Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S-Demo

Disc Archaeology

Findings from a byte-level analysis of the Japanese demo disc image (194,600,960 bytes / 94,720 blocks; 255 filesystem entries).

A command-line demo player

The disc's program is /Demo (51,648 bytes), a movie/demo player whose Unix-style usage text survives intact — typo included: demo [FilaName] -f [fps] -v [volume] (-m -b) — with options documented as "-f...Set fps option (default is 24)", "-v...Set Output volume (default is 0x4000)", and -m/-b selecting whether the parent is the main or battle task. The player's error strings are a typo collection: "FilaName", "Cab't open InitEventUtility", "Can;t search Drawing buffer pointer", "DIasplayScreen faild error".

A disc with no LaunchMe

The startup script (AppStartup) ends by declaring "the system will start $boot/Launchme" — but no LaunchMe exists on the disc. The only executable is /Demo, which expects command-line arguments. This is consistent with the disc being driven by an external menu or store-kiosk system rather than booting standalone, fitting its Panasonic (hardware-maker) publisher.

Development leftovers

• The BGM directory preserves the project's raw audio pipeline: numbered .4416-format sample files (TAKI02–TAKI25) and loosely-named stage streams, among them the misspelled jupitarstage and olgol (オルゴール — "music box").
• /data/SE/SE1/ holds 19 loose, unpacked USE*.AIFC sound-effect samples — working files that later builds ship only inside packed archives.
• Win/lose card art exists for only two fighters (card_moon, card_jupiter), suggesting the demo's versus mode was scoped to a Moon-vs-Jupiter showcase.

Filesystem notes

The redundant directory copies ("avatars") of /System/Drivers, Folios, Programs and Scripts, plus rom_tags, disagree between copies — stale older generations from multi-pass mastering. The root directory copies verify hash-identical, so this is a mastering artifact, not dump damage.

Unallocated space

20,222 blocks (~40 MB, 21% of the disc) belong to no file, in three runs. Every byte was checked: 100% standard iamaduck mastering filler, nothing hidden inside.

Demo vs Retail

The Panasonic-published demo disc is not a trimmed copy of the Bandai retail game — it was cut from an earlier snapshot of the project, before several asset-pipeline overhauls:

• Character animation naming: the demo ships moon0.pak/moon1.pak per fighter; the retail disc uses the later moon1P_0.pak/moon2P_1.pak per-player scheme. The demo roster is five fighters (Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus) against retail's full lineup.
• Music pipeline: the demo's BGM is raw numbered .4416 sample files (TAKI02–TAKI25) plus loose stage streams — including the misspelled jupitarstage and olgol (オルゴール, "music box") — where retail reorganized everything into per-character AIFF banks. The demo's sound-effects tree still contains a folder of loose unpacked samples (SE1/USE*.AIFC) that retail ships only in packed archives.
• Missing systems: the demo has no FONT data (no staff-roll/profile text system) and no gmdebug debug program; its interface archives (SubData) are five files against retail's ten, and the shared ones differ in size — different builds, not copies.
• Identical media: the big Cinepak movies (Opening, Moon.FILM, moon08.film, moon16.film) and MidiData.pak are byte-for-byte the same sizes on both discs — the video and MIDI content was locked before the demo was cut.