It's no secret that Nintendo fans have been without a new game in the F-Zero franchise for a long while, and that makes the preservation of each and every version of the game important to its most loyal fans. Two of the franchise's most serious fans are attempting to preserve the Satellaview version of F-Zero titled, BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2, and are offering $5,000 (risen from $1,500 just two years ago) to anyone who aids them in their quest.

BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 was originally released in Japan for the Satellaview in August 1997, but was only playable for 2 non-consecutive weeks providing one had the modem add-on for the Super Famicom to access it. As this is a very obscure way to access a game, especially back then, backing up Satellaview data has proved to be a daunting task. Founder of the Video Game History Foundation, Frank Cifaldi, says that each Satellaview game was broadcast weekly and then backed up to a flash cart where it was ensured that "every surviving game comes from a used cart where that game happens to be the last one the owner played.” Bit rot also has to be taken into consideration as Satellaview memory packs are known to degrade, breaking down the digital information over time, mostly due to storage device failures.

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At the time, players had access to 10 total tracks in BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2, 5 of which have already been backed-up and preserved. The other 5 tracks include Forest I, Forest II, Forest III, Metal Fort I, and Metal Fort II. These tracks apparently still elude preservationists to this very day, despite spending years searching for the code. These fans ask anyone who has any Satellaview carts lying around to, if they can, "dump the information and see if it contains anything." Even if the cart seemingly has nothing on it, it's still possible the tracks are hidden somewhere in the code.

While it is unlikely many will have such an extremely rare cart lying around it is worth checking up on, as the cash reward for such a find is pretty hefty indeed. However, the two fans say that what is more than likely is that the information has already been dumped or has gone bad from simple aging. Hopefully someone, somewhere, will discover something as Satellaview game broadcasting is an interesting part of history that deserves to be preserved. Of course, with the way the F-Zero franchise is going these days (literally nowhere) anything F-Zero should be cherished and saved as best it can.

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Source: Kotaku