A Satellaview research blog.

New ROM Dump, but I don’t know Wai I’m releasing these now.

Oh dear, this is the most successive punning I’ve done on the blog yet…. er, eh-hem!

This article features the release of a 8M Pack dump ROM with 2 games. Before I hand it over, though, I’m gonna link some of the related articles, or at least alleged relations, in some cases.

Starting with this one. This is probably the biggie. One ROM is directly connected with Yuki Uchida and her radio programming.

Meanwhile, according to bluesun’s translations of Satellaview history museum, the other ROM is tied in to the “Waiwai de Q” series.

Read More…Read More…

Tee and crumpets.

This is a tad of a minor update as there isn’t really anything “new” to announce just yet. I’ve been busy with other things the past few weeks (and had many schedule setbacks due to circumstances beyond my control), but I hope this will at least let everyone know I didn’t have a BS Laser fired at me.

I recently obtained a set of 3 Satellaview 8Ms thanks to Callis.

One of them contained a Yoshi no Panepon. (Arr, again? This time I’m keeping it as a personal copy.)

One of them contained a Special Tee Shot. This one is one that wasn’t currently in the collections of the collective Satellablog team prior, so I consider this a nice get. Based on it’s appearance alone and comparing it to the ol’ GoodSNES set’s ROM, I feel pretty safely assured that previous dumps of it are alright. Special Tee Shot will be added to the Java and Flash emulators on the site assuming no compatibility issues.

The third pack… don’t get too excited about it, but it’s at least new. I will give more info on it when it’s ROM is dumped and made available.


New ROM features cock and pussy. (Actually SFW, don’t panic)

So, once again, today is my birthday!

Of course, I wouldn’t let my birthday go by without a ROM release after last year had a great one! I’ve been planning on having something up here for November 4th for a good amount of time. But Satellaview games don’t grow on trees, so it left me wondering what to put out.

Thankfully, the residents of Snesfreaks answered my question for me back in October! ChronoMoogle found an interesting auction on eBay.de and set up a multi-party fund for it’s purchase and release, leading to the first release on the blog with 5 people who can be credited to it; The funders, ChronoMoogle, MarcoEagleEye, Svambo (all from #snesfreaks) and myself, and of course the ROM dumper, ikari.

So, what called for such a banding together? It must have been a game that we’ve known about prior and has eluded us before, right? Is it a killer app? Does it teach us something new about the Satellaview? Drum roll, please, this is going to be a really long article…

Read More…Read More…

Messing with them web emulators again…

You might notice a bit of a change in the “Play Satellaview games online!” section. (Already?)

I’ve now split the section into Java and Flash sections. I’m working on embedding the games with flashsnes so that people can use that as an alternative to Java.

Feel free to tell me of any issues – I already know I’m confused by the default control scheme. D:


I knew I was forgetting something all this time… EDIT: Now with No-Intro comparison

So, as I was going through testing ROMs to add to the Java emulator, I came across a couple redumps I never actually got around to showing on the blog!

For two years!

Oopsie-daisy!

The game they’re for has been put on the Java emulator already. It’s Dr. Mario!

I don’t remember the details too hard on these redumps, but if my memory serves they have the ol’ “Deleted Headers”. The Java embed is of the first of the two – it appears to play identically to the commonly circulating ROM.

I deeper analysis might come around.. if I don’t forget for another 2 years.

Dr. Mario (BS)
ROM Download

EDIT Oct. 15, 2012: I’ve attempted to do a more in-depth comparison with the previous dump, HOWEVER…

It appears said previous dump, as it appears in the no-intro set, has a hacked header. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but regardless…

Here’s 7FC0-7FDF on the previous ROM:

42 53 5F 44 72 20 4D 61 72 69 6F 00 FF 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF 20 10 33 02 CE B7 31 4B

On the same addresses, these two redumps have the following bytes in common:

82 63 82 92 81 44 B3 7D 83 8A 83 49 82 61 82 72
FF 00 00 00 00 00 ** ** 20 10 00 02 00 00 00 00

(The ** are differing bytes. Their location is in the “date” area of the ROM, anyhow.)

Notably, while the latter two’s headers are consistent with a “Deleted” game, the former has a header that just plain looks screwed up, especially with spelling “BS_Dr.Mario” the way it does.

Furthermore, none of the ROMs load in BSNES, but while this is expected of the deleted header ROMs, the “hacked” header ROM causes an odd behavior which causes the ROM loader to crash.

To boot up Dr. Mario closer to the way it was meant to be played, the header should look something more like this;

82 63 82 92 81 44 B3 7D 83 8A 83 49 82 61 82 72
FF 00 00 00 00 00 ** ** 20 10 33 02 C7 B7 31 4B

Note how the “hacked header” ROM does appear to have the checksum and maker values correct. Either the hacker attempted to restore these, or the header hack was based off a previously “pure” dump. This may need to be investigated.

… To think we don’t even have as simple a ROM as this in it’s purest state? Sheesh…


Test running Java-based Satellaview ROM emulation.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone – any newbies, in particular!

Now, near the top of the sidebar menu, you’ll see an option to play some Satellaview games. This is, more or less, whatever has been dumped on the blog that I managed to get working with I-Console. I’ve attempted to make it as user-friendly as possible, but please feel free to tell me if there’s any unusual quirks I didn’t already spot regardless.