Olympic Soccer
Disc Archaeology
Findings from a byte-level analysis of the US retail disc image (570,736,640 bytes / 278,528 blocks). Developed by Silicon Dreams; one of the last North American 3DO releases.
A PlayStation file shipped on the disc
The team-kit color data file exists twice in /Football/Data/:
| File | Size | Location | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
NEWSTRIP |
4,356 bytes | block 4763 | big-endian (3DO) |
NEWSTRIP.PSX |
4,356 bytes | block 266563, FS type PSX |
little-endian (PlayStation) |
The two files contain identical data with every 32-bit word byte-swapped (2,088 of 4,356 bytes differ; e.g. the word 0050B8E8 in the 3DO file appears as E8B85000 in the PSX file). NEWSTRIP.PSX is the little-endian PlayStation original; NEWSTRIP is its big-endian conversion for the 3DO's ARM CPU — and both were copied into the disc layout. It is direct physical evidence that the 3DO version was built from the PlayStation asset pipeline.
Engine and data notes
- The
/Footballdata tree includes formation files named after their formations:F334.REV,F343.REV,F352.REV,F424.REV,F433.REV,F442.REV,F532.REV(3-3-4 through 5-3-2). - Full staff credits are embedded in the executable (Silicon Dreams under general manager Gavin Cheshire; programming by Giles Park, Andrew Hersee and Rod Mack).
- Player rosters are fictionalized near-misses of real 1996 squads (Argentina fields a "D Ortega").
- The disc carries a
/Catapultseek-optimization file (6,981,632 bytes) — the mark of a carefully optimized late-era mastering.
Unallocated space
Only 8,047 blocks (~16 MB) across 17 small gaps, all verified as standard iamaduck filler — a cleanly mastered disc with nothing hidden in its padding.