A Satellaview research blog.

Month: December 2009

Merchandise; Wearing Satellaview Tsushin on you.

About 2 and a half months ago, I won a Yahoo Japan Auctions clothing lot.

I got to open the contents just this Christmas. Taking a look with me?


Ah, this wasn’t the only one, no…

Admitably, these latter ones are a bit more difficult to make out, but the gist of it should be obvious – they’re all clothing branded with “Satellaview Tsushin”, the Satellaview-themed spinoff of “Famicom Tsushin”.


Feel free to right click -> “Save picture as” to save larger versions.


I unfortunately do not know the circumstances under which these were originally distributed, but I’d imagine they were among the many prizes given out to folks who participated in Satellaview events, or given to subscribers of Satellaview Tsushin.


The T-shirt and Jacket are a size L. While I’m certain I’m gonna have a few Japanese natives laughing at me for this, I’ve put them on my tubby Gaijin self out of sheer enthusiasm and took some pics of how well they fit – surprisingly nicely. This is probably one of the best clothing buys I’ve ever done. O:


Merry Christmas! Your present is some Harvest Mooning!

For Christmas, my extra-generous gift shall be a ROM release that people might actually have fun with. 🙂

I’ve upped some Gameplay of it on Youtube! Wanna see?

It’s Harvest Moon!
Well, to be more specific, the ROM Header identifies it as 牧場物語 第２話 (Bokujo Monogatari Dai-2-wa) .

My immediate searching on that lead to the listing of it’s premiere date in Kameb’s site;

1996/09/09
～
1996/09/13ＢＳ牧場物語
第２話　大地と心に溢れる実り！

So this is supposedly a Soundlink series based off the cult hit. So, what’s peculiar about it? Well, if you see the video you’ll spot a few of the things – You start with a slightly pre-formed set of farmland, and you can’t leave it. You’re in the summer season, with some pre-plowed land, a gold hammer, a gold axe, a watering can and a seemingly infinite supply of tomato and corn seeds…
… and pretty much all you can do is grow tomatos and corn, and destroy things around you. There is no livestock, no point to getting money, no plowing, no women-wooing…
… no timer? No game-locking up after an hour? Where’s some of the quirky ROM behaviors commonly associated with Soundlink ROMs? Sure, there’s no sound at all, still, but… huh…

The game even runs on my Super UFO ROM copier, and I’m betting a SNES Powerpak can run it fine as well henceforth.

That all being said, considering some the strange things that occurs if you keep playing long enough, I do -not- think the game is playing the way it’s meant to. But for the moment, let me start by posting some of the more normal pictures.


Yes, it does rain sometimes.


Of course, the corn grows A-OK..


As do tomatos. You can even sell them, although the money is seemingly pointless.

Now, here’s where things start to kinda fall apart… I tried playing all the way through the “Summer’s” end, and got into the fall seasons…


Well… what do I do now?
My endless seeds do not grow, and I quite literally can’t do anything more, except… keep skipping days!


Here’s your humbugging Christmas picture, guys! Yes, I went into winter, and it’s even mooreeee pointless.


Eventually you can skip into spring, and even go back into summer, and seemingly start the process over again. Does it loop endlessly? I don’t know, I didn’t play that far, because I already knew when I couldn’t do anything in the fall that I was going way beyond the point I was supposed to be playing.

I suspect a large chunk of data may be absent from this ROM dump – Perhaps data that controller most of the Satellaview-specific handling, like a timer, new sound code, or automation of gameplay. Unfortunately I can’t verify much of that, as besides Kameb’s site, I can’t find much information on this entry in the series. Also, it’s rather weird that the removal of such data keeps the game as playable as it is…

So, ROM downloading time! This one will boot in nearly anything, even real hardware, with seemingly identical results.

BS Bokujo Monogatari Dai-2-wa
ＢＳ牧場物語 第２話
ROM DOWNLOAD

Another UNRELATED BUT STILL COOL STORY BRO – on the Japanese Sega Channel

I’ve been having relatively slow progress with finding new Satellaview material lately, but I was kinda tided over by some other stuff. Y’see, I recently learned (thanks to This Hidden Palace Zone Thread) that Japan actually got the Sega Channel. As in, the actual thing.

Yeah, I was kinda behind on that. And apparently I wasn’t the only one. I quickly ran through researching and came across a few articles…

Like this one.

And this one.

And was like “woaaahhmmggg”. I’d like to see the Japanese BIOs cart dumped at some point, now.
Anyway, I continued onward and eventually I came across this – The Japanese webpage for “Dyna Brothers 2 Special” on the Virtual Console

I went into immediate action to try to obtain this game, asking around various communities to see if someone could rip a VC WAD of it for me to extract the ROM from. Eventually, I got help for that thanks mostly to Geno and paul from #acmlm on irc.djbouche.net. Long story short, I got a new Megadrive ROM!

“Dyna Brothers 2” was a standard Megadrive game, but you’re probably wondering what’s in the “Special” edition…. here’s where Youtube comes in handy!

I’m putting the ROM download up here, for anyone who’s interested!

I’m hoping that starting with this, I can learn a lot more about the Japanese version of the Sega Channel.

For info on the US Sega Channel, this article is probably the most immediately informative one.

I would also highly recommend checking out this Sega Channel “Demo Cartridge #4” ROM.

St.GIGA at last.FM?

MadHatter at the BS Zelda forums linked me this the other day;

A profile for “St.GIGA” at last.fm

I don’t really know how this site works, but I have checked out the various listings. In particular, the “tracks” listing has an entry for “BS Tantei Club ending theme”. Hmm…!

There is also a “St.GIGA Radio” option. The musical selection in this is a very bizarre mixed lot of Middle Eastern, Americana, and Japanese.

If this is the same St.GIGA from the old times, I wonder if this would mean well for the archival of Satellaview data…


DOUBLE ROM Release – Kouryaku Casino Bar Roulette + Game Tora no Ooana Special 2/24 (edited 12/4/09)

Horray! 2 releases in one Blog post!

Unfortunately, it’s not because I’m being generous. This release has some peculiarities.

To start off, “Kouryaku Casino Bar” might be a somewhat familiar name to someone who has a full ROM set of some sort..
You might’ve even seen this title screen before!

KCB Title screen

Now, this specific ROM dump, what’s so different about it? Well, it seems that all I can do with it is play the Roulette game.

Roulette surree is borring around heree

There’s also an option which returns you to the BIOs, and some… other option. I forget.

Anyway, yeah. Before I was able to do all that, I had to try to boot up the ROM. And there’s where I had my problems.

On SNES9X, this game will boot up without sound, and for some reason will not let you play the actual Roulette part (wtf?) so I tried booting the ROM up in BSNES… to no avail. Huh?

Callis told me he dumped it from a memory pack which also had “Game Tora no Ooana Special 2/24” on it. I requested he send me the “full” dump with both their data, and after I got it, I was able to have BSNES boot the data from both the games up successfully.

DOUBLE Huh?

No, I don’t know why. I don’t think it makes any sense, either. It just happens! Is there some grand mystery of the Satellaview only Byuu knows? Ah, but I can’t be speculating. ^^; Gotta keep moving.

Now, as for that “Special”… It’s possible you may have problems booting the individual ROM of this up automatically in BSNES, but now that there’s a manual load option, I don’t think that should be a problem. That being said, I didn’t test it. 😛

Aren't you excited now? :P

It’s a new magazine! No worries though, gamers, this one isn’t about music this time, I swear! It’s actually related to videogames, and seems to feature some Q&A, and a pretty long article on a Pro Yakyuu game which I can’t quite identify…

Actually, I was just too lazy to look it up. The 3 should be a giveaway.

You might recognize the name of the magazine as matching a radio program I showed on the blog before. :3

So, yeah, for this double release, the RAR file has both the original dump with the merged ROMs, and the split ROMs. I’d recommend running the merged ROM in BSNES if you actually want to play anything.

Kouryaku Caisno Bar Roulette + Game Tora no Ooana Special 2/24
攻略カジノバー ルーレット + ゲーム虎の大穴スペシャル 2/24
ROM DOWNLOAD
CLICK HERE

EDIT/UPDATE:
Madhatter has shown to me a bit of a revelation about the nature of the Kouryaku Casino Bar downloads! They’re apparently quite a bit more special than I initally anticipated!

“Also the Nichibutsu Casino has always fascinated me to just due to the BS Zelda connection. To quote from the September 19, 1995 News Wall:

☆発覚！ 秘密クラブ建設計画
“街”の中で鍵がかかって入れない、謎の民家。
１０月１日から、ここが秘密クラブとしてオープンする。
カジノバー（カジノ・ニチブツ）になるのだ。
ただし、ここに入れるのは秘密クラブ入館証を買った人か、「ＢＳゼルダの伝説」でトライフォースを８個手に入れた人だけだ。
ワクワクするね！

☆Secret Club construction plans revealed!
A previously locked house of mystery within the “City” opens as a secret club on October 1.
Casino Bar (Casino Nichibutsu).
However, the only people that may be admitted are those who have obtained eight pieces of Triforce and who gained the secret club entrance certificate from “BS The Legend of Zelda”.
How exciting!
(rough translation)”

… Man, have I been given a swerve! I have quite a few questions about how a “Secret Club” would be handled on the BS-X, but regardless, it seems I’ve just released a BS Zelda prize. O_O;