One of the most fascinating peripherals in Nintendo’s history is the Satellaview. A satellite modem that interpreted radio signal data, several interesting Nintendo games were made just to be played in the short fixed “Super Famicom Hour” in which they were transmitted. While many of these games were lost to the ages due to their lack of permanence, devoted fans have slowly been making them available to play once more, such as last month’s translation of BS Zelda: The Ancient Stone Tablets.
One of the rarer Satellaview game collections, however, belongs to everyone’s favorite pink puffball. Titled Kirby no Omocha Hako, or “Kirby’s Toy Box”, it had 10 separate minigames that would need to be downloaded separately, and due to storage limitations they would each be deleted if the player decided to download something else. As a result they’re hard to track down, but recently video game preservationist Frank Cifaldi discovered four of them for sale in an auction. With a rallying call to fellow enthusiasts, they manage to raise the 85,500¥ or $813.08 USD required to secure all four auctions.
Help if you can! We're raising money to preserve these super obscure, impossible-to-find Kirby games for SNES for everyone to play- (1/3) pic.twitter.com/mmWtpSh9wN
— Frank Cifaldi (@frankcifaldi) November 7, 2016
Now the team is working to preserve the games in ROM form to make them available for everyone to play, so if you’re interested in experiencing a slice of forgotten Kirby history it’s worth keeping an eye out.
Written by Tom Brown
Whether it’s an exciting new entry in a series long established or a weird experiment meant only for the dedicated, Tom is eager to report on it. Rest assured, if Nintendo ever announces Elite Beat Agents 2, he’ll be there.
