Cannon Ball

The Satellaview represented a fascinating chapter in Nintendo's long history. The peripheral allowed Japanese players to tune in to special satellite broadcasts that distributed various forms of unique and exclusive game content to their consoles. The problem is, many of the games that were part of the Satellaview have been lost due to their temporary state; a game can only be found nowadays if it happened to be the last game played on the cartridge it was found on. Kirby's Toy Box – a collection of ten Kirby mini-games – saw broadcast in 1996, though only three of these games were eventually preserved in ROM format. It was assumed that the remaining seven were gone for good, until four more of them were just discovered.

A group of gaming preservationists were scouting around in the Ishikawa Prefecture of Japan, when they happened across a seller at an auction who happened to have these four games:

"Circular Ball" / "ぐるぐるボール"

"Cannon Ball" / "キャノンボール"

"Pachinko" / "パチンコ"

"Arrange Ball" / "アレンジボール"

The group didn't have the cash to buy them, so they asked their fans on social media for donations to help secure the games. The fans came through and the group managed to win all four games in their auctions for 85,500¥ ($813.08). The cartridges will soon be converted to ROMs that will be playable via emulators, so everyone can have an opportunity to experience this lost piece of gaming history. Truly a wonderful story, though there's still work to be done, as this means three of the ten games are still out there somewhere.

What do you think? Would you like to try these out? Do you think they'll find the last games? Drop us a comment in the section below.

[source kotaku.com]