The recently-missing shipment of SNES games, valued at $10k, which was declared lost in the US postal system has - miraculously - been found.

Package received.

SNES game archiver and emulator maker Byuu had given up hope over ever recovering the package, sent to him by another collector, after the US Postal Servicer (USPS) reported it lost.

The package was part of an ongoing project to scan and archive every SNES game. With it lost, Byuu had regretfully declared the project dead.

Thankfully, the continued media attention given to the case caught the eye of a USPS worker who wanted to lend a hand.

Here's what happened next, in Byuu's own words:

"Both before and after February 14th, news sites had started to pick up this story. For which I am extremely grateful. It wasn't until the story really started to take off that on February 16th, finally a manager at the USPS Consumer Affairs department took note of the case. And I mean that literally: he told me straight up the reason he was contacting me was because of the news articles he had encountered on this case. So thanks to the coverage, I finally had a strong contact within the USPS who passed me to his employee who then proceeded to open an investigation and help search for the package. On February 21st, I received an e-mail on the missing mail search I had submitted on January 30th, informing me that my package had been located! Excited, I contacted my CA rep... who then proceeded to tell me that the search had failed, and that the e-mail notification was errant. However, she promised to request all possible locations the package could have ended up at to do one last search. The CA rep called me late in the day advising that someone in the Atlanta, GA mail recovery centre had just now located my package! Thankfully, the photographs I took of the packages before sending back the first batch of 100 games proved useful with exact appearance, dimensions, weight, etc being available for the search team. Still, given all the constant ups and downs, I wanted to wait until the package was in hand before giving anyone any false hope. Finally, today, February 23rd, the ordeal is finally over! The package arrived safely, with all games intact.

$10k of SNES games.

Byuu has previously opened donations via Paypal to help replace the games lost - all of this money has now been returned, he has said.

After all that happened, the package was recovered at probably the last possible moment - it had made its way to the Atlanta recovery centre which is where lost mail goes to be placed up for public auction.

Understandably, Byuu has said he will be more cautious with shipping games in the future - only using smaller shipments, or buying individual games to scan and archive then selling them on to get some money back.

"But... yes," Byuu concluded, "with these games recovered, I'll declare the preservation project undead! ^_^"