Developer Loads Slack Chats In SNES Game

Slack has roughly the same features as other communication platforms, such as WhatsApp, Discord, and Skype. But it turns out that it is also possible to open Slack conversations in an SNES game. At least one of the software developers of the app succeeded.

BS-X: The Story of the Town Whose Name Was Stolen isn’t just unique because of its lengthy title. This game used the Satellaview. That is a ‘satellite modem’ that was used with the Super Famicom, the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo. This obscure piece of peripheral equipment could receive radio signals and use them in the game that was connected to it. With BS-X, this allowed adding data and playing in real time.

Due to the rarity of the Satellaview and BS-X in the West, Slack developer Bertrand Fan had to use an emulator. In addition, he has developed a tool that enables the generation of Satellaview files. To use the game to load messages into Slack, the user must first find a building in the game, name it and list items for sale. “Each item has a name and description. If you use your imagination a little you can use the name for the sender, the time and the description for the message,” Fan explains on his blog.