So, one of the many milestones I was trying to get to all these years has just happened.
I sent some 8M Packs to ikari_01 of snesfreaks (Details as to why him are a long story involving me taking responsibility for some issues with the crowdfunded 8M Pack purchases.) and something highly surprising came out of the result.
The good news? BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban Dai-1-wa has been redumped and it’s ROM is verified.
The bad news? BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban Dai-1-wa has been redumped and it’s ROM is verified.
If you need further explanation on that, here’s the AST page on the BS Zelda Homepage. The very reason the “restoration project” exists is because the original ROM releases had significant chunks of data not present, including the indoor tiles.
While I don’t know the origin of the four on the page, I do know this: The only difference between them on the site and this redump is a mere copier header. And y’know, those can be removed without incident, leading to…
That’s right: 100% IDENTICAL ROMs. Actually, this is baffling even by my standards… My main reason to hold the Sekiban ROMs suspect was the blanked-out date value in the BS-X headers, but for some reason this redump – which came out of my very own 8M Memory Pack – has this same issue! This probably explains the “scene” releases of the BS Marvelous ROMs, as well… I’ll need to report this to No-Intro and see what discussion happens on that.
I now have no reason to doubt the validity of the Sekiban dumps anymore… they are as good as it’s gonna get, missing data and all. It’s unfortunate… yet, at the same time, I feel like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. The burden of this duty is no longer hanging on my fandom-centered conscience.
Because of how the verification turned out, this milestone has been rather bittersweet for me. The BS Zeldas, obviously, introduced me to the Satellaview, and a part of me was hoping I could find a “more complete” Sekiban ROM dump. However, this redump tells me that this is simply impossible. The restorations on the BS Zelda Homepage may be the only way to play the games for the foreseeable future.
This also tells me that I should expect similar if I seek out Kodomo Chousadan Mighty Pockets Chousa 3, another ROM which seems to have incomplete portions and an early-game crash in emulation, which may be restorable but at the cost of data preservation.
Also, this has inspired me to do an update for the Sekiban ROMs restoration patch in Japanese… I know the Japanese audience wants to play these again, and I would be glad to help them to the best of my ability. Expect that on the blog in a mere few days, or even hours… written entirely in poorly machine-done Japanese. I need to practice that more.
I will put the redumped ROM up here for reference, even though it is identical down to the byte.
BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban – Dai-1-wa (Redumped and Verified) | BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤 第1話（検証ROM）
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