Alright, I wanted to do this write up for a while… this one is a bit of a doozy. It’s gonna require a bit of build-up and explanation. This will also have more picture references and video links than the usual posting.
It’s actually kinda difficult to figure out where to begin with this, but I suppose the best way to go about this is to first show a regular bootup.
(You will notice I linked, rather than embedded, this video. I want to keep the amount of embeds I got restricted, so the primary embed I got ready will come later.)
So, what can we make of this? At first glance, it looks like a mere demo of Super Bombliss. (For the newcomers: Bombliss has had versions released in the USA under the name “Tetris Blast”, but Super Bombliss in particular is Japan-only. Effectively, consider this the version of Tetris for the Satellaview from here on out.)
The first thing apparent in comparison to the retail game is the “Radio On/Off” toggle replacing the 2-player mode.
1-player mode has limited versions of the “Contest”, “Puzzle” and “Vs. Com” modes. Notably, nothing looks completely hard-removed, but rather intentionally rendered unselectable. Now, obviously, many demos would lock out contents from the full game like this, but… oh, let’s hold there for a bit.
Before we continue, what info can we gather on Bombliss on Satellaview?
Let’s start with the archive of the Satellaview History Museum again. Over there is listed a Soundlink series for Bombliss:
1995/10/04
～
1995/10/06 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
第１回
1995/10/11
～
1995/10/13 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
第２回
1995/10/18
～
1995/10/20 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
第３回
1995/10/25
～
1995/10/27 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
Kukun kun also uploaded a video of a broadcast of Bombliss Cup from November the following month. While it can’t be accessed on YouTube presently, it was uploaded to webarchive, albeit with some of the ContentID’d music absent.
Alright, now, we gotta pay attention to both of these now… See those dates?
The download date of this Bombliss ROM is 10/13. That lines up with the Soundlink broadcast dates! At this point, I decided to try comparing the data of the “demo” to the retail ROM, and it became apparent that the 8M pack dump was double the filesize… filling up the 8M like a Soundlink game would.
While I was doing this inspection, though, LuigiBlood found a much faster way of getting the info I wanted to find – cheat codes.
A text file included with the ROM download contains some of the cheats found. A combination of the cheats can actually access the Soundlink mode!
Soundlink mode for what episode, you ask?
Apparently, more than one of them! Including the one shown in kukun kun’s “November Bombliss” video.
Here’s a video of the Soundlink mode in action.
Trying to get to that mode can be difficult, however. The cheat codes to do so are the codes for editing the game clock. Apparently, unlike what has been seen from previous Soundlink game dumps, Bombliss, probably to help toggle the “demo” and “Soundlink” modes, has some of the strictest and most detailed clock coding that’s been dissected so far. There are checks for not only the hour and the minute, but the day of the month, the month, and the year, and internal tables to dictate what mode the game is supposed to be on at those times! And from what I’ve seen in my attempts to fiddle with this on SNES9X, in order to use the clock cheats you need to shut off SatData Time Channel and/or anything in an emulator that would cause your clock to sync to your Windows OS. There’s no way I’d reccommend actually trying this, especially for a mode without it’s radio broadcast audio intact.
Ultimately, to step around these issues and give people checking the ROM easier access to the goods, LuigiBlood found one super code:
Unlock all stages (Puzzle Mode):
80BC850B use as an Action Replay code
or edit 0x3C85 to 0B in the dump (+ correct the checksum)
(Do note, as a general guide for using cheats on Satellaview ROMs, to wait until after the game is booted to “apply Cheats”.)
Yes, you can in fact just unlock everything from the restricted “demo” mode. But if you go into it thinking it’s 1:1 with retail, you’ll be caught off-guard.
Retail
BS cheats
It turns out, to make the Soundlink mode, the puzzles from Levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 were altered, changed completely, or moved around. (There’s also visual differences that are a bit more puzzling to figure out the reasons for.)
This means the easiest way to play the otherwise-Soundlink-exclusive puzzles from all the episodes is to simply use the cheat to access this game mode!
Which is what the video I’m finally going to have as the embed will show!
There is possibly still more to access out of this ROM. For exmaple, I played the Soundlink mode and have not managed to get the event postcard screen to appear, even though I see the tiles for that when I browse the ROM in a tile editor.
Also, obviously, proper audio recordings of all the Soundlink episodes would be appreciated. Going by what we can pull from kukun kun’s video, there’s definitely some interesting musical choices.
A dump of the November Bombliss may be potentially useful, as LuigiBlood says November time tables are not in this ROM. It doesn’t seem like it would be much different beside that, though.
This could be seen as an interesting follow up to the ages-old revelation that you can use cheat codes to access Tetris in the Dr. Mario (BS) ROM.
If you want to implement this in SatData, be aware of the notes about the clock system and cheat codes. Otherwise, videos show this was broadcast from the Stadium and did not have a unique Event Plaza.
Super Bombliss (All Japan Super Bombliss Cup 95) 10/13
ROM download
BONUS:
Another batch of redumps.
Sutte Hakkun – BS Version 2 6/17
Yoshi no Panepon BS Ban 3/21
Wario no Mori Futatabi 7/12
Dr. Mario 3/9
Super Ninja-kun 6/29
Table Game Daisyugo! 6/14
Golf Daisuki! O.B. Club 4/3
Special Tee Shot 8/16
Lord Monarch 8/2
Darius Force 3/26
