Alex Mitchell

Lost Satellaview F-Zero Content Recreated By Fans

As chronicled in a recent video from Did You Know Gaming, lost content from the ephemeral Satellaview F-Zero broadcasts has been restored by fans through a ROM hack:

Download the IPS/BPS patches for your version of F-Zero at the Internet Archive.

The Satellaview, a hardware add on that allowed Japanese SNES owners to download games over broadcast television channels, is an important topic within the broader video game preservation discussion. Because the storage used for those downloads was re-writeable, and community efforts surrounding video game preservation were less sophisticated than what we’re used to today, many Satellaview experiences have unfortunately been lost to time. While not a substitute, there is comfort in knowing that a great many of these experiences were at least documented through VHS recordings, which it appears is how the lost F-Zero content was recreated by fans.

BS F-Zero Deluxe re-integrates all the content from the first and second Satellaview broadcasts, which includes new tracks, new racers, and new graphics. There are patches supplied that are compatible with the Japanese, European, and North American releases of the game and it appears to be compatible with emulators, FPGA cores, and real hardware! The only thing left that I’m hoping to see eventually is MSU-1 support, but as it stands this is an excellent project that improves on one of the SNES’s best titles.