A Satellaview research blog.

Category: Emulation

Emulating the Satellaview is a highly daunting task.
Games that use the BIOs and the Soundlink, in particular, throw a monkey wrench into any plan.
The most popular emulators, SNES9X and ZSNES, seem to break compatibility with Satellaview games as each update progresses.
This category is for the emulation scene, and is intended to help people with emulating the Satellaview to the best of my ability.
As of the writing of this article, there are three different emulators each with different compatibilities for the Satellaview that are reccomended.

Zelda fans, The New “Mottzilla BSZ-Lite Hack” is a must-download.

It’s been a long time since there was a major update in terms of BS Zelda ROM hacking, but over the past few weeks Mottzilla – with the help of my bugtesting abilities – has come out with a highly impressive new version of his “BSZ-Lite”, a BS Zelda hack tailored to those who want to play the game on real hardware, with their Powerpaks, or, in my case, that Neo Myth SFC cart Matthew Callis just gave me a few days back.

Read More…Read More…

“Hello Satellaview!” homebrew ROM is born.

So, the past few days on #serioushax @ Caffienet on IRC, I’ve been talking to Seru-kun for a bit. He was interested in making a Satellaview homebrew app, and was asking me for help. Typical of me, I had to have an obvious blank spot in my research somewhere, so I wasn’t as helpful as I could’ve been… but eventually he got something out!

“Hello Satellaview!”

The ROM can be downloaded here

This app is most notable for, besides the fact that it’s the first homebrew Satellaview app I’ve seen, filling in info on a blank spot in the Satellaview Header Data that I didn’t know of before. Check the section on “Pointers”. Yes, I kinda didn’t know that before. Seru-kun eventually figured it out on his own. Rather embarrassing. D:

The ROM boots on BSNES. Kinda doubt there’s a way to test it on a actual BS-X cartridge at the moment, and there may not be as long as the only methods would involve destroying old packs… but hey, a man can dream, yes?

In the meantime, Seru-kun and I are talking about the potential benefits and limitations of working homebrew on Satellaview. He may soon release yet another homebrew app that uses the Satellaview-specific registers to some degree. And maybe this time I won’t be missing important information…. nah, I probably will. pft.


Satellaview Emulation – SNES9Xpp XE is SWEET.

For a long, long time now, I’ve been wondering by the BS F-Zero ROMs have a notable emulation issue where you can’t clear a lap.

Well, I finally found an emulator where this doesn’t happen! Behold! Xpp XE. I don’t know much on it – it’s apparently Japanese in origin and based of the “SNES9XWXE” I may have mentioned before, but it’s newer (well, 2004, but still), and better!

To set it up, mark your “Save” directory and make a folder called “BIOS” there. Take the (headerless) “BS-X” ROM, name it to “bsxbios.bin” and put it in that directory. Now set up a “BSXPSRM” directory and leave it blank.

Then load the beauty. You’ll kick into the BIOs – showing the emulator obviously use a hack-ish method to load the ROMs. You have to load Soundlink games as though they were downloads!

Still. It’s worth it. Just for this. Watch me crash and die, folks!

Page reserved for reccomended emulators.

Originally this was a different article entirely, but now this space will be updated with what emulators are recommended. (Last update April 14th)

For games intended to run from the BIOs and Data Carts meant for compatible cartridges:

BSNES version .042 – http://byuu.org/bsnes/

For Soundlink games:

SNESGT, .218 should do for now, I think… – http://gigo.retrogames.com/

For BS Fuurai no Shiren:

This special case seems to only run on a modified SNES9X emulator which I only know of as “SNES9XWSE”.

http://kiddocabbusses.tryhappy.net/nothingforfree/BS-X/snes9xwse.rar