Alright, time to prepare another one of the ROMs I put money down on.
Wait, I said one, right? Well, one of them is the one I put money down on. And the other goes along with it. There’s a two-in-one today! One of these was provided by sanmaiwashi, while the one I paid for was an anonymous contribution.
I’m always pumped up when one of the Soundlink games gets found, and was proud to contribute to this, even if it may be one of the less notable ones to many.
So what is it? Let me pop up my video recording here…!
A sumo sports game! Let’s grab some info on this off the archive of Satellaview History Museum. From the list of Soundlink games:
1996/06/02
～
1996/06/07 タカラ杯 大相撲 衛星場所
〔初場所〕 VTR
1996/06/09
～
1996/06/14 タカラ杯 大相撲 衛星場所
〔春場所〕 VTR
1996/06/16
～
1996/06/21 タカラ杯 大相撲 衛星場所
〔夏場所〕 VTR
1996/06/23
～
1996/06/28 タカラ杯 大相撲 衛星場所
〔秋場所〕 VTR
1996/06/02
～
1996/06/07 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[First location] VTR
1996/06/09
～
1996/06/14 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[Spring location] VTR
1996/06/16
～
1996/06/21 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[Summer location] VTR
1996/06/23
～
1996/06/28 Takara Cup Sumo Satellite Location
[Autumn location] VTR
What we have is… well “Takara-hai Oozumou Eisei Bashou” is a bit of a mouthful, huh?
The title translates to “Takara Cup Satellite Sumo”, so I’ll be referring to it as “Takara Cup” for the remainder of the article.
This game is based on the retail Super Famicom game Oozumou Spirits.
Comparing the Soundlink broadcast game to a let’s play I found of the retail release, the similarities are pretty apparent. Takara Cup effectively converted that game wholecloth to the Soundlink format.
You may want to try learning how to play the retail Oozumou Spirits before going any further. When I tried looking for any guides to this game, this reddit post was what I found.
I played to a pretty decent level myself, but my strategy for matches was typically to mash B + X…. Awkward.
This release will be for the “Natsubashou” and “Hatsubashou” episodes. The video above is the Natsubashou episode. I also recorded Hatsubashou here.
Both episodes are pretty similar; in fact, LuigiBlood has provided a text document with a simple PAR code to access other episode’s content within the Natsubashou ROM and a link to another site:
0xC1A = 00/01/02/03
https://ameblo.jp/satebo/entry-12624412078.html
The site link has good information on episode differences and screenshots from undumped media that is related to the broadcast. As for the differences, they mostly amount to some changes in player characters/stats and some intermission graphics.
(This site and God-bird.net probably need to be added to the links section on the bottom of the page. Expect that within the week.)
The structure of the game is split into two distinct halves:
The first half is all statbuilding. You start the game by assigning some stat points to your new sumo wrestler (see the guide for info on the stats). Then you accumulate more by going in quick matches against many other opponents. A long win streak gives you bigger and better stat rewards, which you can add to your sumo wrestler either when you finally lose, or if the win streak is big enough that the game just forces you back on the stat screen.
After a set amount of time (It’d be a bit before 20 minutes into the broadcast, meaning the clock setting when you start the ROM factors into this), you’ll be booted out of this mode and go into the actual tournament. There will be a few automatic battles before you take control. The opponents here will be significantly more difficult than the ones you were using to build stats, and will defeat you quickly if you don’t adapt to the mechanics. That said, one defeat is not an instant loss in the tournament, and you will partake in many matches regardless of your win or loss streak. There are many long pauses between matches, some of which include a screen which shows you how to do some special inputs.
Also, this ROM dump has the advertisement at the end.
The ad is for Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei-ō, another Super Famicom game from Takara.
If you want a gist of how the Soundlink audio was for this broadcast, kukun kun has an archival recording of the Hatsubashou premiere.
BTW, that event plaza is among the ones in my reconstruction WIPs a few posts! If you want to recreate the broadcast in your Satellawave emulation setup, you can get it pretty close with that!
タカラ杯 大相撲 衛星場所 〔夏場所〕 | Takara-Hai Oozumou Eisei Bashou – Natsubashou
ROM Download
タカラ杯 大相撲 衛星場所 〔初場所〕| Takara-Hai Oozumou Eisei Bashou – Hatsubashou
ROM Download
(SILLY BONUS INFO:
The player character name for the Hatsubashou episode is 山天牡 – apparently read as サンテンボウ (Santenbou) according to the Soundlink audio, which gives the sumo wrestler a name that sounds phonetically very similar to Satebo (サテボ) from BS-X.
The player characters from other episodes have different names.
Since this is significant to the Soundlink audio it’s thus safe to presume that the other episodes had distinct soundlink audio from each other.
As thus, I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to help finding the missing Soundlink audios.
Thank you in advance!)
