Super Nintendo is the standard home video game console with a sales record of 17 million units in Japan (end of December 1996).
Nintendo proposes a software writing / rewriting service “game kiosk (tentative name)” to continue to supply Super Nintendo software to an overwhelmingly many NES users. By implementing this service, we would like to further develop the SNES market.
The “game kiosk (provisional name)” is a system that uses a writable flash memory instead of conventional cartridges to provide new games at low cost to users. For software manufacturers, development costs can be made more efficient, and there is no inventory risk at retailers, and there is no packaging (production) period. We believe that it will eventually lead to the solution of used problems.
< Flow of game kiosk (tentative name) software supply >
Software maker
Supply game software
Nintendo
Game software
Recorded and supplied on master CD
Transmission of write data
Sales outlet
Write service
Payment of writing fee
user
3. Advertising and Sales Promotion
Sales promotion and advertising will be conducted by our company. We will ask for the cooperation of the software maker for the planning and content, and will implement it.
● Advertising
1. TV advertising is advertising in spots and offered programs.
2. Magazine advertisements include game magazines and comic magazines.
● Sales promotion
1. Distribution of pamphlets and flyers at stores.
2. We will publish a communication magazine like “NINTENDO Magazine (tentative name)”.
3. We will develop comprehensive advertising and publicity linked to the previously published magazines of Shogakukan and ASCII Recruit.
Approximately 100 titles, including newly released software, are planned.
● Recruitment of setting store
An exhibition briefing will be held around July for GK controllers, GK writer mass-produced products, and software at the start. At that time, we will also announce the application guidelines.
This is the source code to the unlicensedSuper Noah’s Ark 3D SNES game by Wisdom Tree, known for their unlicensed NES games. The game is notably “the only commercially released SNES game in the U.S. that was not officially sanctioned by Nintendo”, as well as using the same game engine for the Super Nintendo version of Wolfenstein 3D under license from id Software.
Origin
I bought this off of eBay in November of 2018 and got 4 diskettes and an official seal of authenticity (deep irony) for the disks on official Wisdom Tree letterhead. The disks were zipped using PKZIP, an old version that split it across 4 3.5 inch disks. This was a huge pain to unzip, given no modern tools support this specific format and required old software on old hardware to successfully extract. The disks were zipped sometime on of after November 13th 1994, 10:31AM, which is the latest date on any files in the disks. The original files from the diskettes are included as well as an extractable archive of the contents. All files are available on GitHub as well.
Interesting Contents
There were a few notable items in the archives I will share below. First (not below) is the full set of tools provided by id Software to extract and repackage the contents of Wolfenstein 3D, as well as the C source code for it.
Rebecca Heineman: The sound code was originally written for RPM Racing, using the Apple IIgs Merlin assembler with macros to build for the custom Sony SPC700 CPU. It was improved over time for Wolf3D.
Rebecca Heineman: Kewl. I found the source to my old audio tools for the SNES. At the time they were written, I had no docs to the SNES because of licensing issues with Sony. This code was created by reverse engineering the audio hardware and figuring out how it worked.
Rebecca Heineman: I even learned Japanese, so I could read the patents, Sony docs on the SPC 700 CPU I found “elsewhere” and other bits I could gather to complete the sound driver. Sugoi!
Rebecca Heineman: I think for the xmas break, I’ll get the game to compile with my current 65816 build tools.
John Carmack: I gave you huge respect for learning enough Japanese back then to get through the tech docs!
From johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com Fri Aug 19 13:46:52 1994
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 94 20:21:29 -0600
From: John Carmack <johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com>
To: Vance Kozik <vance@crl.com>
Subject: Re: SNES snds
Ok, here is the code for the utility that generated SNES sounds (a
tiny NeXT program). I wrote this, but only because the original
development plan fell apart. I make no claim that the sound code in
wolf is worth a damn.
John Carmack
From johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com Thu Aug 25 14:48:29 1994
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 94 19:38:27 -0600
From: John Carmack <johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com>
To: jimt@crl.com
Subject: sndlink
I think the sounds were all 22khz 16 bit samples, but it has been a
LOOOONG time since I looked at that stuff.
I think you have the cmdlib.[ch] files from other stuff. Here is
sndlink.c:
printf ("sndlink 0.1 by John Carmack\n");
printf ("Sndlink (v0.1) by John Carmack\n\n");
//%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
// WOLFENSTEIN 3D
// by John Carmack
//%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
=============================================================================
SNESGRAB
by John Carmack
=============================================================================
=============================================================================
WALLGRAB
by John Carmack
=============================================================================
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
; Id's SNES sound driver - decoded from 'driver.s' provided by Id in
; an 'encoded' state (simply and each character with $7F to get in
; ASCII range - for some reason this was the ONLY file provided by
; Id that was encoded...). It includes 'SPC700.MACS' which was not
; provided by Id but it appears to be only a macro file so the SNES
; sound chip code could be compiled by their regular 65816 assembler!
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
LST OFF
TR ON
USE SPC700.MACS ;Write this in SPC700
REL
**************************************************
*
*
* SuperFamicom Music Low Level Sound Driver *
*
By Bill Heineman and John Carmack *
*
*
**************************************************
// JAPVERSION has mission pics instead if briefing
//#define JAPVERSION
// If PALCHECK is defined, aborts on NTSC version, else abort on PAL
//#define PALCHECK
Assets and other files all seem in place, as well as some tools I was not able to find anything for online, which I believe could be the iD assembler mentioned in the file above as regular 65816 assembler:
MSD RomEm(R)-PLUS Interactive Control Program --
Copyright (C) 1988-1993,
Microsystems Development, San Jose, California, USA,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED --
Copyright (C) 1988-1993,
John Golini, Los Gatos, California, USA,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
***************************************
** Zardoz 65C816 Macro Assembler **
** **
** Version%s- %s **
***************************************
2.0h Aug 11 1994
2.0h Aug 11 1994 04:58:09 Copyright (C) 1992,1993 by Zardoz Software, Inc.
This is an early Street Fighter Alpha 2 / Street Fighter Zero 2 (ストリートファイターZERO 2) prototype, notable due to the fact is does not yet use the special chip and is very early in development. There were several auctions sold by safestuff1 and I bought 2 copies and decided not to buy any more after they were identical and board images were not posted and showed more final character select screens. The date on the first auction has the EEPROMs labeled with the date 6/11, while the date from the other board is 9/15.
HELP WANTED: There are several items I know I will never get to, if you can help with this game or any other with any of the following items, [please contribute on GitHub! Think of this as more of a living wiki (without spam) and contribute in any way that you can. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if you need help or want to contribute but aren’t sure where to start.
Check music against the retail version
Check sprites against the retail version
Check character move set against retail version
Animated GIF to compare
Screenshots
Starting with the title screen, it actually looks better in the prototype and now squished like in the final, a larger and nice typeface for Push Start Button!! and slightly different, less detailed background:
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
Characters & Sprites
This section is thanks to Kiddo Cabbusses / サテラビュー好きの外人さん. I don’t know if I got this well in this image (below) but the short of it is; Zangief’s stance has more frames of animation in the prototype compared to the final, and by golly it looks a LOT better for it. The final game looks jank in comparison. His stance is the only thing in the prototype, he’s otherwise nothing - not even able to attack or get hurt like Ken who is also buggy.
Chun-Li and Dhalsim are actually SURPRISINGLY close to completion. They have some missing graphical effects (Chun-Li’s Kikoushou, Dhalsim’s Yoga Fire/Flame/Breath/Inferno) and sometimes crash the game. But every now and then you can play through a whole match with them. They may had been intended to be playable by the time this was put out, but the few missing things got in the way. Ken is buggy. Rolento has a stance like Zangief and otherwise does nothing. The buggy Nash-Akuma is crash-prone.
On that note, trivial commentary on the development from what I can perceive: From the characters ready to demo and the ones close to being ready to being demoed, we have 4 SF2 vets, an Alpha 1 character (Charlie) that’s basically a reskin of a SF2 vet, and the only “new” character introduced in Alpha 2. Likewise, of the incomplete characters, the ones furthest in are SF2 vets and a character whose first SF appearance is Alpha 2. This gives me an impression that characters were intentionally prioritized - I’m assuming likely in case space issues required them to outright cut someone.
If you win a round with Ken in the SFZ2 proto it will crash. Also it looks like for some reason Ken has programming that’s meant to be for Akuma’s Teleport move. If you do quarter-circle back + punch he’ll move towards the other player at the same speed as the teleport, but he can’ phase through and there’s no graphical effects.
As reported by Josh Smith, Sakura has all three of her jump kick animations from the arcade version in this prototype. The release version removes the animation from the medium kick and replaces it with the weak kick animation.
Stages
The stage layouts are different than the final version, some drastically different.
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
Player Portraits
Portraits have small to noticeable alterations, and there are more complete portraits than stages. Ryu, Chun Li and Sakura have the most changes.
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
2-Up Swipe Onion Skin
Hacking & How-To Explore
All of this is with the most amazing thanks to Revenant for literally making all this extraction possible. Below you will find notes on how to explore the various functions in the game and possibly find more! These codes are included in the download below as a CHT file.
Notes: Each character slot on the select screen has 4 bytes that determine which slot to move to when pressing a direction on the D-pad, and some of the unfinished characters are "still there", sort of, in that they will skip over other adjacent characters if you are actually able to select them- if that makes any sense. So it seems like more characters may have been planned to/close to actually being included on the select screen.
Sprite Debug Controls:
Controller 1:
Y: Step Pose Frame
X: Animate Pose Infinite
B: Reset Pose
A: Animate Pose to End
Start: Change Table
Controller 2:
L: Previous Palette
R: Next Palette
X: Previous Pose
Y: Hold to orient sprite / hitbox
B: Next Pose
A: Hold to orient sprite / hitbox
Start: Toggle Hit Boxes
There is a dummied 6th option on the stage select to play on Zangief's stage, but it doesn't have background animation. All characters' theme music seems to be intact.
Pro Action Replay Codes:
9FA6C1xx - char select music modifier
C0367005 + C0368C06 = add zangief stage to menu
(invisible + displays glitched banner but otherwise works)
DFA7EFxx - ryu stage modifier
00 = ryu
02 = akuma
05 = adon
0a = bison
0c = dan
10 = zangief
other stages up through 10 have music but no background
C031A4xx - replace ryu with character on menu
00 - ryu
01 - ken
03 - charlie
04 - chun li
0a - bison
0d - sakura
0e - rolento
0f - dhalsim
10 - zangief
(values are actually the same as stage values above, but usable ones differ)
other characters use wrong sprites/portrait, but possibly correct palette?
(i.e. 02 is akuma, and appears to still use his palette)
not sure how any of the missing characters actually behave if selected
7E0492 - p1 char ingame
7E0712 - p2 char ingame
7E00C7 = 08 -> character debug
C0201608 - enable during match (uses current p1 character)
7E00C4 = 04 -> stage debug
C01DF504 - enable on boot
for some reason, loads stage number from address normally used for p1 input
so holding down R button (value $10) goes to zangief stage.
only values of $10, $20, $30 etc. can be entered this way, so most stages can't be
but if button X ($40) is held down it will specifically load $05 (adon stage) instead
C03B5800 + C03B5Axx - debug stage modifier (see above for values)
ROM Information
The ROM information (below) also has a different internal title, the retail title is STREET FIGHTER ALPHA2:
---------------------Internal ROM Info----------------------
File: sf2z.sfc
Name: Super Street Fighter2 Company: Capcom
Header: None Bank: HiROM
Interleaved: None SRAM: 0 Kb
Type: Normal ROM: 32 Mb
Country: Japan Video: NTSC
ROM Speed: 120ns (FastROM) Revision: 1.0
Checksum: Bad 0xE210 != 0x0000 Game Code:
---------------------------Hashes---------------------------
CRC32: 349D8084
MD5: 1BDF3D1524794B36745FDE718E2BA646
SHA-1: CC4CC2F858D25280FD984F5A9F8164DC120860EB
Board / Cartridge Images
Images from the auction itself until I have time to update them.
This is a version of the game that was used at the ‘96 Tokyo Toy Fair / ‘96東京おもちゃショー and very closely resembles the Satellaview release. So closely in fact that only 1 non-header byte is different. At 0x04EAA0 the Satellaview copy has 0x02 and the Tokyo Toy Fair version has 0x09. Both ROMs actually contain both banners, the value at 0x7FF4 controls the for banner image, with 0x00 being the Tokyo Toy Fair, 0x01 or any other value being the Satellaview banner. Other than that the game is the same as the Satellaview version. The very cute Act Against AIDS banner is present in all versions of the game.
On a more personal level, I lost a copy of this at auction many years ago, and felt terrible about it. Finding it was a my white whale moment, and belated birthday present. 🌺