Densetsu no Starfy 3/Revision changes between v1.0 and v1.1

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Densetsu no Starfy 3 was only released in Japan; however it still quietly received two slightly different ROMs on cartridge.

This has historically occurred time to time with video games in general (prior to the introduction of Internet patches), for example various revision changes in other Game Boy Advance and Game Boy games (such as certain languages of certain versions of Pokémon games, Super Mario Land) would make adjustments like fixing glitches, removing typos, removing or adjusting anything that could be viewed as controversial, simply optimizing the code, and so on.

Identification

The original release (v1.0) of Densetsu no Starfy 3 has an MD5 hash of A9A2F5D60EA44E08901ABDFE69F2438A and a v1.1 release has an MD5 hash of EE4FBCEC249A68B796BE491F56FFE03D (also known online as Rev 1). It may be possible to identify which is which simply by tilting the cartridge towards light, and looking for an imprint with something suspicious (for example, a v1.1 of a game might have "A" next to the code; while a v1.0 might have just numbers for the code), as this is done to identify other games (example).

At present, the actual differences between v1.0 and v1.1 of Densetsu no Starfy 3 are poorly documented, but there are a few known changes; as described in the headers below.

A third revision with v1.1 as the base, was released digitally for Japanese Wii U Virtual Console; and has an MD5 hash of 4133D617F0A38053682FEFB3AE752F6B; confirming it as different to v1.0 and v1.1, but similar the differences are unknown or hard to find online. Additionally, as usual this game is contained in a Wii U Game Boy Advance Virtual Console application with various emulation features including Restore Points, viewing two manuals (one a digital copy of the original game manual, another about the Virtual Console application) and changing the display and controller settings.

See also: v1.0 data, v1.1 data, VC data

Unused build date text changes

Thanks The Cutting Room Floor for originally finding these

The unused build date texts have some changes in the v1.1 revision, as such:

A build date unique to v1.0:

OptRls.2004/07/11 16:24:04

This may have been changed to the following v1.1 date; and the dates seem to be about two months apart:

OptRls.2004/09/14 17:03:31

V1.0 has three dates which are seemingly not in v1.1, and for some reason the text is encoded slightly differently to the rest. "."s in both the v1.0 and v1.1 build dates are artifacts from null (00) bytes and arguably shouldn't actually be in the text dumps, but the different positioning of the null bytes have been kept for illustration:

OptR.ls.2004/ 07.. 22:0.0:15
Opt.Rls.2004./07.. 22:.00:45
Opt.Rls.2004./07.. 22:.02:14


These three dates from v1.1 are seemingly not in v1.0:

OptRls.2004/07/07 22:02:02
OptRls.2004/07/07 22:00:32
OptRls.2004/09/14 17:03:31

Object Differences

Some objects have had their properties adjusted, or were removed entirely, between the v1.0 and v1.1 versions:

  • Two Mermaids, one in Stage 4-6 and Stage 8-6, had their internal data adjusted to fix a glitch where loading a file after saving with them would spawn Starfy at a different Mermaid.
  • In the fifth map in Stage 4-8, Two pearls that were on top of the first machine that eats crushed ice were removed in v1.1. The lower "mouth" part of this machine was also moved one tile higher, clipping into the upper "mouth" part.
  • In the last map in Stage 4-8, there were two extra sets of Korasu (six extra, for a total of 9 Korasu) in v1.0. These were removed in v1.1, leaving just the one set of three.
  • In the last map in Stage 6-2, the rollable rock was moved one tile to the left in v1.1.
  • In the map with Puffy Wario in Stage 8-7, the door at the top is moved one tile down in v1.1, placing it on the ground.
  • In the third map in Stage 9-6, the Mermaid right next to Starfy at the top of the map was removed in v1.1. The Mermaid in the lower section of the map was moved one tile to the right in v1.1.
Video comparing object placements

Scripting Differences

Upon entering Stage 10-4 for the first time, Moe has additional dialogue in v1.1:

あぁ?

『カン』にきまってんだろ?

オラ!いくぞ!

There are also some minor scripting differences between v1.0 and v1.1.

  • In the opening cutscene in Stage 3-1, when Kanterabaa first shines her lantern, Starfy, Starly, and Moe are shocked in v1.1. In v1.0, only Moe is shocked (and Starfy and Starly are neutral).
  • In subsequent visits to Stage 4-4, when Starfy talks to the Jellato Sisters, the top Jellato sister jumps only in v1.1. (A character jumping generally indicates who is speaking.)
  • In subsequent visits to Stage 6-4, when Starfy talks to Lovely and her friends, the character jumping will not match the character currently speaking in v1.0. This was fixed in v1.1.
    • The errors are that Lovely jumps when Loverin is speaking, and that Lovelove jumps when Savako is speaking, and nobody jumps when Lovely or Lovelove is speaking.
  • In the first visit to Stage 9-2, when Starfy talks to the Pufftop Guard after defeating all the Mekkarabii, one of the Pufftop Guard's lines of dialogue is split into two smaller lines in v1.1.
    • This appears to fix a minor visual bug where in v1.0, the closing quotation mark for this dialogue is on top of the fish indicator to scroll to the next dialogue, causing the quote mark to disappear.
  • In the first visit to Stage 10-3, in the final cutscene before the end of the area, Moe's dialogue before the fade-out closes automatically in v1.1, whereas in v1.0, the player has to press the A button to close it.
Video comparing scripting

Patched Softlocks

In v1.0, by moving through and re-entering boss doors in a certain way, it is possible to disable the cutscene trigger for the boss, making the player unable to fight the boss and progress. The v1.1 revision patched the possibility to perform these softlocks by changing the bosses' behaviors to not disable the cutscene trigger when the player moves close to the trigger and then re-enters the boss door.

Video of the softlocks

Minor

This is a list of small technical changes.

  • Version number (offset 0xBC): 00 in v1.0 and 01 in v1.1
  • Complement check (offset 0xBD): 13 in v1.0 and 12 in v1.1

Offsets to structures

The locations to different areas in the ROM have changed between v1.0 and v1.1 (such as at least the offsets to the build date texts, the unused multi load texts, and likely other locations).

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