Fans of the F-Zero series have reason to celebrate as two previously lost games in the franchise have been rediscovered and made easily accessible thanks to the F-Zero community. These games, known as BS F-Zero Grand Prix I and II, were released in the 90s as part of the BS-X Satellaview system in Japan. Being broadcast-only releases, these games were incredibly rare and largely unknown to Western audiences. However, in 2018, recordings of the lost F-Zero games were uploaded to YouTube, and a ROMhacker used these recordings to create a faithful recreation of the lost games, making them available to fans for free on the internet.
The BS F-Zero Grand Prix games are particularly interesting due to their historic release method. These games were available exclusively through the BS-X Satellaview system, where players could download them through satellite connection via a special cartridge. Recently, due to footage uploaded on YouTube, ROMhacker GuyPerfect was able to use a new tool called Graphite to create a faithful digital recreation of the lost games. This recreation is now available online for fans to enjoy, and there is even a $5,000 bounty for any fans who can locate the original broadcast software and ROMs.
While this is an exciting development for fans of the series, the community is still searching for a physical copy of the broadcast software to bolster their recreation efforts, showing that the quest to preserve gaming history is an ongoing process. It is possible that one day, physical copies of the broadcast software will be located, allowing fans to compare the digital recreation with the original lost games.