Nintendo's Satellaview add-on for the Super Famicom (SNES to you and me) was a fascinating piece of equipment—as you'll be aware if you've read our exhaustive feature on it.
Using satellites to broadcast data, the Satellaview was home to some unique titles, many of which are yet to be preserved.
For example, F-Zero BS Grand Prix 1 and BS Grand Prix 2 were broadcast between 1996 and 1997, and while all four weeks of BS Grand Prix have successfully been found and dumped, BS Grand Prix 2 was, until recently, a different matter entirely.
A $2,500 bounty was raised to encourage people to track it down via the many rewritable 'Memory Pack' cartridges used in conjunction with the Satellaview. The contents of these carts is often a mystery until they're dumped.
Amazingly, BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2's first week has now been found and preserved. BS F-Zero Deluxe—a fan-made ROM which includes the Satellaview content—has been updated to reflect this.
"We partnered with the people who made BS F-Zero Deluxe to ensure the legitimacy of the data as well as additional analysis, and of course, updating BS F-Zero Deluxe as well, and yes, this person who dumped it received the bounty prize money ($2500 per week found) that was offered a while back," says LuigiBlood of the discovery.
The second week remains missing, however, and another $2,500 is waiting for the person who finds and dumps it.
"Unfortunately, this data does not contain the Week 2 data, which means we only get Forest I and Forest II. Who knows what would be the undertaking for Forest III and Metal Fort I and II. The bounty prize for Week 2 ($2500) is still up for grabs, so if you find it, definitely go to us and we’ll talk."
LuigiBlood also talks about how time-consuming Satellaview preservation is; it's not simply a matter of dumping various 'memory pack' carts and finding the missing game. "It is hard, and quite frankly and I want to stress this part: very expensive," says LuigiBlood. "It is not necessarily fun to get through Memory Packs, especially since BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 would actually not be visible in menus. This is the kind of stuff you would only know if you dump the memory of it and not really before. Then count the fact that we release them in the wild, which is almost like throwing money away."
LuigiBlood adds that there's "a possibility" that BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2's second week might never be found, given how many packs were dumped in the quest to find its first week.