An anonymous reader cites a report from Ars Technica. Nintendo's Satellite View, a Japan-only satellite add-on for the Super Famicom, has become an easy target for preservationists because it was home to some of the most ephemeral games ever released. This includes a lot of content from Nintendo's own games, including F-Zero. This influential Super Famicom (Super Famicom in Japan) racing title was broadcast to subscribing homes in Japan eight times weekly in 1996 and 1997, some featuring live “SoundLink” CD-quality music and narration. was included. When a live game broadcast ended, the memory cartridge used to store game data would be reported as empty, even though it technically wasn't. If the same 1MB memory cartridge was kept in the system when another broadcast was initiated, its data would be overwritten and no rebroadcast would occur.
As reported by Matthew Green at Press the Buttons (along with an informative video from Did You Know Gaming), data from some unused memory cartridges has been discovered and used to recreate some of the content. I did. Some courses that are part of the multi-week “Grand Prix 2” event have yet to be found, despite a $5,000 reward and a huge amount of effort. But amazingly, the 10 courses included in subsequent broadcasts were reverse engineered using VHS recordings, machine learning tools, and manual pixel-by-pixel recreation. According to the creators, the results are “more than 99.9% accurate” and currently exist as a mod that can be patched into existing F-Zero ROMs. […] After 25 years, their work continues to ensure that moments in the gaming world, largely lost to time and the flow of various companies, are restored, if not completely restored, as much as humanly (and mechanically) possible. It means being brought closer to the image of
