes with this one on kukun kun’s channel.

You might recognize the voice of Rica Matsumoto ( 松本梨香 ) if you’re even the slightest bit familiar with the Pokemon anime. Yes, Ash Ketchum Satoshi’s voice; She had her own radio show here! Tagging alongside her is Hitomi Mien ( 三重野瞳 ) who has a detailed Wikipedia article about her prior music and screenwriting work.

But, uh, wait, there’s something else in this ROM too… it was deleted, but recoverable!

Another Tamori no Picross! This is a 3/27 rerun of a 8/1 broadcast.

松本梨香と三重野瞳の放課後の王様　1996年03月29日(金) + タモリのピクロス03月27日
Rika & Hitomi (3-29) + [Deleted]Tamori no Picross (8-1, 3-27)
ROM download

And lastly, a bit of leftover data recovered from another 8M. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like we can easily transplant this into a prior dump (I tried transplanting data from other Silicon Chounaikai dumps, but this just results in corrupted or crashed ROMs). Thus, I can’t say much about it. But I have been told it corresponds with this kukun kun video.

爆笑問題のシリコン町内会　1996年10月12日
Bakusho Mondai no Silicon Chounaikai 10/12 (leftover)
ROM download

Merry Christmas!

Unfortunately I couldn’t get anything that’d surpass Oryouri Pon for this, but hopefully you shall be appeased with this assortment of dumps that match retail releases.

Going by kukun kun’s videos and other resources, the Satellaview actually had a distinct branding for these; “Satellaview Best Selection”, which is frequently used in promoting these limited-boot-up downloads. There’s probably some exceptions to this, so I’m not gonna relabel every retail-matching game, but knowing this term will be helpful if researching this subject further. There may even be a canonical list of what titles were released under this brand (And knowing my luck, Danyl has it and I forgot). That said, retail rereleases aren’t that exciting to me, so excuse me if the extra information may be a bit lacking this time.

I’ll start with one that I could had sworn I’d released way back, but Danyl has corrected me on that. See what I mean when I say these don’t quite excite me as much? It’s to the point where I make mistakes in regard to them. I even overlooked Wild Guns until someone else took it in their hands, and that ended up being different from retail. Oofsies. Well, anyway…

Chou Makai Taisen! Dorabocc-chan
ROM download

If you’re not familiar with this one, it was localized as “The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang” and is a decent choice for people wanting a Zelda LttP-like.

Next is…

Ah, Top Racer! This one has it’s fanbase, as the gameplay is solid and the 2-player split screen is pretty impressive for the hardware.

There’s two dumps in this set: one is incomplete, and the other is “alloc NG” but runs perfectly fine.

Top Racer 2
ROM Download

Next is…

Well, I’m not actually as familiar with this one, but it looks pretty straightfoward. Battle Submarine is a game where you battle, with submarines. Seems very simulation-like.

Nothing too unusual to report about the dump, it’s a straightforward release.

Battle Submarine
ROM Download

After that… huh, interesting, Battle Submarine was by Pack-in-Video, and it appears this next one is also.

Ski Paradise! In America, this was “Tommy Moe’s Winter Extreme: Skiing & Snowboarding”, and in Europe this was “Val d’Isère Championship”.

The original dump had the game deleted but all the data was intact. A restored header boots an identical-to-retail game as expected.

Ski Paradise
ROM download

Alright, and saving the best for last…?
Well, at least I’d think it’s best. You know me, wanting all that Hudson Soft recovery.

Of course, 1990’s Hudson would not broadcast Bomberman without also broadcasting Takahashi Meijin no Daibouken-jima, known in the US as “Super Adventure Island”!

The game’s soundtrack is so good, this is one you may prefer over the Soundlink radio! (Well, actually, since there are many MSU1 hacks where I don’t like the soundtracks provided, this may not that distinct in that regard. But I always wanted to say that!)

Takahashi Meijin no Daibouken-jima
ROM download

Hey, it’s Christmas time! That means it’s time to bumrush through some releases!

Last month, I released a pretty interesting magazine, and this time, I got another one – and some that may be interesting for all the wrong reasons – ready.

For this one, I’m not gonna embed my own gameplay recording, but rather an archival video from kukun kun:

Now, let’s pop out the emulated ROM screenshot!

Presenting “Oryouri Pon!” by Indieszero, the same devs behind Sutte Hakkun!
Indieszero’s own website is kind enough to provide info on broadcast months.

This is not your typical Satellaview magazine – it’s got it’s own style, with a unique interface and frequent use of animated interactive elements.
In this magazine, you “unlock” recipes by answering multiple-choice questions, and they save to SRAM to incentivize you to cook ’em all!

(I don’t know why this image is so much larger than the others. My apologies.)

We’ve obtained ROM dumps of the other notable cooking magazine “Cheap de Gorgeous” before, and this is all the “Gorgeous” without the “Cheap!”
(No offense intended!)

12-Tsuki-gou here matches the video kukun kun has after repairing the ROM header.
On Indieszero’s site, this is the 2nd volume out of four. The missing volumes would be 11-tsuki-gou, 1-tsuki-gou and 2-tsuki-gou. Strangely, all media on the internet appears to be from 12-tsuki-gou.

お料理ポン！ 12月号 | Oryouri Pon! 12-Tsuki-gou
ROM Download

The next batch of magazines are meant to accompany radio programs. One of the unfortunate circumstances that happens because of this is that there is a good chance that radio program has not been archived, meaning whatever the context is behind the contents of the magazines is, is completely lost.

Houkago no Ousama in particular is an alarming one, because there’s many broadcasts, and apparently all of them are unique.
kukun kun has video for 10/7 and 10/10, but 10/9 here? Nope, nada!

And because of that, I was not prepared for THIS! (WARNING: Probably considered NSFW.)
Why, oh, WHY is that guy exposing himself like that? Good grief!

This obvious gravure photo also probably has no business being in an official Nintendo product, but to me this is at least a palette cleanser after… that.

Oh, this mempack dump also has an AK Live volume with the same date.

Da-ba-babiddy-dobiddy-buh-biddle-luh-rubudi-skabiddle-wa-do-wop-bop!

Houkago no Ousama (10-4) + AK LIVE (10-9)
ROM download

Ah, and guess what? All the following magazine dumps are ALSO lacking a respective rip of the radio program on the internet.

Which means we may run into something like THIS and go “WHYYYY?” some more!

Okay, at least this one is ONLY “weird”…. man, what a thing to say, huh?

Bakusho Mondai no Silicon Chounaikai (1996-7-27)
ROM Download

We got another Silicon Chounaikai coming up too.

This one was apparently so nice, the person with the memory pack downloaded it twice!

… Actually, this one looks like it might have an interesting text dump on “Ryouma De Yuku”, the RPG Tsukuru 2 custom campaign.

Bakushow Mondai no Silicon Chounaikai (11-16) [Twice]
ROM Download

Alright, one more! … Well, technically two more, but they’re both on the same mem pack.

These are meant to accompany Yuki Uchida’s radio program “Yuugure Street Kids Side-B”, of which to my memory there was exactly one broadcast that… it’s no longer on NicoNico, is it? My re-uploads are the only remains of the radio broadcast… ouch!

The contents of these magazines seem to be mostly just pictures, which makes the lack of the radio programs for context even more taxing. Imagine getting a ROM dump and it’s main content is a screenshot of a shower faucet. Just… what?

Do note that they likely broadcast with “Yuki no Waiwai Kids”, which there is only one ROM dump of.

This 8M pack dump has two distinct Yuki Uchida episodes, as well as the downloader making that common mistake of downloading the same program twice.

Uchida Yuki (8-12, 8-12, 8-5)ROM Download

Alright, I got to post on my birthday!

So, for this ROM release… I wanted it to be something special. HOWEVER… I needed to do a lot of research first.

So let me build up to what I am aware of.

According to God-Bird.net, a magazine called “Ranking Magazine” ran from June 29, 1996 up until a undetermined (but likely 1998) ending date.

ランキングマガジン
放送期間 （遅くとも）1996年6月29日～
解説 詳細不明
—
Ranking Magazine
Broadcast period (latest info) 1996/6/29 –
Explanation Details unknown
。

Although it says this, there are other sections on the site which seem to have references to other ranking magazines.

4ステージをクリアすると成績がパスワードで表示され、それをハガキで送ることで応募できる。番組「マリオの森～ランキングマガジン」内で順位が発表され、上位には賞品も出された。ランキングイベント第一弾は5月19日、第二弾は7月20日から行われた。
—
After clearing the four stages, your score will be displayed with a password, and you can apply by sending it by postcard. The rankings were announced on the program “Mario no Mori ~ Ranking Magazine”, and prizes were awarded to the top players. The first ranking event was held on May 19th, and the second on July 20th.

Hmm, come to think of it, I think I saw that on kukun kun’s videos!
Yes… um… It was about an hour and 22 minutes into this video.
This doesn’t seem to match up exactly with the info supplied by God-Bird but it is nevertheless the evidence of regularly-distributed ranking magazines for various Satellaview Events.
Notably, this mentions not just Wario, but also WaiWai De Q and Panel De Pon. Something about BS Zelda as well.

Man, this is difficult to dig through with the hours of archival video kukun kun has, but nevertheless! It looks like these were regularly distributed.

With that established, let’s move forward!

Be sure to have the sound ON when watching this!

One of these has been recovered, and… this particular one is a real doozy!
Even compared to what kukun kun caught on video, it feels SPECIAL.

A few things to go over, but the most important thing is… the synthesized voice audio! Yes, I mean, I didn’t even know that was even possible on a Super Famicom before this point! Absolutely mind-blowing! Every person who ranked in BS Super Mario Collection got the honor of having a voiced shoutout long before the days when people paid Twitch streamers for basically the same thing!

Ah, yes, I did say this was for BS Super Mario Collection, right?

Besides the winner announcements, there’s also articles with art from the game that is higher-res than what would come from dumping the actual game ROMs!

This is also one of the first magazines we got which has many user-submitted fanart pieces!
…. WHY IS CARBUNCLE FROM PUYO PUYO THERE?

Besides BS Super Mario Collection, there are also sections for Satella-Q and Zenkoku baken ōja kettei-sen 2 (To newbies: Satella-Q was the regular quiz game series. The latter thing was a Soundlink Derby Stallion 96 event which a ROM dump for one episode was obtained of way back.)

Adding to the distinctness of this program are these idle animations for the bottom box, with Satebo and Parabo!

Do note that since this was recovered from a 8M with deleted data, the ROM may not be pure. There are no obvious bugs.

ランマガ３月号
らんきんぐ まがじん ３月号
Ranking Magazine – 3 Tsuki-gou
Ranking Magazine – March Issue
ROM download

The reason I tried to get all this research down on this before releasing is because I had some concerns about the theoretical privacy risk of a computerized voice shouting the aliases of names.
That said, my policy so far – and I intend to stick by it – has been “If it was broadcast publicly, it’s fair game.”
There’s no signs that this was a personalized copy (And I doubt the owner would have deleted the ROM like it was trash if there was a strong connection there!)
Therefore, as soon as I cross-checked and verified that similar types of magazines were on kukun kun’s videoes, I decided to post it here.
I hope you all enjoy the findings!
I’d LOVE to see the voice generation reverse-engineered and used in homebrew games!

I was planning something else for Halloween but a life shakeup happened, so here’s a rushed article.

a bit back, a ROM was dumped of BS Tantei Club – Kouhen. This is not exactly the dump that’s been going around before, which was labeled “Saihousou”. This is from the premiere.

While other build differences aren’t known, casual gameplay can access the BS Ihatovo Monogatari advertisement and event postcard screen.

BS Tantei Club – Kouhen (Premiere)
ROM Download

I will go into the dump I intended for later, I guess.

BONS: assorted redumps

Mario Paint BS Ban
Special Tee Shot
Wario no Mori – Futatabi
Yoshi no Panepon – BS Ban

Let me leave off with the text of a tweet I made a bit back, since ChronoMoogle told me it should have gone on the blog:

A lot of Satellaview preservation is thanks to 8M pack dumping. However, it is believed that some media simply can not be obtained this way.

One of them is “R no Shosai”, a series of horror anthology stories. Broadcast in 1997, this would be right up the alley of those who liked the ghost story aspects of the first Famicom Detective Club games. These are simple kinetic stories presented in photos, text and voice acting, with the main hook of the program being the choose-your-own-ending story branchs to the spooky tales.

In a feat that is rare on even the more ambitious Satellaview programs, every branching path is voice acted. How this is done, I do not know, although the heavily compressed voices during these branches suggest they were stored in the game, rather than played over the Soundlink radio.

The subject matter of the stories can get pretty dark as well, which feels un-Nintendo-like, in spite of their being credited as the developer.

Part of the reason it is suspected this can’t be recovered – besides the fact no data of it has been found outside VHS recordings of gameplay – is because there are technical signs in said VHS recordings that the program downloaded directly to PSRAM rather than the 8M memory pack. As such, outside a theoretical huge leak, only Nintendo themselves can save this one.

What a cruel twist of irony, for the game about ghosts to disappear like a ghost in and of itself.

Videos of R no Shosai can be found on kukun kun and halki’s Youtube channels.

There’s been a lot of incidents going on lately that threaten the ROM preservation scene, including an attack on the Internet Archive (It’s currently down as of this writing and it’s affecting how the article is being written!) and the typical Nintendo site takedowns.

Somehow, though, I’m still pushing on.

This is not the expected October release, BTW, this is something I’m doing now because I hit some good, juicy hidden data from exploring the dump!

So what do we got?

Well, actually, we gotta do a recap before this one, because we’re pulling from a series of dumps here.
So, let’s go way back, to the days of GoodSNES. There was a ROM on their set simply called “BS Super Famicom Wars”.

Upon looking this up, on various sites, including the archives of Satellaivew History Museum, it turned out there were actually four distinct broadcasts of this.

(This has been edited to omit parts of the listing not relevant for today’s release)

03/01(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ソラマメジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Soramejima”
03/08(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ハゴロモジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Hagarojima”
3/15(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ノアカザントウ』| Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Noakazantou”
03/22(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ４週目 スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ツキノワジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban 4-shuume “Tsukinowajima”

Turns out the dump on GoodSNES was “Tsukinowajima”. Oddly, on the listing here on the site, it’s the only one given an episode number. ( 4-shuume )

A while back, a different Super Famicom Wars broadcast, with episode 2, “Hagarojima” was recovered.
… We did have that on this blog, didn’t we? I can’t recall when we got an article up for it, so let me just link this here just in case;
Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Hagarojima

Recently, a third volume was recovered – and by that, I mean it’s both the third recovered, and the third in the series.

This is “Noakazantou”.

As you can see, all of these are pretty similar, so after obtaining these and seeing the GoodSNES one, I figured if I could compare them I’d be able to find some way to toggle through the episodes to access the “missing” map, which according to the Satellaview History Museum would be the first one, “Soramejima.”

The summary of what ended up happening would basically be “I got quite a bit more than I bargained for”.

Going through the process of what I did would be boring so I’ll cut to the chase; the primary difference in each episode is hex values 363F6 and 363F8 respectively.

The latter value is still not entirely understood but it seems tied to the broadcast order, as each of the recovered ROMs is marked sequentially with 02, 03 and 04 respectively. My speculation is that this changes the password generation at the end of winning a map. Further updates on this may be necessary.

The former value is the interesting one… tinker with it, and you can change the map!
So, if Soramejima was the first map, would that make it 01?

Why yes, yes it would. (Yes, my line of thinking is that naive, and it just happened to work this time. Go fig.)

But that’s peculiar… Hagaro-jima is 06, Noakazantou 0B and Tsukinowa-jima 0C. These hex values don’t exactly go up in a sequence that looks predictable or expected at first glance.

So… what’s 02? I mean, 00 is a crash, so certainly there’d be nothing at-

Oh wait WHAT

There’s MORE maps! Maps that were not officially broadcast are in fact buried, unused, in the ROM data! They are fully playable, almost as if they may had intended to be broadcast!

You can tinker with the value for a total of 16 maps (The 4 that were broadcast, and 12 unused ones).

At the time it feels like 16 is the most I can get out of this. Attempts to break any higher will lead to bugged results.
But there’s one more really good bit: If I set 363F6 to 12, I get something resembling a proper, in-game map select, where I can scroll up or down and choose one of the 16 maps to play. (You can also try scrolling past that amount to buggy results. Not recommended.)

Perhaps with more tinkering someone can enable 2-player mode or something? Or disable BGM, or plant the retail version’s fan translation to this. Would be great for the Satellaview+ audience.

Why 12 of the 16 complete and fully playable maps were never officially broadcast is probably something we’ll never truly know the reason for. It’s especially unfortunate to think about, since St.GIGA often lamented being starved for games!

Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Noakazantou
ROM Download

Incidentally, you may be wondering “With all this data, can you replicate the missing broadcast’s ROM?”
Well, I can certainly try. Here’s my attempt:

Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Soramejima (Theoretical Replica)
ROM Download

I admit, I kinda consider a reconstructed replica to be a bit of a controversial thing to distribute. I can easily make something like that for any retail game I can spot on a schedule, but while I’ve tinkered with the idea in private (mostly to test to see how accurately I can get it done), I’ve never distributed results like that on here because I didn’t want to flood the databases with modified ROMs.

For that reason I’m making sure this is clearly labeled in the filename, and to request that no one remove that label. There’s always the chance an actual 8M dump will come along and it may end up looking different from what I got (VERY SMALL CHANCE considering how the data is so similar between episodes, but I digress).

Anyway, one more ROM to distribute.

And I bet you guys will like this one above all the “official” ROMs and “Official” replicas.

Modified Super Famicom Wars BS Ban ROM – all Maps unlocked
ROM Download

This one has the scrolling map, so you can play any map!

Since there’s now a bunch of Super Famicom Wars ROMs I’ve put them all in a set so they are easier to sort.
Download it here!

BONUS: A buncha redumps of mixed quality.

Cu-On-Pa BS Ban 7/20 (corrupted)
Zelda Kamigami no Triforce 3/18 (corrupted)
Super Nazo Puyo Tsuu (Incomplete)
Super Nazo Puyo (Corrupted)
Kid Klown no Crazy Chase (deleted)
DerbyStal 96 – Taiou 97-nendo Ban (11-24) (Corrupted)
Kodomo Chousadan Mighty Pockets – Chousa 1 – Junk-ya Black no Ie.zip
The Firemen 2/27
F-Zero 2/20
Mario Paint – BS Ban (6-4) (Deleted Corrupted)