Satellablog - Satellaview Blog

Redumps. Because sometimes identical ROMs happen, except for the times they aren’t -that- identical.

I posted an upload of these before in various ROM sites, but now I’ve checked them out in slightly more detail than before.

These are some redumps of previous dumps. Although most of these redumps – much like the new dumps – were pure chance dumps (with the exception of the Panel De Pon 98′ Redump, which I bought with my own cash), there’s quite a bit of good and/or interesting to take note of nonetheless.

Due to the nature of these being redumps and many of them being hard to tell from the initial releases, I’ve taken into marking the Month/Day values in the ROM Headers as part of the ROM filename – similar to how GoodTools and No-Intro manage multiple similar-appearing ROM dumps.

Currently these redumps are being hosted elsewhere – chalk it up to mere laziness.

I’ll start with this one. Should be familiar if you checked out the blog just a bit ago –

Gambler Jiko Chuushinsha 2 – Dorapon Quest.
Marked December 20th as opposed to the previous dump’s December 19th. It is otherwise identical down to the checksum.

Let’s Panchinko Nate Gindama 4.
Date is set as November 24th. The dump previously floating around is dated March 21st.

Panel De Pon ’98 Event Version.
Dated December 28th – the previous dump is marked January 11th.

Zelda no Densetsu Kamigami no Triforce.
Dated November 30th. The previous dump was dated May 21st. This dump is “locked” (It was apparently played to it’s 5-bootup limit), so you can’t run it on BSNES, even though the previous dump runs fine on it last I checked. It otherwise appears to be the same game, of course.

Cu On Pa SFC.
This dump is dated June 15th. The previous was dated May 31st. This also has had it’s boot-ups exhausted and is marked as “locked”.

A bad BS F-Zero 2 Practice dump. The title screen graphics are corrupted. It otherwise seems to play fine. Weird…….

Multple Yoshi no Panepon – BS Ban dumps.
Marked January 2nd, June 14th, and July 5th. I think this is ample evidence to say that this data is fairly common and easy to find.

Peculiar Sutte Hakkun BS Version 2 dumps.
These seem to be a similar case as what the “AK Live Hit Gang” dump was – checksum and maker values were zero’d out. Due to this BSNES and SNESGT won’t run them. They are dated October 19th and November 25th, respectively.

Kirby no Omachahako – Hoshi Kuzushi.
Dated Feb. 26th. THIS DUMP WORKS FOLKS. YOU CAN PLAY IT. IT RUNS ON NEARLY ANYTHING. IT’S A KIRBY GAME. C’MON ALREADY.

Explaining BS-X “lockout” – why your Zelda pack won’t play anymore. (sorry dude.)

Ah, this dreaded screen.
Why so dreaded?
This screen says you got no data in your Memory Pack, that’s why.
Wait, what’s that? “I just HAD a game in this 5 minutes ago!”?
Unfortunately, a common realization people don’t tend to have have when purchasing Satellaview 8M Memory Packs that have game data in them is that many of the games are designed to expire. Callis lost the chance to play a Zelda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce pack to this. Poor guy. 🙁

This post was more or less inspired by me talking about this a bit before in a DigitPress thread. Let me repeat a bit of what I said there, and then add some more to it from some additional research.

I’ll start off by repeating this; many Satellaview downloads are designed to expire.
Nintendo and St.GIGA had to think of -something- to prevent people from keeping free games forever; this system is probably one of the earliest examples of DRM in console gaming, and also among the most brutal.
The games expire through a method where, in the end, the data is “locked” in the memory pack, sitting there fully intact, yet being unable to be read.

What games are set to expire? A fairly high amount of them! If it was released at retail, expect any Satellaview download counterpart that doesn’t have any alterations to be expire-able. If it’s Kaizo Choujin Shubibinman Zero, same. If it’s a Soundlink title? Wait, those weren’t designed to boot up to begin with, so these games were already “locked” befroe you even got your hands on them.

What games don’t expire? For some reason, many Nintendo 1st Party downloads, like the BS Kirby no Omachahako line, Special Tee Shot, and special editions of their titles. Also, Squaresoft’s games.

“How” does a game expire? The BS-X checks the header for a value (xFD5) that states how many boot-ups the game has left; This amount seems to be between 1 (0x84) and 5 (0xFC) for every download that can expire (data that doesn’t expire have 0x00 in the header value). If it boots up a game, it’ll subtract from that value. When there’s nothing left (0x80)? The game is “locked”. The BS-X will refuse to read the game, acting as though it’s not even in the Memory Pack. Other data can theoretically be written over it. However, if you believe your data is valuable – which is likely the case – then you’ll probably want to know if you can do something about this.
A ROM Dump of an 8M Pack with “locked” data will allow you to see the contents – Emulators like SNESGT and SNES9Xpp XE will even bypass the lock and boot it up (BSNES, however, won’t – such is the downside of highly accurate emulation, needing to emulate the un-desirable parts.)
If you want a way to un-do the lock in the Memory Pack itself, though… well, good luck to you there. I got nothing to help you with.

New ROMs: Old ROMs; Same Difference.

Thanks to Callis yet again, here’s a set of new ROM releases.
Rather than go for “Strange” ROMs like I have done previously, this post will be dedicated to things one might find boring – or not. There’s still a chance there’s something in these I don’t see at first glance, after all.

Let me start with the one you’re least likely to play first. “Gambler Jiko Chuushinsha 2 – Dorapon Quest”.

Gambler Jiko Chuushinsha 2 – Dorapon Quest (BS) | 自己中心派2 ドラポンクエスト (BS)
ROM DL

I do not know much about the game in particular, but it’s based off a SFC cartridge release of some sort. It seems to be Mahjong game. Bummer.

Next up is a title a bit more easily accessible to an international audience.

Super Fire Pro Wrestling (BS) | スーパーファイヤープロレスリング (BS)
ROM DL

Super Fire Pro Wrestling is a game in the cult-import hit “Fire Pro Wrestling” line. The gameplay in this entry – once again a rerelease of the retail cart version – is similar to the NES game “Pro Wrestling”.

After that, we have…

Super Bomberman 2 (BS) | スーパーボンバーマン2 (BS)
ROM DL

Super Bomberman 2. This one should be fairly familiar for Bomberman fans. The Satellaview version does not seem to have anything particularly special about it, though, so the Caravan version would probably still be the rarest. [/nerd talk]

These three are all standard, limited-bootup, Satellaview downloads. Being quick rereleases of older titles, they are fairly easy to emulate. There may not even be any differences in coding…

Well, not the normal coding, anyway. The Satellaview had a different SRAM system, and games had to be modified to function with that. This can cause certain ROMs to have issues with emulators. Therefore, for the last two releases, I’d specifically recommend booting these with the BS-X ROM in SNESGT;

Super Nazo Puyo – Lulu no Luu (BS) | スーパーなぞぷよルルーのルー(BS)
ROM DL

Super Nazo Puyo, a psuedo-RPG/Puzzle game hybrid based off Compile’s arcade puzzle game line. Even though this is based off a standard retail release, an emulator like ZSNES would have problems with this ROM in spite of being able to play the original game normally.

Now, for my last release. This one is a bit more personal to me than the rest, because this is an 8M Pack I purchased myself, with my own money, to be dumped.
When I initially got it it appeared to be empty, but of course I knew (well, because the YJA auction description implied it) that it had some sort of data, so I sent it to Callis to dump.
He returned to me, this very ROM image.

ActRaiser (BS) | アクトレイザー(BS)
ROM DL

Strangely enough, I had people request me to find this bit of data before I actually did find it. As per the above entries, I do not suspect it to be any different from the retail (Japanese) version in terms of gameplay. However, Callis did tell me of emulation issues, so I once again expect SRAM code modification.

Hopefully anyone here can take the time to invest to try to dig into these ROMs a bit deeper? 🙂

Ah, something new! RPG Tsukuru 2 download data.

Took long enough for a (relevant) update, huh?

Today NicoNicoDouga got a nice upload of RPG Tsukuru 2 Custom Data. As I explained earlier (I hope), RPG Tsukuru 2 took 8M Memory Packs as “data carts” where save data could be read and written upon. Many times, St.GIGA would have custom data up for download on the Satellaview, where you’d download it using the BS-X cartridge and then check out the data on RPG Tsukuru 2.

The video I have obtained apparently has footage from a Satellaview-exclusive RPG Tsukuru 2 download, called “Go By Ryoma”.

【RPGツクール2】「龍馬でゆく」(サテラビュー配信作品) 前編少しだけ

UBSCSB Series 2: Family Basic.

Another entry caused by “I got nothing new on Satellaview”.

Out of boredom I decded to try looking up info on “Family Basic”, for the Famicom. If you already have an, um, “basic” idea of what the BASIC Programming Language is, then you should know what this would be just by the name.

Family Basic Sets tend to be expensive as heck on eBay, so purchasing one was not in my ability at the moment. Apparently Matthew Callis himself has some stuff though.

Digging down a bit more, though, I found this listing for a Hudson cassette.
To clarify this – Family Basic stored and read data off Data Cassettes using the Famicom Data Recorder add-on. Now, I heard of a lot of generic cassettes being usable here, but I don’t really recall hearing much about the commerically-sold products based around Family Basic, aside from the programming tools themselves. I tried digging up for info, but unfortunately I still need some more Japanese language skills – I only have some vague hints.
Either way, apparently stuff was commerically sold as Famicom Data Cassettes – how would one archive these? … perhaps a lossless audio format like FLAC?

… but yeah, going on from that, after looking that up, I decided to try throwing a search for Family Basic up on NicoNicoDouga. There are a -lot- of results, more than what I think I could fit in a blog article here (Maybe even demanding it’s own blog set?).
I unfortunately lazied out on getting the original links for these, but you can find them under a tag search for ファミリーベーシック on NicoNicoDouga. Some of these videos had descriptions or dates which implied them being homemade, but some have dates such as 1983 or 1986, and many of the NND descriptions clearly reference “Family Compuer Magazine”….

These are just some of the videos. It’s still quite a lot, though, so please use the “more” link to view them.

UBSCSB Series 1: Sega Pico

There hasn’t been many updates this month, hasn’t there?

Sorry folks, Satellaview progress has been slow. I’d gladly post some more info as it comes along, but quite frankly, there isn’t much I can recall at the moment. In the meantime, since you guys already know that I tend to look at other bits of obscure gaming, I’ll fill up time by posting some things.

Let me start with the Sega Pico. Yes, -that- Sega Pico, if you already are familiar with it in the USA. The “Edutainment” gaming system Sega released in their days of oversaturating the market with Genesis upgrades and derivatives, it seems the Sega Pico actually had a much more startling success story in Japan than in what I believe to be the country of it’s birth…

ROM Release…? …. Nah, I don’t think this counts.

Callis sent me this rom to examine… and… well, it just seemed like a corrupted to me, and I told him that.
He then told me something weird – The Memory Pack this image came from caused his Satellaview to -really- mess up. It gave out an “Error 41” message, according to him.

I looked through my old entry on Errors, and realized I never came across such an error. What is Error 41? He wasn’t able to take a picture. Can someone hack or modify the ROM in such a way that error 41 can be called out? Of course, if someone -could- do that, I’d expect even grander things, like access to many of the “locked” BS-X areas…

This strange download, if one ever dares try making a tool to put new data into a 8M Memory Pack, could replicate this “Error 41” that Callis told me about.

ENTRY REVIVAL: “All Night Nippon and how obscure Japanese culture impacts your Nintendo games”, now with more Satellaview relation!

Someone who’s been backreading on my old Blogspot blog location asked me why I was missing the “All Night Nippon” article (He found it a very interesting read).

I told him that I thought the article was a bit misplaced at the time, but developments were coming along and I thought to revive it. Well, the development I got wasn’t quite what I expected, but I got it!

This one’s a fairly long one, so I’m gonna use that “more” code I haven’t used in a while.