There's A $5,000 Reward For Anyone Who Can Find These 'Lost' F-Zero Tracks

Long before DLC become a regular part of our gaming lives, Nintendo broke new ground with its Satellaview service for the Super Famicom. Using satellite broadcasts, this system allowed players to download and store games on special rewritable BS-X memory packs – and preserving these titles has become a serious endeavour for many fans, because they were never granted official physical releases and are in danger of being lost forever.

One such preservationist goes by the name Porthgeidwad, and they've put up a bounty of a selection of tracks for Satellaview BS F-Zero Gran Prix 2, a Satellaview-exclusive sequel to the original F-Zero: Forest I, Forest II, Forest III, Metal Fort I and Metal Fort II. These tracks were broadcast weekly, with Forest I and Forest II coming in Week 1 and Week 2 containing Forest III, Metal Fort I and Metal Fort II.

Anyone who can find all of these tracks will be rewarded with $5,000 USD, with half of the amount coming from Porthgeidwad and the other from "another user who currently wishes to remain anonymous". The aim is to get the tracks either on a physical BS-X memory pack or a ROM dump:

These ROMs come from BS-X memory packs. The strange thing is that for F-Zero on the Satellaview is that it's under a different than normal file type called "soundlink". These on first appearance on the cart when turned on don't display/play this file type, so the only way to know if it's there is to dump the information from the BS-X packs and view them on a PC.

As noted by Porthgeidwad, time is of the essence here, as BS-X memory packs have a finite lifespan:

BS-X memory packs are known to suffer from data degradation (the so-called "bit rot") and that if they aren't dumped by now, there's a chance they might have gone bad. More like a lottery at this point. If you do have a BS-X cart lying around with seemingly nothing on it, dump the information and see if it contains anything.

If you have any BS-X packs lying around that you haven't properly investigated yet, now's the time.

Source: Nintendo Life.