The Satellaview is a Super Famicom peripheral launched by Nintendo in Japan in April 1995. It clips underneath the console and adds a satellite modem, connected to St.GIGA's digital broadcasting service. Nintendo therefore sold not cartridges but a subscription: games and shows came down from the satellite at fixed times.
Content was stored on a rewritable memory cartridge, the 8M Memory Pack, and browsed from an interface called BS-X: The Story of the Town Whose Name Was Stolen — a small 2D town the user walks around to reach the downloaded games. Some programmes, the SoundLink titles, mixed gameplay with live audio broadcast: a soundtrack and voice acting were synchronised with the session, at broadcast time, and once only.
The service ran until June 2000. It aired exclusives that became legendary precisely because they never existed on cartridge: BS Zelda no Densetsu and its sequel Kodai no Sekiban, BS Super Mario USA, and the weekly episodes of BS F-Zero Grand Prix. Since the content was ephemeral by nature, part of the catalogue is lost today; what remains comes from memory cartridges preserved by players.
| Manufacturer | Nintendo |
| Year | 1995 (Japan only) |
| Type | Console (Super Famicom peripheral) |
| Media | Satellite broadcast, rewritable memory cartridge |
| Controller | Mandatory |
| RetroAchievements | Yes |
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro snes9x | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro mesen_s | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro bsnes | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro bsneshd | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
snes9x is the only core available everywhere. mesen_s is missing on RPi3 and RPi Zero 2; bsnes and bsnes-hd are additionally missing on the OGA/OGS/RG351 handhelds. On those machines, snes9x is the only option.
snes9x is the default emulator: it is the best trade-off between accuracy and performance, and it runs on every board. mesen_s is more accurate but heavier. bsnes aims at hardware exactness, and bsneshd is its high-resolution rendering variant, the most demanding of the four. CRT output is supported by snes9x and bsnes; softpatching works with snes9x and bsnes only.
RetroAchievements are available on this system. Netplay is available with none of the four cores. A controller is mandatory; keyboard, mouse and light gun are not supported.
The BS-X BIOS is mandatory: it holds the interface from which games are launched, and without it nothing boots.
| File name | Description | Accepted MD5 | Emulators concerned |
|---|---|---|---|
satellaview/BS-X.bin |
Satellaview BS-X BIOS (mandatory) | 96cf17bf589fcbfa6f8de2dc84f19fa2, d5af0ab2545c053b90ffa0866074ecf1, 9c72de0cf4c9c88003292a79ddd0144d, fed4d8242cfbed61343d53d48432aced | snes9x, mesen_s, bsnes, bsnes-hd |
Place the BIOS like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/satellaview/
└── BS-X.bin
Four variants of this file are accepted: original Japanese dumps and English-translated versions. The BIOS checker will confirm that yours is suitable.
The most widespread BIOS is in Japanese and has to be worked through on every launch before reaching the game. The Satellaview guide details that route step by step.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/satellaview/
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| snes9x | .bs .fig .gd3 .sfc .smc .swc .zip .7z |
| mesen_s | .bs .bsx .sfc .smc .zip .7z |
| bsnes | .bs .bsx .sfc .smc .zip .7z |
| bsneshd | .bs .bsx .sfc .smc .zip .7z |
The .bs extension is the one used by Satellaview dumps and works with all four cores. The .bsx format is only recognized by mesen_s, bsnes and bsnes-hd: if a .bsx file refuses to start under snes9x, switch emulator from the game menu.
No game ships with Recalbox for this system: the folder is empty on first boot.