Putting up this release after a long while, because of the combination of weird circumstances. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten too much time for deep analysis, but this should be a fairly beefy post anyway, if only because of the next few paragraphs.
There’s a good amount of evidence that there’s Satellaview ROMs people in Japan have that are not circulating among the most well-known ROM databases. Depending on who you ask, there’s debate on whether the people who have these ROMs are hoarders who don’t want foreigners obtaining their data, people who’d be willing to share if they were not afraid to talk about their ROMs for fear of Nintendo’s wrath, or simply casual pirates do not realize the significance of archival and databasing.
A part of me has secretly been wishing for a long time that someone would just take all the ROMs the Japanese internet has (that we don’t) and hand them to me on a silver platter. However, I knew that became an unrealistic desire when it became apparent that even NicoNicoDouga video uploads that were deleted, such as the footage of R no Shosai Dai-2-maku, were gone for the long-term.
Therefore, for the many years on the blog I’ve dabbled under the assumption that I would probably never obtain one of these supposed “Japan internet only” Satellaview ROMs.
Of course… you know where this is headed, right? Where I go “OMG CURVEBALL MEGATON, I’VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER TO BE WRONG”?
Well, more or less true. Although perhaps what happened next may have diluted the impact in the opinions of some.
But it’s still all good.
You folks might have seen this video on YouTube earlier.
Tamori no Picross 8/13, yes? ROM’s not circulating around at the time, yes? One of the ones on SFC Mania, it seems?
Much to my surprise, makuchan had this ROM. An enigmatic ol’ “bstamo.smc” that popped up on makuchan’s USTREAM turned out to be a Tamori no Picross we didn’t have yet.
For reference, makuchan’s also got some credits on the BS Zelda Homepage for supplying the current Map 2 ROM we have. makuchan also said some things about other BS Zelda ROMs which I am curious about. Perhaps some day I’ll muster up nerve to ask about them…
Blast my meekness. It took ChronoMoogle’s insistence for makuchan to share the bstamo.smc ROM with me. I did a brief analysis and then recorded that YouTube video while I waited for a final approval to put it up on the blog.
The release of said ROM would be a milestone if simply for being previously one of the supposed “Japanese internet only” ROMs I’ve pondered about for so long, so I was pretty eager to write an article about that.
Then, while I was waiting for that final approval, the most wack coincidence in the world happened.
ChronoMoogle found an 8M Pack dump. Of the exact same Tamori no Picross episode.
.. of course, I assume most are gonna think “Well, that was a bit shaggy dog, huh?” but it doesn’t seem to be exactly that. The 8M Pack dump seems different in some ways that I can’t seem to pinpoint exactly, besides the fact that it doesn’t like to boot in ZSNES compared to makuchan’s bstamo. I’m confused as to what the significance of this is, but most likely it’s quirky emulation.
ChronoMoogle’s 8M Pack also has a magazine of some sort, but it doesn’t seem to want to boot in anything, even snes9x-sx2. It crashes in a similar manner to Super Bomberman. How strange… Supposedly it’s a Bakushow Mondai program. I hope someone can figure out the contents sooner or later.
I’m going to put up both ROMs. Most folks will probably have an easier time running makuchan’s ROM, while ChronoMoogle’s is a more readily verifiable 8M pack dump.
Tamori no Picross 8/13 | タモリのピクロス 8/13 (ChronoMoogle’s 8M, dumped by ikari_01)
ROM download
Tamori no Picross 8/13 | タモリのピクロス 8/13 (from makuchan)
ROM download
