So! ChronoMoogle obtained this 8M Pack and got ikari to dump a ROM of it, and he told me to put it up on the blog right away!
So then I… procrastinated! … No, wait! Actually, I gave it a thorough examination!
And by that I mean I popped it in SNES9XPP XE and saw it didn’t seem to want to load in the BIOs. Turned out the ROM was a magazine with similar issues that the release of AK Live Hit Gang did. Speaking of that one, I should double-check it’s patch… ah, anyway.
ChronoMoogle told me the 8M did an Error 09 on him once. This is probably what caused the “deletion” in this instance. Because of this I can’t claim with 100-percent certainty that this ROM is completely valid.
Anyhow, long story short, I tried a checksum fix, didn’t work at first, examined the 8M, saw that there was BS Zelda data in the 8M yet AGAIN, removed the BS Zelda data, and then fixed the checksum for real.
Ok, and what was all that for, here?
Oh, hey, it’s yet another magazine ROM, I suppose I’ll ju-
Wait… “the History Of This Town”?
By town, did that mean… BS-X?
Interest immediately sparked. I got bluesun to look at this and he supplied this translation of the 138 Town History Chart “rumors”. Among other translations, that is.
It turns out this ROM has a few really interesting pieces of the narrative of the world of BS-X contained within it.
Apparently, there was a long-term, ongoing event where players could collect 2000 “rumors” that, when completed, would give the complete backstory of BS-X and perhaps even restore the Town’s “stolen name”.
And this ROM, of “Machi Magazine”, is an important piece of it, telling a few details and hints. Specifically, it tells the first 138 of these rumors… a strange number to stop on, mind.
It’s also loaded with puns, much like my blog. One notable one might be found by fans of Terranigma. Ha, ha, “Tenchi Souzou”… it must have been heavily advertised on the Satellaview for a reference like that. In fact, just a bit ago MadHatter on the BS Zelda forums found this.
Although there is no publishing date marked in the header, the download date is November 4th… huh, that’s my birthday! Ha ha! I wonder if I’ll have a present ready for the blog then…
(Note on the picture below: XPP XE gives weird dates for whatever reason.)
As for the most probable year of release, the BS Zelda data and references to Tenchi Souzou also being in this magazine scan have me believe it’s from 1995.
Anyway, there’s probably a lot to discuss about this and how it pertains to things such as what to look for next and the BS-X fan translation ROM, But the ROM will need to be available for that! 😛
Available below are both a “pure” 8M dump and a header hack to load the ROM up on Satellaview-ccompatible emulators.
Machi Magazine | 街マガジン
(Deleted, possibly bad?)
ROM Download
Prepatched fix ROM Download