A Satellaview research blog.

NEARBY MILESTONE ROM RELEASE: The Penultimate Puyo. (Last one will drive me Madou I swear)

While Danyl still works on that big batch, I’m gonna take a few notable chunks and release them separately. This is, obviously, to keep the page active, and also to hopefully make Danyl’s job a bit easier with a smaller amount of ROMs necessary to work with.
(NOTE: Danyl has done some edits to the article. Please excuse any unusual changes in formatting or writing style.)

I’m gonna start with one I spent a sizable amount of my own monies for. Now, it’s been a while since I did that, partly because I really shouldn’t be doing that with how broke I am, but this dump is a tad important. You know why?

Let me recap the prior Puyo Puyo-related ROM dumps on Satellablog. This is useful especially if you’re new to this blog, which may well be the case considering it’s almost as old now as the Satellaview was when it was first made…

PRIOR RELEASES.
Super Puyo Puyo
Super Puyo Puyo Tsuu BS Ban
Super Puyo Puyo Tsuu Remix BS Ban
Super Nazo Puyo
Super Nazo Puyo Tsuu For Satellaview
ALSO Super Aleste

You might be thinking “Wow, you got every Puyo Puyo game!”
But you’d actually be wrong!
There’s two more to add this set… the one of theses last games is in the “Madou Monogatari” line that is on the Super Famicom.
That’s “Madou Monogatari – Hanamaru Daiyouchienji”.

It, in fact, did have a Satellaview download demo!

Here’s a video of the demo in action. It’s a pretty long video, though, so I’ll leave some text info for the tl;dw crew.

Among of the quick notes:
1) The game starts right away, even if you press nothing on the title screen. There is no save menu. The game restarts from the opening cutscene on player death.
2) The game goes through the first study session and a little bit of exploring the Forest of Light, seemingly stopping in it’s tracks right when you would get the Ribbit Boots and leaving you softlocked.
3) You are not able to go anywhere outside your home town or the Forest of Light.
4) While there’s not a lot of known differences, there is a pretty notable difference in the Forest of Light battle BG. Here is the one used in this demo:
BG
(I unfortunately was not able to recruit any dataminers for further assistance in spotting differences.)
5) The download date on the header is 2/11. As a frame of reference, the retail game’s release date is January 12, 1996. As such, this is likely from a broadcast that came after the retail game’s release.
6) According to Kameb’s Satellaview history museum site, which has a section on games featured on various Game Tora no Ooana broadcasts, Madou Monagatari had features on 12/28/1995 and 1/18/1996 respectively:

12/28(木) 新作ソフト(魔導物語はなまる大幼稚園児)
秘伝ソフト(もってけoh!ドロボー)

(Translation of relevant portion: “New software (Madou Monogatari Hanamaru Kindergarten)”)

1/19(金) 今週のお買い物情報(1/19)
秘伝ソフト(魔導物語)
リコちゃん電話(嫌いなジャンル)

(Translation of relevant portion: “This week’s shopping information (1/19) Secret software (Madou Monogatari)” )

Here’s an (abridged I guess) broadcast list provided by danyl:

1995/12/28 – 1996/01/10 (broadcast 2 times per day)
1996/02/01 – 1996/02/11 (maybe 12th ?) (broadcast 2 times per day)

The 8M Dump was, according to LuigiBlood, sent by an anonymous contributor.


Madou Monogatari BS-X Ban

魔導物語 BS-X版 | Madou Monogatari BS-X Ban
ROM Download

And with that, NOW did we got every Puyo game on the Satellaview ?

Not really we have to find a last one which is an Sample Version of Super Nazo Puyo Rulue no Roux where you can play the trial course with 6 levels.

Here the list of broadcasts provided by danyl:

1995/06/05~1995/06/11 (2 times per day until the 9th after, this is 3 time per day)
1995/07/17~1995/07/23(3 times per day)
1995/08/14、1995/08/18、1995/10/22 (??? times per day)

Also it’s had been mentionned on the “かべ新聞ニュース” of June 2, 1995 (which can be found on this spreadsheet realised by Danyl:

「す~ぱ~なぞぷよ」秘伝ゲームで放送決定!!

★5月26日に発売されたばかりの最新ソフト『す~ぱ~なぞぷよ』(バンプレスト)が、
6/5~6/11の虎の大穴 秘伝ゲームとして登場するぞ。
★続いて今月のオンエア予定を教えちゃおう。
『超原人2』『ミスティックアーク』が6月中に登場予定。
乞うご期待。
Translation by Danyl:

“Super Nazo Puyo” will be broadcast as a secret game ! !

★The latest software “Super Nazo Puyo” (Banpresto), which was just released on May 26th, will be released as a secret game of Tiger’s Long Hole from 6/5 to 6/11. ★Next, let me tell you about this month’s on-air schedule. “Genjin 2” and “Mystic Ark” are scheduled to be released in June. stay tuned.

Of all the milestones I hoped to achieve, this will be probably the most unexpected one

I take it fans of Compile really loved the retro Puyo Puyo games, as I’m certain this would not have been possible without the most hardcore of them preserving their 8M packs!

I remember seeing other old media, like manga publications, and it seemed like in the old days you’d see Arle side-by-side with Mario and Pikachu in terms of iconic video game characters.
The era of Puyo Puyo Tsuu and Sun must have been a magical time for them…
I hope I am helpful in reliving your memories!
BS SUPER MARIO COLLECTION NEXT, GUYS? :3 (Spoilers: No, but we got some other Soundlink stuff incoming.)
BY THE WAY: Since we also got Super Aleste, that leaves one Compile-devved Super Famicom game without a 8M Pack dump. That is Jaki Crush, released in 1992, published by Naxat Soft. (This is assuming Spriggan Powered doesn’t count)
Credits :
Writter : Kiddo
Research : Danyl

The biggest batch so far (Part 1)

Hi, LuigiBlood here. I’m late. Very late. Happy Pride month, by the way!

Since the last post in February of this year, a lot of things happened. Anytime I was getting a decent batch, it kept growing up, and delayed it even further. It became almost daunting to manage, especially after a certain anonymous benefactor just dumped like… 40 Memory Packs for me to check since then. Then I kept getting plot twists.

So it got to about 25 things to release. That’s too many to release at once, so I seperated in two batches for me to release some things faster.

I will start with some of the most important stuff, because 2 of these releases has been funded by people:

We actually have been looking for this for a long time. This is the last one of the 3 Dezaemon games that we dumped for a while.

For more context, Dezaemon is a shoot ’em up game editor, released for Famicom, Super Famicom, Playstation, Saturn and Nintendo 64, and with the Super Famicom version, there was also a trilogy of games broadcasted on Satellaview.

This one from the Sugoi STG series was created by Riko Kushida (櫛田理子) from the Game Tora no Ooana (虎の大穴) team, a weekly Satellaview radio program usually coming with a magazine supplement. The name is Jintai (人体) which means Human Body, and boy… does it show.

We finally completed the Satella-Shooting Trilogy, and this one needed some fundraising, and I need to credit the following people who were happy enough to donate money for this:

  • Video Game History Foundation
  • Jonas Rosland
  • cmstar0
  • dillydylan
  • Hiccup
  • History of Hyrule
  • Ballz
  • Matthew Callis
  • Hubz

Amazing STG – Human Body | 凄いSTG 人体
ROM Download

 

We had known about this one for a while, but we finally have it.

Bounty Sword is one of the very few real time strategy games on the Super Famicom and was released in stores, on a cartridge, the ROM is actually 3 Megabytes!
Considering that the Satellaview Memory Pack only allows 1 Megabyte of storage, this means this is a cut down version.

I’ve left the research to ChronoMoogle, who liked the base game, and was more than happy to help explain differences between the retail and BS Version:

  1. The titlescreen lacks its intro / background animations and has the subtitle “Satellaview Special Time Attack Version”.
  2. The save file menu is missing, it jumps straight into the game after pushing start on the title screen.
  3. The story cutscenes are extremely simplified and only show text.
  4. The map screen and other features between chapters are missing.
  5. Each chapter gives you a time limit of 2 minutes.
    -> If a chapter is beaten within these 2 minutes, the game advances to the next one.
    -> If it reaches zero, the game goes back to the titlescreen without any saved progress.
  6. Dialogue during chapter gameplay seems to be mostly the same, but the player will be reminded how much time is remaining periodically.
  7. It is pretty tough to even beat Stage 1 within 2 minutes, so cheats would probably be needed to check how many chapters of the game are actually in the data.

As this also needed money, I would also thank ChronoMoogle for the funding of this release as well!

Bounty Sword BS Version | バウンティ・ソード BS版
ROM Download

 

This one is identical to the retail release except for 2 bytes. This is Soreyuke Ebisumaru Karakuri Meiro – Kieta Goemon no Nazo!!, a spinoff game of the Goemon series from Konami, where you guide Goemon’s sidekick, Ebisumaru, to the goal, through a 3D isometric labyrinth by changing the arrow panels as he walks through them.

This was dumped by an anonymous benefactor.

Soreyuke Ebisumaru Karakuri Meiro – Kieta Goemon no Nazo!! (Retail) | それ行け エビス丸からくり迷路 消えたゴエモンの謎!!
ROM Download

 

This one is also identical to the retail release, it also has no starts left so it won’t show up on the BS-X menu by default, but that can be easily bypassed!

This is a Super Famicom version of one of the games of Activision’s Shanghai series of Mahjong Solitaire, where you just match two identical tiles together to make them disappear, until it’s empty. It’s playable alone or with 2 players competitively.

This was also dumped by an anonymous benefactor.

Shanghai – The Great Wall (Retail) | 上海 万里の長城
ROM Download

 

This is another retail identical thing, this time however, it’s Lufia & The Fortress of Doom! This one has 2 starts left.

There’s not much to say, it’s the first game of the Lufia RPG series from Taito. I know there’s a lot of retail identical titles for this batch, but Satellaview is also this, a bunch of retail rereleases with limited amounts of starts sometimes, think of them like demos but with the full game.

Huge thanks to Hubz who managed to get this.

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (Retail) | エストポリス伝記
ROM Download

 

Okay, we still have some more games that were released on retail, but I promise, this time it’s a bit more interesting:

This is a cut down playable demo version of Supapoon DX! If you leave the game on the title screen, it would show gameplay demos, but also advertises the full game’s content, such as 100 stages in Story Mode, that you can have fun with everyone in Versus Mode, and ends, with, of course, a “Coming Soon!”

It’s a fun breakout clone game that can played in both single player and multiplayer!

The final game is 1 MB, but they actually made a Satellaview demo version with half the size, 512 KB instead.

Huge thanks to sanmaiwashi for sharing this! And thanks to danyl as well for remotivating me to get back in touch with him!

Supapoon DX (Demo) | すぱぽーんDX 体験版
ROM Download

 

This is a non playable demo showcase of Elfaria II – The Quest of the Meld. Yes, non playable. This is a pretty substancial and very long showcase of the game’s story, characters and RPG gameplay elements, and ends with credits info and the release date and price of the game. This game was never released outside of Japan.

Again, thanks to sanmaiwashi for the dump!

Elfaria II – The Quest of the Meld (Demo) | エルファリアII ザ・クエスト・オブ・ザ・メルド デモ版
ROM Download

 

Okay, the retail stuff are out of the way for this part 1 of this batch, now back to unique Satellaview content.

More content in the Satellaview magazine format! Freud’s Challenge 11th time. Except it’s literally the same as the 2nd version, 95% of the data is identical, just seems to be sorta recompiled.

Freud’s Challenge is a series of psychological tests (putting aside how Freud isn’t really the best example of our time), where you’re put through a bunch of situations, with a question to answer with several choices, or maybe an image to pick through. It’s certainly one of the many oddities of the Satellaview.

There are dumps of 1 through 6 already, and the fact that 11 is basically 2 is certainly feeling more like a rerun.

Freud’s Challenge – 11th Time (Magazine) | フロイトの挑戦状 第11回
ROM Download

 

This is data to be used for Same Game Tsume Game. It’s basically custom graphics to select for Same Game. This is named “User Same Game” in the BS-X menu, there are editors for custom graphics for it, but this is… weird. I don’t actually know for certain if it’s user data or a download. I have absolutely no context for it, but I wanted to release an example of addon data for Same Game that isn’t the usual kind from retail stores.

User Same Game (Same Game Data) | ユーザーさめがめ
ROM Download

 

There were several dumps of BS Nintendo HP. HP stands for Homepage, it’s a Satellaview magazine version of the Nintendo website, where they shared a lot of news about the future of their consoles, incoming games and everything. It used to be deleted via BS-X, so it was “undeleted” to be usable. This means as a result that the data integrity cannot be certain.

The music is also something to behold. This is from February 21st, 1999. Super Smash Bros. even has a full featured menu to explain the game, characters and all!

It’s interesting how late this is, considering Nintendo was about to pull the plug for new Satellaview content support in a month then, leaving St. GIGA alone at the helm after a bad fallout, only able to rebroadcast content.

This dump is brought to you by, again, sanmaiwashi!

BS Nintendo HP Issue 2/21 | BS任天堂HP 2/21号
ROM Download

BS Nintendo HP Issue 2/21 | BS任天堂HP 2/21号
SPC Music Download

 

I brought you Cheap de Gorgeous Vol. 5 last year, well here’s Vol. 4, dumped by Denizbkg01!

This one was not deleted this time, so the data integrity is totally fine. As a reminder, this is a cooking magazine with recipes and food talk.

The music is the same as Vol. 5, so the music SPC rip is not really needed here.

Cheap de Gorgeous – Vol. 4 (4/26) | チープdeゴージャス Vol. 4 (4/26)
ROM Download

 

This next one, we owe you an apology. We had this dump since 2019. It seems that in the process of research at the time, the release just was completely forgotten.

A wrong now fixed. This is “Derby Stallion 96 – Nintendo Breeders’ Cup National Betting Championship Tournament 3”, a soundlink title of horse racing where you can bet on horses… for pretty much already predefined races and results for each, you can watch the original broadcast from back then thanks to kukun kun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt2n2l4DLAo

This dump, unfortunately, was corrupted. The download includes both the original dump and a modified version to make it playable.

Derby Stallion 96 – Nintendo Breeders’ Cup National Betting Championship Tournament 3 (Corrupted)
ダビスタ96 任天堂ブリーダーズカップ 全国馬券王者決定戦3
ROM Download

 

And, finally, the last one for Part 1:

This is sort of an insane one because we had UNDAKE 30 Same Game Mario Version before. And that was it. There were more UNDAKE 30 titles, such as this one.

This is UNDAKE 30 Ura Game Daisakusen, on a similar principle to Same Game where you make all objects attached to the one you selected that are the same disappear, except there’s a twist that some of them change when you select them before it registers. There’s also a hidden golden 7 that makes you gain more points.

This Memory Pack also includes a redump of Kouryaku Casino Bar Kinyoubi – Slots.

UNDAKE 30 Ura Game Daisakusen | UNDAKE 30 うらがめ大作戦
Kouryaku Casino Bar Kinyoubi – Slots (Redump) | 攻略カジノバー金曜日 スロット
ROM Download

 

Part 2 will come as fast as I can, there’s really a lot of dumps to deal with. You should not wait too long, there’s still interesting stuff to release.

A Christmas Satellaview ROM Story.

It appears this year one of our more interesting ROM gets of the year is a tad last-second. My friends, let me tell you a story about true Christmas spirit, great ambitions, the hot-blooded determination of mankind, and hex editing! … Or possibly something resembling that. I’m not entirely sure.

A bit earlier in the month, there was a Satellaview set on eBay. Noting that it seemed a tad cheaper than what most models recently sell for, I basically went up to Callis and was like “OMG GET IT PLZ KTHXBAI”. With enough pressure, he caved. Yes, I probably am a dick for doing that.

Flash forward to just last Wednesday. Yep, the 21st.

Read More…Read More…

Sutte Hakkun – NP vs. BS

When I tried to look up on “Sutte Hakkun”, I was guided to Wikipedia.

For once, an article with a lot of useful info on a game.
But, are all these differences that notable between versions?
Since I couldn’t find any of the games going around on sale, I once again took the cheap-way-out of emulating… but unlike most people who go straight to the NP Version, I started with the “BS Event Version”.

Read More…Read More…

BS Super Famicom Wars, recorded poorly by… uh, myself.

I popped BS Super Famicom Wars in SNESGT and played it a bit. From my Youtube description:

“This seems like a sort of little demo in comparison to the NP Version. Before you ask – these are the only characters, settings, and battle map I could select. There’s also a lot of missing polishes compared to the NP Version – I can’t seem to enable Battle and Fort Seizing animations for example.”

I looked into the matter further and, according to the Satellaview History Museum, there were actually 4 volumes of BS Super Famicom Wars released. They likely each had a different map. I’ll be on the lookout for more info.

Read More…Read More…