This post is a cleaner way to tell the story behind a bitleak and the preservation work that followed.
The point was always to give proper credit to everyone involved and keep these releases free, because that is how they best contribute to videogame and romhack history.
In 2020, shortly before the release of Campeonato Brasileiro II, a Peruvian guy named “Allen Strayjom” reached out through Facebook saying he ran a retro-games community. He wanted me to take a look at a dump of a romhack called Solano Soccer 99, which had issues starting matches.
How it started
Before sending the dump, he asked me not to publish the release before a special event he was preparing for his community. I agreed and received the file.
After the CB2 release, I started testing the game in my spare time and noticed a protection routine similar to the one I had seen in the other hack. I made the necessary patch and sent it to CLE to test as much as possible.
Soon after, I sent the corrected version back to the Peruvian contact. He confirmed that everything was working and asked me not to publish it until January 2021, because he still wanted to release it at the event mentioned earlier.
What came next
In that same conversation, he also mentioned other bad dumps I could check:
- Contra 98: different title and 50 starting lives
- Super Campeones 4: Spanish translation of Tsubasa IV
Later I found out that he and his community were selling reproductions of Solano Soccer 99. That was when I understood what the “special event” really meant: making money from other people’s work.
Credits and preservation
I want to note that CLE gave me the CB2 cartridge for free, even paying shipping himself. Even after spending money on multiple cartridge variants in search of an unprotected dump, he never wanted anything back. He only asked for the material to be made public.
That is why I made the small intro change on the original hack, to credit the effort of everyone involved.
From that point on, I started accepting any rare dump he sent my way and focused on preserving whatever could still be saved.
Releases
The first corrected materials published from that work were:
- Solano Soccer 99: protection removed, original cartridge dump
- Super Campeones 4: multiple protections removed
Donations and support are still optional here.
Solano Soccer 99, Super Campeones 4 and other rare romhacks