A Satellaview research blog.

Day: June 1, 2010

So, what’s up with the BS Dragon Quest ROM anyway?

EDITED: Now with some stuff I remembered from years ago which may or may not be relevant. Scroll down for more.

Sorry, folks, I have yet to be able to find a video of BS Dragon Quest Dai-4-wa proper, so I thought instead to try recording the one “BS Dragon Quest” ROM dump to see what that’s like….

and it’s a bit peculiar.

Starting from that menu, I can apparently choose which week I want to start in – I picked the 4th one, conveniently enough. In that one the player seems to merely go through the last castle and fight the Dracolord.

Question is – what’s up with that menu? Why are all four weeks easily playable in this single ROM file like that? The Satellaview game surely didn’t originally work like that – being able to play the episodes in any order would desync with the Soundlink audio quite easily.

Some folks would say it’s just a hacked ROM. However, most hacked Satellaview ROMs are hacked for emulator compatibility, while this one is not. Also, apparently it’s got a valid BS-X checksum, which is highly improbable of a ROM hack.

Unfortunately I can’t investigate it any further. My own assumption, though, is that it’s a leaked Debug ROM of some sort.

EDITED IN PART STARTS HERE (I also posted this at the BS Zelda forums)

Since it’s been a while since I was told this story anyhow, I guess I’ll put this up here:

I recall a long time ago, Pachuka (Pachuka is a rather… imfamous person in the Sonic the Hedgehog community and in internet emulation communities) told me a bit of a story about how he “stole” the first Satellaview ROMs from a guy who’s alias was apparently “ROMar” and leaked them across the internet, which would probably be the origin of the BS Zelda ROMs and whatnot. Trying to verify this thing myself, I tried digging around internet archive and whatnot, and found a few scattered references to Pachuka hosting a “BS-X Cult” in the late 1990s, with no listing of the contents.
Unfortunately, I have not gotten anyone else to confirm/deny this story, couldn’t track down this ROMar guy, and I couldn’t even get Pach to remember the specifics of any of the ROMs he “leaked” (He even got basic info on the nature of BS Zelda ROMs wrong. I felt like I was talking to a complete idiot.)

I do suspect the BS Dragon Quest ROM was among the leaked ones, but when I asked Pach about it he threw at me a “I don’t give two shits about JRPGs” response (in other words, he’s really not being any helpful.) I was hoping sometime to track this ROMar guy down, ask him which are the ROMs that can be traced back to him, and if the BS Dragon Quest ROM is among them, ask him for some info about the nature of that one. Until then…
*shrug*

Just how difficult is getting new stuff? A sorta-personal story.

To make up for the lack of updates on the latter half of May, I’ll tell a bit of a tale about it!

Y’see, on eBay there was this auction for a Satellaview 8M Pack – why, this one, in fact;

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360253372584&ssPageName=ADME:L:OU:US:1123

I decided that, in the name of the research Callis and I do, I should try another 8M Pack purchase with my own money (Callis was bidding on other things at the time), and thus, you see, I snag the auction.
One thing that should be obvious but I’ll reiterate anyway, and one of the major problems with trying to snag Satellaview material – purchasing 8M Packs is a lot like gambling. Most of these carts are untested, and you literally have no idea if there’s any data in them at all until you either boot it in BS-X or ROM-dump the data inside. Of course, if by some chance the data IS identified, it probably wouldn’t even be selling on eBay – rather at YJA for a hefty pricetag.

So anyway, yeah, I order this pack

Of course, in typical “internet tragedy story” fashion, I spend the rest of the month waiting for it, because USPS pulled some BS on me (Pun entirely intentional) and had it sitting in their office for half a month without sending me a notice.
After a trip and a polite explaining to them of the going-ons, I get my memory pack, and put it in the BS-X set Callis gave me.
In typical “internet tragedy story” fashion yet again, it’s merely RPG Tsukuru 2 Data. Now, for reference, I currently have no research on how to tell a “Homemade” RPG Tsukuru 2 data from anything that was downloaded from St.GIGA’s servers, so it’s theoretically possible I still have something interesting. Theoretically.
It ain’t anything nearly as funky as a Kirby no Omachahako or Tamori no Picross, though, that’s for sure.
And so, there goes 60 bucks I could’ve spent on current-gen gaming instead. Aw, well!

In the meantime, other interesting things have happened – in particular, one memory pack on Yahoo Japan Auctions was listed as one with UNDAKE30 Same Game Daisakusen Mario Version, which solidifed something I all but confirmed before. Now, if only I could get archives of the UNDAKE30 Radio show…

Rom Release Rushing will continue at some point in this month, but I want to write some actual articles in the meantime, somehow.