Nintendo has always been well known to be an innovative company. It’s in their DNA right back from when they resurrected the video game industry in the west after Atari famously caused the video game crash in 1980’s. It was Nintendo’s innovative and out of the box thinking to rebrand their video game system as an entertainment system that let users control a toy robot electronically in order to get stores that didn’t want to touch video games with a 10ft pole to stock their games and console. In fact Nintendo’s thinking was ahead of it’s time (arguable whether that’s still the case, with the Switch 2 not being innovative at all), sometimes way ahead.
The perfect example of this is a little known satellite game and sound streaming service for Super Nintendo that was available only in Japan during the mid 90’s when everyone was excited about Nintendo’s new 3D console the Nintendo 64. Back then the west only got tantalizing little snippets about the service in video game magazines with the hopes that it would eventually be available in English speaking countries. However it never happened, the service remained in Japan and eventually failed but all that is another whole story. The service was called Satellaview and games released on the service were classified as BS Satellaview games, a lot these games have been recovered from dumping BS-X flash cartridges imported from Japan.
There is quite a detailed explanation behind how the service worked which I will explain in another post. Or you can read about it in detail in this Time Extension article. Basically though an add-on peripheral that plugged into a Super Famicom console needed to be purchased which allowed communication with a satellite. Additionally a cartridge (which looked a lot like the Super Gameboy) called “BS-X – The Town Who’s Name Had Been Stolen” had to be purchased and plugged into the cartridge slot of the console. A smaller flash cartridge plugged into the BS-X cartridge, very much like how a Gameboy cartridge would plug into a Super Gameboy. This flash cartridge would store games the were downloaded from the satellite, it was constantly overwritten with new games as it had a very limited memory capacity. The games were broadcast in real time and would be downloaded via a novel RPG game overworld interface – “BS-X The Town Who’s Name Was Stolen”. Games would be downloaded by visiting the various buildings in the town at specific, scheduled times. What made this service really special was how the gaming experienced was enhanced by real time radio-type narrated broadcasts for specific games. Some of these games along with the narrated sound broadcasts have been re-created and are available as ROMs that can be found online including BS Zelda – Map 1 and Map 2 and BS Zelda – The Ancient Stone Tablets.
The Satellaview+ Service
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A (not so) small but dedicated group of hardcore SNES fans, historians, gamers and programmers have teamed up to go one step further and recreate the entire BS-X Satellaview experience from using the overworld interface from “BS-X – The Town Who’s Name Was Stolen” to download and run streamed game ROMs using a local client that you connect to by using custom program Satellaview+. The team have created their own schedule of game rotations which runs from 8AM to 11PM (US EST) daily, with sound broadcasting via SoundLink+ broadcast Thursdays through Sundays during the same hours. Currently the sound broadcasts contain video game, ambient and random genre music that is not linked with any of the games being broadcast. However it’s likely that in the future it will evolve to be more and more like the original service having sound broadcasts which compliment the games being streamed. The Satellaview+ team’s website can be found here at Github.io with links to the required programs and required ROM files as well as instructions on how to setup and run the service on your Windows 10 PC.
The Satellaview+ service went public in August of 2024, so is still in it’s infancy though complete and working with hardly any issues, it’s likely to be further refined and developed over time. The team plans to keep the service going as long as possible which is excellent news for SNES fans. The team consists of the DD Dev “Riven”, the Lead Programmer, Co-Decision Maker, Lead Scheduler, PR, Discord Mod, and Event Planner “SatellaViny”, other Discord Mods and Schedulers “Aiko Clove and Peace”, Programmers “Kroko”, “MemeMaster9000”, “KiddoCabusses” and “LuigiBlood”, Artists “NTG”, “King Mayro”, “PowerPanda” and “Advil”, Testers “ConstantAura209”, “Nanachan”, “V1rtu3” and “Satanos”, Voice Actors “MadNyle”, “Scrunch”, “Toast” and “R.K’de”, Composer “Mister Sandman”, Soundlink+ Mix Manager “Taneuma”, Japanese Translators “YesMan”, “Taneuma” and “Riven”. Not such a small team after all, so expect big things from a team of this size!
I was able to ask Riven, the main leader of the project, several questions about Satellaview+ and Soundlink+ and it’s future direction: Are you trying to reproduce the service as it was originally or are you going to go for something different?
We are trying to hold as true to the original service as possible while also expanding beyond what it’s original role was in the SFC’s [Super Famicom’s] heyday. That is why it’s Satellaview(+) [plus] and not just “Satellaview Revival Service” or something like that.
Do you ever plan on combining SoundLink+ with the gaming experience or is it going to remain as background music that is not related to the streamed games?
Yes; that is something that we are actively working on getting up and running as soon as possible and the first step in that process is getting the necessary updates to the client completed [hoping for some great news on this very soon].
Do you plan on making a broadcast of BS Zelda Map 1 or Map 2 or BS Zelda – The Ancient Stone Tablets with voice narration? Riven replied:
There are many things going on right now that we cannot discuss but I can assure you are very exciting and I don’t think that anyone would be disappointed.
With such a promising statement coming from the team’s leader the future for modern Super Nintendo gamers is looking bright indeed! I’m definitely looking forward to see how this excellent and free service for SNES gamers will develop in the future. I encourage all SNES fans to take advantage of this unique opportunity and use the service by logging on with the client and playing through the SNES9x or BSNES PC emulators. The last section of this post has instructions of how to install and use the service, so keep reading if you are interested. It is also possible to play through the popular emulator platform Retro Arch on PC. I don’t cover that here but it shouldn’t be that difficult online to find instructions on setting it up.
Playing Satellaview+
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Currently the game experience includes the ability to visit most but not all of the buildings in the town. It also depends on the time as to whether there is any game being broadcast at a specific location. For example the sport’s stadium doesn’t begin broadcasting any game until 11AM so if you visit before then you will not be able to play anything. Some games are hidden like games that are loaded through visiting the pay phone. You need to buy a phone card and access the phone on a day when a game is being broadcast.
The news stand will have a BS format digital magazine ROM which will be in Japanese. An easy way to read it is to have your smart phone handy with Google Lens. Activate the camera function and put the settings on to translate from Japanese to English, then just point the phone camera at the screen to see a translation in English. The robot building will have special ROMs such as homebrew and prototype games and isn’t available every day. The radio tower is the main building and normally has between 3 and 5 different games being broadcast each day. So check back there every 3 hours if you don’t have the schedule but want to know what games are available. You can earn money by talking to the sailor looking dude in the top right corner of the town, right next to the pond.
To run Satellaview+ you need a PC with Windows 10 installed. When you download the Client and the github website and run install it should notify you of any other add-ons that you need to install such as WebView 2 and Windows Runtime, etc. For simplicity copy the folder with containing the emulator to a separate folder of your regular emulator so you can create a desktop shortcut called “Snes9x for Satellaview” and a separate shortcut with your normal emulator (if you have already have it installed) called “Snes9x for Emulation”.
Copy the included English translated bios file to the BIOS folder of SNES9x (it has a .bin extension). After the client installer has finished open the Satellaview+ Client (from the shortcut on your desktop) between 8AM and 11PM (US EST) and it should automatically connect and start downloading the required BIN files for the current broadcast. You may click the Soundlink+ button if the day is Thursday through Sunday to hear the live broadcast. Keep the client window open and run the Snes9x.exe file, create a shortcut of the file to your desktop and name it “SNES9x for Satellaview” for ease of access if you like. Plug in your USB controller and set the buttons using the input configuration option in the emulator, I use the controller from my Sony Playstation 3. Next go to “file” and then click “load multi cart”, in “slot A” click “Browse” and then select the BIOS .bin file you copied to the BIOS folder previously. Click “OK” and you will be greeted with the BS-X loading screen. Input a name when prompted and enjoy the broadcast!
