You might remember us bringing you the news early last month that four of the ten long lost "Kirby's Toy Box" Satellaview titles had surfaced and been successfully purchased at a Japanese auction. Thanks to the efforts of Frank Cifaldi and Mathew Callis enough money was raised by the community and the auction was won. All that was remaining was for the cartridges to arrive and be successfully copied to make sure everything was in working order.
The wait is now over, because Callis has successfully dumped all four of the mini-games and shared them for every Kirby fan to enjoy. We remind you the discovered games are "Circular Ball", "Cannon Ball", "Pachinko" and "Arrange Ball". You can watch two of them in action in the videos below.
Kirby no Omochabako: Cannon Ball:
Kirby no Omochabako: Pachinko:
The digital preservation of some video games is quite challenging, because often the producers themselves lose the original code due to factors such as damaged floppy disks or broken hard drives; often retro games are forever lost unless someone who actually bought them in the first place still owns the original copy. Satellaview games offer a whole different challenge - the broadcasts ended in late 1996 and the games were downloaded onto the service's rewritable Super Famicom cartridges. These were often reused and, as such, older games got written over.
That is why having found these four games on four separate, fully functional cartridges was an amazing opportunity. Don't believe we have heard the last of "Kirby's Toy Box", either, because "Kirby no Omochabako - Ball Rally" remains - to this date - unaccounted for.
Comments 25
I need a miracle to preserve dat dere Kirbeh!
Nice!
Fantastic news!
@Shiryu are those videos the wrong way round (or at least the headings)?
Fantastic news, though to be honest the games look like they're entertaining to play for less time than it takes to watch the video.
And just because these most of the games are now found, doesn't mean the last one will ever be. The chances of someone having saved it on the disk all this time is slim, and if anything have now worsened - after all someone saved these 4 all this time, so he/she is clearly 1 of the very few likely to have saved the last one, but didn't. 1 less chance of rescuing it
Good news! It would be great if Nintendo offered these old gems in a package on 3ds or something.
And this is why digital emulation is necessary for preserving the history of computer/video games: every physical copy of a particular game will be lost or destroyed at some point in the future, and every digital gaming service will eventually shut down someday. It's a tricky issue, but this is definitely one case where software copying and emulation helped to save history!
Excellent news.
So by me collecting every CIB N64 game released in Australia I'm actually preserving history.
Excellent, this gives me another excuse to use when my wife complains as I buy more every month
I've heard of a ball, but a CIRCULAR ball??
Kirby Dreams Collection
@JaxonH Talk of emulators (especially ones on modern hardware that is not VC ) is not allowed on NL.
-mods
First the Nintendo Playstation, then the American 64DD, and now 4 Kirby minigames thought to be lost to the sands of time. What a great year 2016 has been for the preservation of classic gaming!
@happylittlepigs I actually got to see the Nintendo Play Station in person two months ago. I can't explain the awe I felt seeing it.
@MagicEmperor It better come with a money-back guarantee! (It doesn't)
surely nintendo has its games archived?
@gaga64 yes, they are! @Damo when you have some time please switch them over.
In my experience satellaview games are shovelware, but i certainly appreciate them being able to find and preserve these games.
Looks at that first picture...
Now those are some beautiful scanlines. CRT perfection in all its glory. Some emulations come pretty close, but there's nothing like the real deal.
ON TOPIC:
@Shiryu Nice article once again.
And good that these games are being preserved. Maybe they can make a label out of it on Switch VC: The Satellaview Archive.
Would love me some officially translated version of Famicom Wars...
@ThanosReXXX I too have been hoping for some daring hacker to translate "Super Famicom Wars", but nothing to report at this time.
@Shiryu I do have the Famicom version, but it's not official, obviously. In my humble opinion, Nintendo is sitting on a goldmine here.
The Super Famicom Satellaview Zelda game is also nice, by the way...
@ThanosReXXX It's not just Nintendo as I have pointed out in the "Secret of Mana 2" feature. Most Japanese devs are sitting on goldmines but it seems they believe there isn't enough interest in games unreleased in the west to get freshly localised and released officially in our side of the planet. Decades of being a part of game preserving communities have told me otherwise. (And yes, people would pay for them if they legally had a way to do it in case anyone doubts it)
After I saw that previous article showing the Kirby Satellaview games I got really interested by them and thought I'd give them a go. Really nice that more have been found, I love Kirby ^_^ and I hope to play all the games!
@Shiryu What I meant specifically was all the NES/SNES/Famicom/Super Famicom disk-based games they had back then. Most of us have never seen them, let alone gotten a chance to play them.
Very nice, but...you guys have the game's titles and videos mixed up. xP
@Mega_Yarn_Poochy Your avatar makes my heart melt!
Hey its Kirby Gunbound!
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