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Back in the 90s, Nintendo worked alongside St. Giga in Japan to bring forth exclusive software for their Super Nintendo system at the time, all this through broadcast satellite transmission, which ended up being titled "BS" (which stands for Broadcast Satellaview).

A good number of Nintendo first party franchises were available for to the service, like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and also F-Zero.

The BS titles which originally released back then were saved into memory, and it's due to this specific hurdle that many, many titles from the BS era of the Super Nintendo have become increasingly rare to track down and preserve, and the passing of time doesn't help in this regard, since the hardware in whicj the games were saved are rotting away or most likely have their internals failing and erased by now.

While some titles from then have been regained and restored, like the BS Zelda titles, others like F-Zero haven't seen much luck, since a couple entries from the F-Zero broadcasts haven't been found as of yet, with a $5,000 US dlls bounty currently on going for anyone that might have existing copies of said games, or rather, the two missing week broadcasts that remain for F-Zero to have its entire BS catalog preserved.

Given the missing content, in 2018 a Japanese YouTuber by the name of "kukun kun" uploaded the original broadcast from the missing F-Zero media, showcasing the entirety lf the games on his videos. While this didn't include the original dumps of the games, it helped for romhacking enthusiasts to take action int he matter.

In a collaborative effort between romhackers "Guy Perfect"; who made the "e+ Complete" romhack for F-Zero GP Legend on the GBA, FlibidyDibidy, LuigiBlood, Porthor and Power Panda, they managed to recreate from scratch, making frame by frame comparisons Kunlun Kun's videos, the entirety of the BS media for F-Zero that was missing, effectively making 1:1 recreations of each and every track from the original broadcasts back in the mid 90s.

Together with Did You Know Gaming, the incredible work of the romhackers has been made accessible and available for everyone so that players can now experience this lost media from F-Zero's history made from the groundup.

While the original ROM dumps from the BS broadcasts are still missing, the search for them continues, as well as the 5k bounty too, but in the meanwhile, these recreations will make this lost media accessible to the world, in yet another instance of how great and important the romhacking community is when it comes to passionate and impressive endeavours.

 

[duwen]

Insanely impressive how this was accomplished. I'm now torn between buying a SNES flashcart to play this or waiting for the bootlegs to show up on Aliexpress.

 

[_Snow_]

Insanely impressive how this was accomplished. I'm now torn between buying a SNES flashcart to play this or waiting for the bootlegs to show up on Aliexpress.

Get the SNES flashcart. The FXPAK Pro is excellent and well worth the investment. I love that I can one day play Seiken Densetsu 3 translated on my system. It's on a list of titles that I'm working through.

This preserving of lost digital media is like modern day Indiana Jones. It's very cool. I always love the history behind games and technologies that I never even knew of when growing up. I do hope that some day the missing roms get recovered. It could be on a cart packed away in a box in some closet just sitting there. I would love to be the romhacker that smashes through the window and.. oh. That's break and enter. Nevermind. Someday, they'll be discovered.

 

[retrospect]

the paradox: they claim to have made a 1:1 recreation, but nobody can check if the affirmation is actually true. If it's possible in the future, then the "1:1 recreation" is not needed anymore.

I'll bet you can check if you go through each frame of the VHS video tapes like the people that did this work did.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I'll bet you can check if you go through each frame of the VHS video tapes like the people that did this work did.

You can assume that tiles that look the same are indeed the same, but you can't ever know. Also you can't rebuild what is outside fov ans finally, the BS sounds can't be restored for any game, but when devs say it's 1:1 reproduction they already are assuming that the reader knows that the BS sounds are not included.

 

[Kwyjor]

You can assume that tiles that look the same are indeed the same, but you can't ever know.

I presume that the level format is extremely rigid and that there is only one particular tile layout that can reproduce the tracks as displayed.