F-Zero courses from a dead Nintendo satellite service restored using VHS and AI
F-Zero courses from a dead Nintendo satellite service restored using VHS and AI
There's still a $5,000 prize for the original Japanese Satellaview broadcasts.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nintendo's Satellaview, a Japan-only satellite add-on for the Super Famicom, is a rich target for preservationists because it was the home to some of the most ephemeral games ever released.
As reported by Matthew Green at Press the Buttons (along with Did You Know Gaming's informative video), data from some untouched memory cartridges was found and used to re-create some of the content.
Some courses, part of a multi-week "Grand Prix 2" event, have never been found, despite a $5,000 bounty offering and extensive effort.
And yet, remarkably, the 10 courses in those later broadcasts were reverse-engineered, using a VHS recording, machine learning tools, and some manual pixel-by-pixel re-creation.
The backgrounds on the courses required the work of a pixel artist, Power Panda, to finish the package, and Porthor to round out the trio.
Their work means that, 25 years later, a moment in gaming that was nearly lost to time and various corporate currents has been, if not entirely restored, brought as close as is humanly (and machine-ably) possible to what it once was.
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