If I were to bring up “a Nintendo console lost to time,” what would your first thought be?
Perhaps you’d think of the infamous Virtual Boy, one of Nintendo’s few outright disasters in the console space, or maybe one of the company’s early pre-NES consoles that contained several variants on Pong. What you probably wouldn’t think of is the Satellaview, a Japan-only add-on for the Super NES/Super Famicom.
Released toward the end of the console’s lifespan in 1995, the Satellaview was a unique piece of hardware that offered functionality that was well ahead of its time: downloadable content. It lived a longer-than-expected life in obscurity, with exclusive games such as BS Legend of Zelda and Radical Dreamers that had a seemingly fleeting existence.
It’s also the subject of one of the most challenging digital preservation efforts in existence.
“The Satellaview is still one of the biggest oddities of Nintendo game history,” said Lenard Haase, a German Nintendo fan and Satellaview enthusiast who goes by the online handle ChronoMoogle. “Many games are still unpreserved, hidden in memory packs floating through the Japanese retro game market.”
On June 30, 2000, the Satellaview broadcasts through which players could download new games ceased entirely. Many game historians and collectors feared that games and bits of content distributed exclusively through the Satellaview service would be lost forever.
But thanks to the extensive efforts of devoted fans and preservationists, steps are being taken to find—and restore—some of the most obscure pieces of Nintendo’s gaming history.
