Shock - Technical Achievement - BS F-Zero 2 recreated, released (patch to F-Zero US/JP/EU)

[Tanooki]

I'll leave this here if you have a care and slight patience, watch this:

If not, just understand that a mix of multiple talents and developed technology, along with a fairly recent VHS grainy drop of footage of every single lost stage was recovered.  That footage, some special tools that can frame by frame match and recreate full game structures (born from a SMB tool seen in the video) allowed the team to come together, remap every single stage, fill in the blanks in the backgrounds/art where needed, and well in the end  you have F-Zero Deluxe.  This has the full original game, BS1 and the lost BS2 all in here along with both sets of cars to use.  This is as much as the world will ever get to having the real BS F-Zero 2 since unlike 1 it was never recovered.

 

 

Patch link: https://archive.org/details/bs_f-zero_deluxe_v1.0

Use this link to patch it: https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/

Use the US/JP/EU original F-Zero release to do it.

[KidGameR186496]

Until by some miracle the original BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 ROM appears somehow, this is the closet thing we'll have to the Game.

 

But holy hell what an amazing and herculean effort by the team! This is easily up there with the Neo Geo recreatation of The Eye of Typhoon as one of the coolest recreation efforts of a lost game.

 

I tip My hat to the team with this patch! I already gave it a try the day it came out and it's amazing. It sucks that Nintendo never released the Satellaview tracks as either a SNES cartridge back in the day or in F-Zero 99. I would've played it in a heartbeat but this excelente recreation will suffice for the time being

[Tanooki]

That is why I posted this.  I don't sit through a lot of fluff piece videos, but this one caught me off guard catching it the day the patch was posted and damn... the detailing of the work involved, the back history, unintended projects that lead to a weird bastardized melding of efforts to concoct a virtually perfect recreation of the meat of the game, the courses down to the smallest detail, the added cars (thankfully still from BS1) and then appending it into a super master F-Zero deluxe package so you can run every course ever made within one doubly expanded rom.  The only 'loss' now is the BS screens, original title, and I doubt anything much else outside of the recordings as far as the actual "IT" of what makes up what that game was and now is once more.  This is totally on par with Typhoon if not exceeds that given.

[Wayler]

A pretty fascinating back story to this project and I'm glad they got to the end successfully. Gonna have to download that patch and give it a go sometime. I always though the Satellaview vehicles looked a bit funky and off for F-Zero. A bit too boxy for racers going over 400 km/h but maybe it's just a matter of familiarity towards the original designs.

 

One thing that was surprising for me was the mention of CD-quality music aired alongside the original broadcasts. You of course can't recreate those on the SNES but it would have been nice to know more than just an offhand comment. I went and searched for the broadcasts saved by kukun kun and they can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDJ4e492luVzZd8G9ioHP-fWxO17UT2Rz 

 

Some tracks are clearly ripped straight out of the Nintendo Super Famicom Game Music CD but others like Death Wind or White Land are unknown to me. Pretty interesting remixes there but it's hard to listen through all the chatter and engine noise. Couldn't find much info about them online. The commentary is pretty funny with constant engrish phrases thrown about constantly. "Let's have a nice party!"

[SlidellMan]

I'm glad that there were those who went beyond the call of duty and made this.

[SlidellMan]

I thought I would keep people updated on BS F-Zero Deluxe:

 

[Tanooki]

The comment on the video is confusing.  Says SPC style, lists MSU, so like...will this just be a stock standard ROM using normal SPCs or is this going to be some MSU butchery?  I'm debating updating the ROM further for the audio, want nothing to do with MSU tweaks, it's unnatural.

[Atariboy]

Sounds like you're better off with the stock version with substitute SNES F-Zero music in the place of the music that originally was streamed from a satellite to players.

 

My impression from the video is that the music is done by way of MSU-1, but that the music is faithful to what the game originally featured. I assume it's simply since it's easy and expedient to go this route where as coding for the SNES sound hardware is far more challenging. A reasonable compromise in my opinion.

 

Sucks for some like myself (neither my Super Nt's jailbreak or the SNES core on the Pocket do MSU-1, which are my two main methods of playing SNES rom files that I've downloaded). But if you own a SD2SNES/FX Pak Pro or are enjoying it on a MSU-1 capable emulator like more recent editions of SNES9X, I don't see the issue here.

 

Sure it's a bit of an unfaithful shortcut for the purists since it's not the SNES audio hardware doing the work, but the experience that you're seeing and hearing is going to be as faithful as they're able to achieve. And if we're picky, the music originally was streamed anyways rather than done locally from the Super Famicom's sound chip.

 

And such purists probably don't want to touch this in the first place since it's a recreation rather than a dump of the original code (which if it survives, is either lost on a forgotten Satellaview memory pack that has yet to fall into the right hands, or is locked up in Nintendo's archive where it's probably never going to be seen again).

Edited March 5 by Atariboy

[Tanooki]

Yeah basically.  I mean I have a mid-life (rev G or H I forget) SD2SNES it's MSU capable and one without the earlier sound issues either.  I just don't want anything to do with it, bastardizing games isn't for me.  Now, if I decided to and enjoyed such things I'd definitely give Roadblaster or whatever it was called that laserdisc game a go, that's slick.  But you come at me with CD music for Zelda... f off with that noise, the SPC audio is magnificent as is, so it's just a waste of space and effort.

 

So F-Zero is the oddity...the audio music aside is right, because it streamed it through the satellite.  I kind of wish given they want to have it seem right, SPC right even, a choice would be there to have SPC audio transplanted into deluxe there for those few courses with new scores like metal fort.  But as it stands now, that final-ish released before the MSU option dropped worked perfectly.  I guess I'm semi-purist?  I want to leave the game alone with the audio, but ok if the audio were put into the rom itself, not as an aside with the MSU in play.  I've never heard the original, maybe it was just streamed SPC audio?  Or was it some rock band going nuts steamed?  I have no idea, and decades on don't care either that deeply other than to know.

 

I like they basically restored a stream in a way it works and as it did back then without the downloads/latency etc.  Same with BS Zelda etc.  I'd like to see (hear) what I said about this F-Zero experience, but what came out a week or two ago now was great, yet if they could put into SPC those new tracks ...score!