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byuu, creator of the cycle-accurate SNES emulator higan and behind a preservation project for SNES games, has killed the project after a loss of 100 PAL games during shipping. While he still plans to dump the Japanese games that he bought, the hopes of getting a complete PAL set are gone.

On January 5th, a package containing 100 PAL games were sent to me to dump. The United States Postal Service has either stolen or lost this package. Most likely the former.

Do not tell me to wait longer. I don't want to fucking hear it. The package is gone and nobody can help. I don't want to ride on some platitude that "HERP DERP MAYBE ONE DAY THEY'LL SHOW UP!" They won't. There is no point in false hope, that's cruel to both me and the donor, and it will just delay reimbursement.

The next step is to try and obtain the insurance claim, and then I'm going to start making payments each paycheck to try and reimburse the sender until he is able to repuchase all 100 games locally. Or if he prefers, he can just keep the money that's equivalent to the value of the cartridges. I won't be purchasing the carts to be delievered to me, because I don't want to risk shipping them back.

I also want to be clear, the donor never asked for reimbursement upon loss. It was my decision and it's going to happen, because I can't live with myself if it doesn't.

Regardless, this much is certain: the SNES preservation project is officially and permanently dead.

This is a great loss to the emulation scene and its attempt at preserving the original systems accurately. Some people are suggesting byuu to set up a Patreon/GoFundMe and he seems okay with the idea if he can fully pay back for what was lost this time.

Source
byuu's overview


EDIT: Feb 23

It appears that the games have been recovered! The $10,000 collection of rare Super Nintendo games are no longer missing. According to the USPS, the games were actually lost, due to the label ripping off, rather than the rumors of package theft that had been floating around. Byuu, the person behind the project now says the SNES Preservation Project is no longer dead. In the linked blog post below, Byuu writes that had the media not covered this incident, these games would have sat in a facility for months, before ultimately winding up in an auction. There was a clear address on the box, even after the label had been damaged. He says while the project will continue on in the years to come, but he will never trust the postal service with larger shipments due to this issue.

My package was sitting in Atlanta, GA for well over a month with my address clearly visible right on the box. Had this case not been escalated to the media, it likely would have gone up for auction in a bin with other electronics sometime in March. As absolutely thrilled as I am to have these games finally delivered, I do still believe the entire experience reflects poorly on the capabilities of the USPS. I hope that they will improve, but ... I'm guessing that's not likely.

If you donated to his Patreon to help recover the cost of the lost games, Byuu is offering a full refund.

SOURCE

 

[Captain_N]

he should just go the the angry video game nerds place......

 

[death360]

This shits happen to me a couple of times makes me think twice when ordering stuff online.

 

[Vipera]

Lost? How do you lose a package of 100 SNES games, exactly?

he should just go the the angry video game nerds place......

AFAIK he doesn't have a large SNES PAL connection.

 

[Captain_N]

Thats true. Well he be releasing what roms he has?

 

[the_randomizer]

Lost? How do you lose a package of 100 SNES games, exactly?


AFAIK he doesn't have a large SNES PAL connection.

Someone at the USPS botched up big time >.>

 

[ov3rkill]

Everybody should be on the lookout if these games end up on ebay or something.

 

[Lumstar]

Someone at the USPS botched up big time >.>

I might be chuckling now, however... the declared value makes me look at this as a felony with the chance of jail time.

 

[the_randomizer]

I might be chuckling now, however... the declared value makes me look at this as a felony with the chance of jail time.

Hard to say, I just hope whoever was stupid enough to do this gets punished; stealing mail is a federal offense.

 

[Jayro]

...So buy them all again maybe..? And locally this time?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I might be chuckling now, however... the declared value makes me look at this as a felony with the chance of jail time.

Mail tampering in ANY form is a felony, so the value of the carts and the theft itself just add to the person's sentence if they're ever caught.

 

[Chary]

It's looking more like this was a theft and not a mis-delivery of the items.

 

[AdamFX990]

Wow. This is depressing. It's super cool of the guy to reimburse the donor. But it sucks that he would even have to make that decision. :/

 

[robman62]

A USPS employee has stolen 4 of my Amazon packages between December and now, any complaints are fruitless. The USPS is garbage and they have no sort of vetting for hiring any longer.

 

[phalk]

God, Byuu is such a drama queen. I understand it's terrible that the games got stolen, but man, he was ALWAYS trying to setup a show, always a 'victim' of everything.

 

[Thomas83Lin]

It's looking more like this was a theft and not a mis-delivery of the items.

That's really fishy to me, letter looks like it has a typo in it. "contests" looks hand typed not like some generic letter. Odd

what the sender really needs to do is call NJ postal "himself" to see what actually happen with the package.

Edit: Closer inspection of everything, It does really seem like byuu is trying hard to make it right so I believe its likely not a scam on his part. The sender will know for sure when he tries to claim the insurance anyway.

 

[Daggot]

Byuu should get in contact with the USPS postal inspectors. They're a branch of federal law enforcement that deals with mail as their specialty. If they suspect that something is amiss I hear those fuckers will investigate for years before they let anything go.

 

[gamesquest1]

sorry but if it was such an expensive package I would either break it up (not having all my eggs in one basket) or choose a more reliable shipping company

I'm wondering if they were all boxed and mint or something as 10k is a big figure, I have helped with no-intro a few times verifying dumps and getting clean dumps of titles that don't have a clean dump aleady, but I honestly think the dumping tools should have been sent rather than a huge cache of expensive games, it seems byuu is implying everyone else is incompetent and he can't trust other avid collectors to contribute to the project, personally I have 175 pal snes games and was happy to hit the 33% mark on a PALfull set, while I wouldn't mind dumping and sharing hashes etc I wouldn't be happy sending them off even though I don't really own any of the mega mega rare games XD

 

[ww97]

I wonder if i can play the smb3 BSX rom, i dunno why some roms don't work when i try, is it time based or something?

Well, only if a nipponi-san guy would downloaded the game at the limited time that it was on broadcast, and then his/her BS-X Cartridge would be obtained by a preserver (dumper). That's how Cifaldi and Callis dumped a handful of other titles in Kirby no Omochabako series, and the only one remained undumped of them is "Kirby's Ball Rally". I have the same prob you have, since I have SMB3 BSX ROM, but only the third week the other weeks are not available over the web, maybe they are not dumped also, Tamori no Picross dated 4.23 is also undumped (Check out picross.wikia.com/wiki/Tamori_no_Picross)

 

[WiiUBricker]

The OP only has an excerpt of the full story. There are many details worth reading in the source.

 

[gamesquest1]

The OP only has an excerpt of the full story. There are many details worth reading in the source.

okie doke's, well I guess I should have looked for the original source first, and I can see where he is coming from on a lot of the points, so fair enough I guess

but that said I have had parcels be held up in the post for more than a month (someone who sent their console to be hardmoded had the parcel "missing" for nearly 2 months until it finally turned up

IMHO he should hold off on accepting donations etc until probably 3 months, after that your probably very unlikely to get them back :/

he will probably end up getting a import tax slapped on the parcel, that's usually the reason parcels go missing for extended periods

 

[WiiUBricker]

It's looking more like this was a theft and not a mis-delivery of the items.

I guess someone at USPS needs to prepare themselves for this:

Spoiler