SNES Preservation Project Continues, Missing Games Found

Published: February 23, 2017 7:08 PM /

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After an arduous nine-day ordeal, the United States Postal Service recovered $10,000 worth of PAL SNES titles that belong to a German donor. The games were part of a SNES preservation project led by byuu.

byuu, a programmer who wishes to preserve titles for future generations, is in the middle of a large-scale project. His plan is to either purchase or receive a loan copy of every SNES title, then rip the ROM from the cart and return the cart or sell it with money going toward buying more titles.

SNES
(Via byuu.org)

Currently, byuu has successfully preserved all 721 North American SNES titles. Now, his attention is focused on the PAL region games, and this is where the drama began.

As TechRaptor reported last week, byuu was set to receive 100 PAL-region SNES games from a donor in Germany. The package shipped on January 5th, 2017. However, on Valentine's Day last week, the USPS sent byuu a letter stating that the shipment was missing and he should package his shipments better. This is despite him being the recipient and not the sender.

SNES
(Via byuu.org)

According to byuu, this donor loaned him 100 games without issue before. To return them, he put them in two boxes with 50 games each. The donor used these same two boxes when sending a second batch of titles. Apparently, when he took them to Deutsche Post, they taped the boxes together and wrapped the box in wrapping paper.

Because of this, the USPS sorting machine managed to tear the shipping label completely off. Despite this, byuu mentions that his address was still clearly visible on the package, yet the USPS still didn't send the package.

SNES
(Via byuu.org)

However, the USPS eventually found the games and sent them to byuu, ending the harrowing situation amicably despite the stress caused for all involved.

In his anger, byuu immediately assumed the $10,000 worth of games was stolen. With that proven to not be the case, he has apologized for his angry accusation.

Though he had no obligation to reimburse the donor, byuu took it upon himself to reach out and immediately begin raising money to refund his patron. According to him, he raised $1020 via Paypal and $146 via Patreon. He contacted all Paypal donors and offered a full refund. As for Patreon, the payments won't come through until March 1st. When that happens, he plans to refund that money as well.

After all this, byuu plans on continuing to preserve the entire SNES library. He's more wary of the USPS now, but says that he will continue buying and reselling SNES games to keep a nice flow going over time. The SNES preservation project lives!

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Connor Foss
| Staff Writer

Former TechRaptor Staff Writer, who also does translation work between English and Spanish. You can usually find me playing horror games or Zelda!