F-Zero courses from a dead Nintendo satellite service restored using VHS and AI (arstechnica.com)
from DannyMac@lemmy.world to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 2024 20:49
https://lemmy.world/post/11921888

#retrogaming

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Deceptichum@kbin.social on 13 Feb 2024 23:05 next collapse

From the sounds of it, the AI wasn’t really necessary for this as the levels could have been recreated manually from watching the footage alone.

RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 2024 23:55 next collapse

Not necessary but definitely a helpful timesaver.

TWeaK@lemm.ee on 14 Feb 2024 01:25 next collapse

I disagree, it absolutely was necessary. The AI tool it was based on (Graphite) creates a frame-perfect emulation of control inputs. While it would technically be possible to manually do it, doing so wouldn’t be practicable. Even with the tool, it would take much more effort to actually build the level around the player view, and if they automated that then fair play to them.

Deceptichum@kbin.social on 14 Feb 2024 03:38 collapse

You don’t need player inputs to work out the scale and shape of a map.

TWeaK@lemm.ee on 14 Feb 2024 10:03 collapse

Again, you’re ignoring what is practicable. You could in theory rewrite the game from scratch, but that’s just not practicable.

Deceptichum@kbin.social on 14 Feb 2024 10:05 collapse

People manually recreate shit all the time for a hobby.

And an F-Zero course is far less complicated than say a 1:1 recreation of a city in Minecraft. Shit having those round sprites on the border of the map already give you a perfect staging point for scale.

TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world on 14 Feb 2024 10:41 next collapse

Maybe but it would also be immensely more time consuming. Why not use AI to accelerate the process?

woelkchen@lemmy.world on 21 Feb 2024 23:03 collapse

People manually recreate shit all the time for a hobby.

Have at it then.

woelkchen@lemmy.world on 21 Feb 2024 23:02 collapse

levels could have been recreated manually from watching the footage alone.

The point was to explicitly not just eyeball it but to be as close to pixel perfect as possible. A manual recreation may have been very accurate but certainly not 99.9%.

Your method would be a remake, this is restoration of the original.

yamanii@lemmy.world on 14 Feb 2024 00:44 next collapse

Good to know the industry have been killing their games even before I was born. Great work restoring it.

TWeaK@lemm.ee on 14 Feb 2024 01:15 collapse

It’s not exactly killing a game, it was never released outside of Japan - and even there it wasn’t widely purchased.

The sad thing is the US SNES did actually have a port for this on the bottom, I always wondered what that was for.

yamanii@lemmy.world on 14 Feb 2024 01:37 next collapse

It is in the sense that you had to delete the downloaded game to play another, it’s why it’s hard to preserve these satella games.

TWeaK@lemm.ee on 14 Feb 2024 10:01 collapse

Yes but this was also around 30 years ago when data storage was smaller and more expensive.

woelkchen@lemmy.world on 21 Feb 2024 22:57 collapse

Yes but this was also around 30 years ago when data storage was smaller and more expensive.

The biggest SNES games were only a couple of megabytes. Super Mario World is only 512 kilobytes is size. It was certainly possible to archive the complete collection which is 1.7GB uncompressed. In 1992 IBM introduced archival storage tapes that 2.4GB of data.

TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world on 14 Feb 2024 10:38 collapse

It’s just as much game killing than any live service today. Satellaview relied on server connection, there’s no official lasting copies that anyone can own.

TWeaK@lemm.ee on 14 Feb 2024 14:16 next collapse

Were they full priced games as well?

TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world on 14 Feb 2024 14:36 collapse

It was a service, but my point is less how much was paid, but that much of it is dead and gone. A completely free game that shuts down its servers and becomes unplayable is still a loss to our culture.

woelkchen@lemmy.world on 21 Feb 2024 22:44 collapse

there’s no official lasting copies that anyone can own.

Then Nintendo did a bad job of preserving it. The game could be an expensive eShop download now…

TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world on 22 Feb 2024 01:31 collapse

As do most live service publishing companies. That is the whole problem. They aren’t bothered by simply looking bad for not preserving them.

Computerchairgeneral@kbin.social on 14 Feb 2024 03:13 collapse

Always impressed by the lengths people will go to preserve game history and more than a little concerned about them getting cease-and-desisted by Nintendo. At least it looks like it's already on the Internet Archive, so that's good.