We've made it to another Zelda Day
December 26, 2016 4:00 PM   Subscribe

Back in the days of the Super Famicom (Japan's version of the SNES), there was a peripheral, only released in Japan, called the Satellaview, that allowed games to be broadcast and downloaded through a satellite broadcast service. Some games were only made available through this service, and many are lost today, including a number of very obscure Kirby games. Two games available on Satellaview were special versions of The Legend of Zelda (Previously), and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. More info is available at the BS Zelda homepage, as is, for the first time, a completely recovered, translated and playable version of the Satellaview LttP remix, Ancient Stone Tablets, complete with voice acting! There's quite a bit

You'll probably need an SNES emulator to play it. An acceptable one is bsnes, especially if you want to play it with the recreated/translated audio broadcast with voice acting. (Which requires a bit of work, and an IPS patcher, to set up, as well as a gigabyte-plus download. Follow the directions in the doc file in the AST MSU1 patch ZIP.) When you get to the end of a week, you'll have to rename your save RAM file to match the filename of the next week's ROM in order to continue. If you don't care about voice acting, you should be able to play the ROM downloaded from the site as-is. If you want the full experience, though, with voice acting, you have a gigabyte-plus download ahead of you.

It is sort of like a remix of A Link to the Past. Some things are familiar, and some things are very different. The biggest difference is that, like BS Zelda, the game is split into fourths, and you have roughly 50 minutes to play each section. There is a greater emphasis on collecting money here, with your rupee count roughly being your score. There are a lot of secrets to find to increase your cash supply.

Some additional stuff!
posted by JHarris (17 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
A collection of old commercials for the first Legend of Zelda game.

If you're wondering why the guy from the second commercial in that collection sounds familiar, his name is John Kassir, also known as The Cryptkeeper from Tales From the Crypt.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:08 PM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Earlier this year Tony Smith was interviewed about the set of gender-neutral dialogue patches he's created for most of the Zelda games.
posted by mhoye at 6:39 PM on December 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's worth noting that Zelda Randomizer now lets you change the hero to any of a number of choices, including Zelda herself as well as more whimsical choices like the "Stalfos" skeletons and Trogdor, and has generalized the game messages to reflect the variable heroes and rescue targets.
posted by JHarris at 7:17 PM on December 26, 2016


Watched the American commercials.
"Hmmm, these American zelda commercials are weird. I'm sure the Japanese commercials will be more serious."
Watched Japanese commercials.
"nope!" :D
posted by hot_monster at 7:55 PM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Whoa, this SoundLink thing sounds wild. I read the Wikipedia article, but I still don't really understand exactly how it works. So they'd do voice acting live while you played the game? Did everyone hear every line at the same time? How would they account for some players finishing some sections faster than others or talking to different NPCs or having to restart?

Are there any extant video recordings of someone playing a Soundlink game so we can get an idea how it worked?
posted by pravit at 8:11 PM on December 26, 2016


Basically, the game was played alongside a satellite radio broadcast. First the radio broadcast the game data, which was saved to the Satellaview cartridge. Then the game began, and played alongside the audio portion of the broadcast.

The broadcast provided music and voice acting, giving the player tips and information during the game. Also, at specific timed instances during the show, special events would occur in the game.
posted by JHarris at 8:27 PM on December 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


I've played through the first 90 minutes or so with subtitles, and there's a lot going on at once. For starers, the game throws you into the action with little handholding — you'll be okay if you've played other Zelda games, but there's no gentle build-up of your skills. The sword and shield are hiding in the first dungeon, which means you have to dodge octorocks just to get inside, and then smash enemies with pots before you get any real offence or defence.

Then the game has a mix of plot events, triggered by your progress and timed events. The timed events are announced by the voice actors (or subtitles, in my case). It's kind of like the game is taking place in an airport where the PA system is announcing events that may or may not be relevant to you. Some of these announcements are necessary to advance (head to Zora's cave to get the flippers) and some are informational (it will rain soon, which means you can't use bombs outside). There's pretty much always something happening in the subtitles, which makes it hard to read them while following the rest of the game — I'm really wishing I'd gone for the voice acted version.

Thanks for another great Zelda Day post.
posted by Banknote of the year at 9:45 PM on December 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've been playing the voice-acted version tonight, and while it does help a bit, the voices are quite corny. They're fan voice actors reading a translated script. They could be worse, but the elder who tells you what's going on speaks  S L O W L Y   A N D   D I S T I N C T L Y, and doesn't really sound like an old guy at all.
posted by JHarris at 10:43 PM on December 26, 2016


Here's something extra for you guys. The Armos Knight boss fights in the game use a variable to track the rotational position of the knights that is only reset at the start of the fight, but is used by other bosses in the game, including Ganon. So, how you play against Armos influences a minor detail of the Ganon fight, the order in which the fire bats chase you, assuming you don't reset the game between (the variable isn't saved in the save file, but there's an Armos fight in the last dungeon). Here's a YouTube video a speedrunner made explaining it.
posted by JHarris at 11:53 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


("The game" being a A Link to the Past, that is.)
posted by JHarris at 12:35 PM on December 27, 2016


I remember that second commercial vividly. I thought it was going to be some kind of arty horror game!
posted by ignignokt at 6:36 PM on December 27, 2016


Hey, Zelda Classic works for Mac now! Any quest recommendations?
posted by ignignokt at 6:55 PM on December 27, 2016


I just finished week 3, and the only way I'm making it through is to play each week twice. Each week has 2 dungeons and a few other items you can grab. The first week gave me a leisurely 2 hours to find everything. Weeks 2 and 3 are just under an hour each, which was nowhere near enough time to get through both dungeons. The second dungeon for week 3 was full of dead ends and obscure passages — I have no idea how I'd have gone through that in one run. Fortunately, OpenEmu lets me play the weeks again, resetting the timer but keeping the items I collected.

What was the experience like for people playing this on the Satellaview? Was the live broadcast your one and only chance to play the game, or could you go back and finish up later?
posted by Banknote of the year at 1:16 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


On Satellaview, Ancient Stone Tablets was broadcast at least twice, and maybe more. BS Zelda was was the same.

I'm up to the start of Day 4 in my playthrough as well, but I've managed to finish all the dungeons to this point, and found a good number of other things as well. I think the only important item I'm missing is one bottle. Additionally, there's lots of extra cash laying around. In particular is to look out for a mole character walking around. If you find him, he'll point you to a place on the map that'll have a cave leading to a room with over 1,000 rupees in it. Ordinarily, it seems, you get between 1,500-2,500 rupees per day.

The game isn't really that hard, and particularly some of the bosses seem to have been toned down from LttP, except for the time limit, which really does put you under the gun to do as much as you can.
posted by JHarris at 3:36 PM on December 28, 2016


Interesting detail about the order of the bats. I think I'll be trying the Zelda 3 randomiser.
posted by ersatz at 3:51 PM on December 28, 2016


Finished Ancient Stone Tablets with a score of about 635K. Had 18 hearts at the end (was missing six pieces of heart).

Dungeon 7 is amazingly short, but Dungeon 8 is very long to make up for it. Note, Dungeon 8 looks like ordinary mountain passages when you enter it, I explored several rooms before I realized it wasn't just a big cave.

Don't fret about finding the silver arrows! I was wondering where I'd find them, but it turns out to be a story event. As long as you get Zelda to the pillar at the summit of Death Mountain, you'll get them eventually. The mountain region in this game, thankfully, is much smaller than it was in LttP. You leave Zelda up there and can go do other things, and when it's time you'll get a message. Helpfully, the pillar itself is a ocarina warp spot.

If you miss an item from a completed dungeon, don't lose hope. On later days you can go back to the dungeon entrance and a thief will be there. If you missed anything, he'll give you all the important items that were in the dungeon. (He'll just say you shouldn't be fooling around here if you haven't.) I don't know if this applies even to the stone tablet macguffins, but it does apply even to technically-optional items like damage-reducing tunics and shields. You do miss out on all the rupee treasure you left behind.

Once a day, the Magic Shop will sell a gold potion. (The narrators mention it when it becomes available.) Not only is it much cheaper than the others (only 50 rupees!), but it fills your health and magic and gives you extra power. The only catch is, only one goes on sale each day. However, if you don't use it one day, it will carry over into later sessions.

BTW, don't forget the fortune tellers! It's not hard to finish all of Link to the Past without visiting their huts because the game does a fairly good job of pointing the way, but here they're very useful in pointing out things you may have left to do with your time.

After you beat Ganon, the game doesn't end! You can talk to Zelda (she's around the southern part of the Death Mountain region), or go back to Sanctuary and talk with the guys there, or even go into Hyrule Castle and talk to the King of Hyrule himself, the first time that was possible in any Zelda game. He seems like a pretty laid-back guy! But considering you can't even fight Ganon until the last ten minutes of play, there's not a lot of time left at that point.

The last few minutes of game time are an enemies-always-drop-rupees period, so if you don't know of any secrets left to investigate, find a region with a lot of monsters and start killing 'em. They might drop 1s, 5s or even 20s. Rupees are 10 points each at the end of the game.

BTW, at the end of every day, make sure to wait a while beyond the end dialogue. Eventually a results screen will appear with your game stats up to that point. After a bit, press buttons to bring up page 2, which presents your total score to that point. And after that there's one more screen, a "To be continued" or "The end" screen with full-screen art. (Actually, the last day will present the translation credits before that point.)
posted by JHarris at 4:54 PM on December 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ah! And don't forget to get the Master Sword! I'm not sure if you can't get it until you have all 8 tablets, or if you need a certain number of hearts or what, but you should be able to get it before fighting Ganon. In this game, it's a L4 sword. Once you get it, you're no longer able to rent sword upgrades from the rental houses.
posted by JHarris at 4:58 PM on December 28, 2016


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