Satellablog

Hey, it’s Christmas time! That means it’s time to bumrush through some releases!

Last month, I released a pretty interesting magazine, and this time, I got another one – and some that may be interesting for all the wrong reasons – ready.

For this one, I’m not gonna embed my own gameplay recording, but rather an archival video from kukun kun:

Now, let’s pop out the emulated ROM screenshot!

Presenting “Oryouri Pon!” by Indieszero, the same devs behind Sutte Hakkun!
Indieszero’s own website is kind enough to provide info on broadcast months.

This is not your typical Satellaview magazine – it’s got it’s own style, with a unique interface and frequent use of animated interactive elements.
In this magazine, you “unlock” recipes by answering multiple-choice questions, and they save to SRAM to incentivize you to cook ’em all!

(I don’t know why this image is so much larger than the others. My apologies.)

We’ve obtained ROM dumps of the other notable cooking magazine “Cheap de Gorgeous” before, and this is all the “Gorgeous” without the “Cheap!”
(No offense intended!)

12-Tsuki-gou here matches the video kukun kun has after repairing the ROM header.
On Indieszero’s site, this is the 2nd volume out of four. The missing volumes would be 11-tsuki-gou, 1-tsuki-gou and 2-tsuki-gou. Strangely, all media on the internet appears to be from 12-tsuki-gou.

お料理ポン！ 12月号 | Oryouri Pon! 12-Tsuki-gou
ROM Download

The next batch of magazines are meant to accompany radio programs. One of the unfortunate circumstances that happens because of this is that there is a good chance that radio program has not been archived, meaning whatever the context is behind the contents of the magazines is, is completely lost.

Houkago no Ousama in particular is an alarming one, because there’s many broadcasts, and apparently all of them are unique.
kukun kun has video for 10/7 and 10/10, but 10/9 here? Nope, nada!

And because of that, I was not prepared for THIS! (WARNING: Probably considered NSFW.)
Why, oh, WHY is that guy exposing himself like that? Good grief!

This obvious gravure photo also probably has no business being in an official Nintendo product, but to me this is at least a palette cleanser after… that.

Oh, this mempack dump also has an AK Live volume with the same date.

Da-ba-babiddy-dobiddy-buh-biddle-luh-rubudi-skabiddle-wa-do-wop-bop!

Houkago no Ousama (10-4) + AK LIVE (10-9)
ROM download

Ah, and guess what? All the following magazine dumps are ALSO lacking a respective rip of the radio program on the internet.

Which means we may run into something like THIS and go “WHYYYY?” some more!

Okay, at least this one is ONLY “weird”…. man, what a thing to say, huh?

Bakusho Mondai no Silicon Chounaikai (1996-7-27)
ROM Download

We got another Silicon Chounaikai coming up too.

This one was apparently so nice, the person with the memory pack downloaded it twice!

… Actually, this one looks like it might have an interesting text dump on “Ryouma De Yuku”, the RPG Tsukuru 2 custom campaign.

Bakushow Mondai no Silicon Chounaikai (11-16) [Twice]
ROM Download

Alright, one more! … Well, technically two more, but they’re both on the same mem pack.

These are meant to accompany Yuki Uchida’s radio program “Yuugure Street Kids Side-B”, of which to my memory there was exactly one broadcast that… it’s no longer on NicoNico, is it? My re-uploads are the only remains of the radio broadcast… ouch!

The contents of these magazines seem to be mostly just pictures, which makes the lack of the radio programs for context even more taxing. Imagine getting a ROM dump and it’s main content is a screenshot of a shower faucet. Just… what?

Do note that they likely broadcast with “Yuki no Waiwai Kids”, which there is only one ROM dump of.

This 8M pack dump has two distinct Yuki Uchida episodes, as well as the downloader making that common mistake of downloading the same program twice.

Uchida Yuki (8-12, 8-12, 8-5)ROM Download

Alright, I got to post on my birthday!

So, for this ROM release… I wanted it to be something special. HOWEVER… I needed to do a lot of research first.

So let me build up to what I am aware of.

According to God-Bird.net, a magazine called “Ranking Magazine” ran from June 29, 1996 up until a undetermined (but likely 1998) ending date.

ランキングマガジン
放送期間 （遅くとも）1996年6月29日～
解説 詳細不明
—
Ranking Magazine
Broadcast period (latest info) 1996/6/29 –
Explanation Details unknown
。

Although it says this, there are other sections on the site which seem to have references to other ranking magazines.

4ステージをクリアすると成績がパスワードで表示され、それをハガキで送ることで応募できる。番組「マリオの森～ランキングマガジン」内で順位が発表され、上位には賞品も出された。ランキングイベント第一弾は5月19日、第二弾は7月20日から行われた。
—
After clearing the four stages, your score will be displayed with a password, and you can apply by sending it by postcard. The rankings were announced on the program “Mario no Mori ~ Ranking Magazine”, and prizes were awarded to the top players. The first ranking event was held on May 19th, and the second on July 20th.

Hmm, come to think of it, I think I saw that on kukun kun’s videos!
Yes… um… It was about an hour and 22 minutes into this video.
This doesn’t seem to match up exactly with the info supplied by God-Bird but it is nevertheless the evidence of regularly-distributed ranking magazines for various Satellaview Events.
Notably, this mentions not just Wario, but also WaiWai De Q and Panel De Pon. Something about BS Zelda as well.

Man, this is difficult to dig through with the hours of archival video kukun kun has, but nevertheless! It looks like these were regularly distributed.

With that established, let’s move forward!

Be sure to have the sound ON when watching this!

One of these has been recovered, and… this particular one is a real doozy!
Even compared to what kukun kun caught on video, it feels SPECIAL.

A few things to go over, but the most important thing is… the synthesized voice audio! Yes, I mean, I didn’t even know that was even possible on a Super Famicom before this point! Absolutely mind-blowing! Every person who ranked in BS Super Mario Collection got the honor of having a voiced shoutout long before the days when people paid Twitch streamers for basically the same thing!

Ah, yes, I did say this was for BS Super Mario Collection, right?

Besides the winner announcements, there’s also articles with art from the game that is higher-res than what would come from dumping the actual game ROMs!

This is also one of the first magazines we got which has many user-submitted fanart pieces!
…. WHY IS CARBUNCLE FROM PUYO PUYO THERE?

Besides BS Super Mario Collection, there are also sections for Satella-Q and Zenkoku baken ōja kettei-sen 2 (To newbies: Satella-Q was the regular quiz game series. The latter thing was a Soundlink Derby Stallion 96 event which a ROM dump for one episode was obtained of way back.)

Adding to the distinctness of this program are these idle animations for the bottom box, with Satebo and Parabo!

Do note that since this was recovered from a 8M with deleted data, the ROM may not be pure. There are no obvious bugs.

ランマガ３月号
らんきんぐ まがじん ３月号
Ranking Magazine – 3 Tsuki-gou
Ranking Magazine – March Issue
ROM download

The reason I tried to get all this research down on this before releasing is because I had some concerns about the theoretical privacy risk of a computerized voice shouting the aliases of names.
That said, my policy so far – and I intend to stick by it – has been “If it was broadcast publicly, it’s fair game.”
There’s no signs that this was a personalized copy (And I doubt the owner would have deleted the ROM like it was trash if there was a strong connection there!)
Therefore, as soon as I cross-checked and verified that similar types of magazines were on kukun kun’s videoes, I decided to post it here.
I hope you all enjoy the findings!
I’d LOVE to see the voice generation reverse-engineered and used in homebrew games!

I was planning something else for Halloween but a life shakeup happened, so here’s a rushed article.

a bit back, a ROM was dumped of BS Tantei Club – Kouhen. This is not exactly the dump that’s been going around before, which was labeled “Saihousou”. This is from the premiere.

While other build differences aren’t known, casual gameplay can access the BS Ihatovo Monogatari advertisement and event postcard screen.

BS Tantei Club – Kouhen (Premiere)
ROM Download

I will go into the dump I intended for later, I guess.

BONS: assorted redumps

Mario Paint BS Ban
Special Tee Shot
Wario no Mori – Futatabi
Yoshi no Panepon – BS Ban

Let me leave off with the text of a tweet I made a bit back, since ChronoMoogle told me it should have gone on the blog:

A lot of Satellaview preservation is thanks to 8M pack dumping. However, it is believed that some media simply can not be obtained this way.

One of them is “R no Shosai”, a series of horror anthology stories. Broadcast in 1997, this would be right up the alley of those who liked the ghost story aspects of the first Famicom Detective Club games. These are simple kinetic stories presented in photos, text and voice acting, with the main hook of the program being the choose-your-own-ending story branchs to the spooky tales.

In a feat that is rare on even the more ambitious Satellaview programs, every branching path is voice acted. How this is done, I do not know, although the heavily compressed voices during these branches suggest they were stored in the game, rather than played over the Soundlink radio.

The subject matter of the stories can get pretty dark as well, which feels un-Nintendo-like, in spite of their being credited as the developer.

Part of the reason it is suspected this can’t be recovered – besides the fact no data of it has been found outside VHS recordings of gameplay – is because there are technical signs in said VHS recordings that the program downloaded directly to PSRAM rather than the 8M memory pack. As such, outside a theoretical huge leak, only Nintendo themselves can save this one.

What a cruel twist of irony, for the game about ghosts to disappear like a ghost in and of itself.

Videos of R no Shosai can be found on kukun kun and halki’s Youtube channels.

There’s been a lot of incidents going on lately that threaten the ROM preservation scene, including an attack on the Internet Archive (It’s currently down as of this writing and it’s affecting how the article is being written!) and the typical Nintendo site takedowns.

Somehow, though, I’m still pushing on.

This is not the expected October release, BTW, this is something I’m doing now because I hit some good, juicy hidden data from exploring the dump!

So what do we got?

Well, actually, we gotta do a recap before this one, because we’re pulling from a series of dumps here.
So, let’s go way back, to the days of GoodSNES. There was a ROM on their set simply called “BS Super Famicom Wars”.

Upon looking this up, on various sites, including the archives of Satellaivew History Museum, it turned out there were actually four distinct broadcasts of this.

(This has been edited to omit parts of the listing not relevant for today’s release)

03/01(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ソラマメジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Soramejima”
03/08(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ハゴロモジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Hagarojima”
3/15(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ノアカザントウ』| Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Noakazantou”
03/22(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ４週目 スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ツキノワジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban 4-shuume “Tsukinowajima”

Turns out the dump on GoodSNES was “Tsukinowajima”. Oddly, on the listing here on the site, it’s the only one given an episode number. ( 4-shuume )

A while back, a different Super Famicom Wars broadcast, with episode 2, “Hagarojima” was recovered.
… We did have that on this blog, didn’t we? I can’t recall when we got an article up for it, so let me just link this here just in case;
Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Hagarojima

Recently, a third volume was recovered – and by that, I mean it’s both the third recovered, and the third in the series.

This is “Noakazantou”.

As you can see, all of these are pretty similar, so after obtaining these and seeing the GoodSNES one, I figured if I could compare them I’d be able to find some way to toggle through the episodes to access the “missing” map, which according to the Satellaview History Museum would be the first one, “Soramejima.”

The summary of what ended up happening would basically be “I got quite a bit more than I bargained for”.

Going through the process of what I did would be boring so I’ll cut to the chase; the primary difference in each episode is hex values 363F6 and 363F8 respectively.

The latter value is still not entirely understood but it seems tied to the broadcast order, as each of the recovered ROMs is marked sequentially with 02, 03 and 04 respectively. My speculation is that this changes the password generation at the end of winning a map. Further updates on this may be necessary.

The former value is the interesting one… tinker with it, and you can change the map!
So, if Soramejima was the first map, would that make it 01?

Why yes, yes it would. (Yes, my line of thinking is that naive, and it just happened to work this time. Go fig.)

But that’s peculiar… Hagaro-jima is 06, Noakazantou 0B and Tsukinowa-jima 0C. These hex values don’t exactly go up in a sequence that looks predictable or expected at first glance.

So… what’s 02? I mean, 00 is a crash, so certainly there’d be nothing at-

Oh wait WHAT

There’s MORE maps! Maps that were not officially broadcast are in fact buried, unused, in the ROM data! They are fully playable, almost as if they may had intended to be broadcast!

You can tinker with the value for a total of 16 maps (The 4 that were broadcast, and 12 unused ones).

At the time it feels like 16 is the most I can get out of this. Attempts to break any higher will lead to bugged results.
But there’s one more really good bit: If I set 363F6 to 12, I get something resembling a proper, in-game map select, where I can scroll up or down and choose one of the 16 maps to play. (You can also try scrolling past that amount to buggy results. Not recommended.)

Perhaps with more tinkering someone can enable 2-player mode or something? Or disable BGM, or plant the retail version’s fan translation to this. Would be great for the Satellaview+ audience.

Why 12 of the 16 complete and fully playable maps were never officially broadcast is probably something we’ll never truly know the reason for. It’s especially unfortunate to think about, since St.GIGA often lamented being starved for games!

Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Noakazantou
ROM Download

Incidentally, you may be wondering “With all this data, can you replicate the missing broadcast’s ROM?”
Well, I can certainly try. Here’s my attempt:

Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Soramejima (Theoretical Replica)
ROM Download

I admit, I kinda consider a reconstructed replica to be a bit of a controversial thing to distribute. I can easily make something like that for any retail game I can spot on a schedule, but while I’ve tinkered with the idea in private (mostly to test to see how accurately I can get it done), I’ve never distributed results like that on here because I didn’t want to flood the databases with modified ROMs.

For that reason I’m making sure this is clearly labeled in the filename, and to request that no one remove that label. There’s always the chance an actual 8M dump will come along and it may end up looking different from what I got (VERY SMALL CHANCE considering how the data is so similar between episodes, but I digress).

Anyway, one more ROM to distribute.

And I bet you guys will like this one above all the “official” ROMs and “Official” replicas.

Modified Super Famicom Wars BS Ban ROM – all Maps unlocked
ROM Download

This one has the scrolling map, so you can play any map!

Since there’s now a bunch of Super Famicom Wars ROMs I’ve put them all in a set so they are easier to sort.
Download it here!

BONUS: A buncha redumps of mixed quality.

Cu-On-Pa BS Ban 7/20 (corrupted)
Zelda Kamigami no Triforce 3/18 (corrupted)
Super Nazo Puyo Tsuu (Incomplete)
Super Nazo Puyo (Corrupted)
Kid Klown no Crazy Chase (deleted)
DerbyStal 96 – Taiou 97-nendo Ban (11-24) (Corrupted)
Kodomo Chousadan Mighty Pockets – Chousa 1 – Junk-ya Black no Ie.zip
The Firemen 2/27
F-Zero 2/20
Mario Paint – BS Ban (6-4) (Deleted Corrupted)

Hey, apologies for the lack of updates here. I have become a heavy contributor to the Satellaview+ project.
I hope you guys are willing to check that out in your free time.

There are some ROMs I want to save for releasing on notable dates, so I will not have major releases today. But these may be interesting to people who enjoy trying to datamine, or to make something out of incomplete dumps.

First off, let’s start with 3 redumps of Undake30 SameGame Mario version. Now, for dumps of this game in particular, that’s probably excessive. However, if you deeper into some of them… interesting things can be found

Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (11-16) (Leftover data from Wizardry 7 Demo)

It turns out a demo of Wizardry VII was broadcast, and the incomplete data here confirms it.

Here’s some info danyl dug up about it.

Its allow you to see the opening demo and listen 36 different sounds.
1995/09/23～1995/09/27 (2 times per day)
1995/10/24～1995/10/31 (1 time per day)

This seems pretty basic and barebones, which probably explains why the user would replace it with something more like a proper game.
I wonder if it is possible to take the data we got from this to construct the demo, based on the description?

Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (11-11) (Leftover data from Leading Jockey 2)

This one confirms the game “Leading Jockey 2” was broadcast on the service. This is a horse-race sim akin to the Derby Stallion series. The data appears to match the retail version identically.

Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (5-29) (BS Fuurai no Shiren episode 4 data)

This third one has data from episode 4 of “BS Fuurai no Shiren”, which demonstrates how easy it is for a Soundlink game to have been overwritten… thankfully, this is one we recovered prior to this dump.

There is one other dump we have with some mind-blowing leftover data, but I’m saving it for Halloween, because it feels appropriate for that time….

Some more redumps:

Super Bomberman 2
Yoshi no Panepon
Mystic Ark (deleted header)
Arkanoid – Doh it Again (incomplete)
Satespo DX Dai-5-gou
BS Tantei Club – Chuuhen (Corrupted)
Cu-On-Pa BS (corrupted)
User Same Game
F-Zero (Corrupted)
Ikari no Yousai (Corrupted)