Review lingsdook 4/5 · May 21, 2024
Beaming you some Zelda from space
The Satellaview is a fascinating piece of Nintendo's history that is not talked about much, perhaps due to its Japanese exclusivity. It was Nintendo's take on a concept that was being explored by gaming companies at the time: digital distribution. Yes, even before the days of Steam and digital storefronts on consoles, companies were experimenting with ways to get games …
The Satellaview is a fascinating piece of Nintendo's history that is not talked about much, perhaps due to its Japanese exclusivity. It was Nintendo's take on a concept that was being explored by gaming companies at the time: digital distribution. Yes, even before the days of Steam and digital storefronts on consoles, companies were experimenting with ways to get games into your living room without physical media!
The Satellaview achieved this through the use of a peripheral for the Super Famicom that acted as a tuner, letting you download games that were broadcasted at specific times. More interestingly, the Satellaview was also used to create "SoundLink" experiences, which used satellite streaming to broadcast voice acting and music that would play in sync with your game. The first game to utilize that technology is none other than BS The Legend of Zelda.
Due to the nature of the technology, BS The Legend of Zelda--as well as other SoundLink games--could only be played at specific times, and were often episodic. While that may sound like a recipe for frustration, it actually worked decently well. It allowed you to carry over your save data from one episode to the next, but also did not require it if you missed an episode. BS The Legend of Zelda was released in four one-hour episodes that featured high quality voice acting and random events that were sprinkled throughout the broadcast. The resulting experience must have been a really cool communal experience akin to an interactive TV show.
And I say "must have been," because as you may expect, much of the Satellaview's catalogue is now lost media. It's truly a shame, because many of these games were developed in-house by Nintendo, and are of very high quality as a result. Luckily, a rom for BS The Legend of Zelda was preserved. The full experience is not playable with that raw rom due to the episodic nature of the game, but through the years, fans have been able to piece together romhacks that try to approximate what the experience might have been like.
While there are many different romhacks, there are three notably convenient repackagings of BS The Legend of Zelda that I would recommend: first, the MSU-1 patched version, which tries to replicate the original broadcast as closely as possible, including fan-dubbed voice acting. However, it only works on specific emulators and takes some set-up to get working correctly. The second form I would recommend are in the The Legend of Zelda - Third Quest and Fourth Quest roms, which remove the time limit and try to structure the game as a single experience, much like other Zelda games. Finally, the MottZilla patch provides the full experience in a single rom, but retains the episodic structure and one-hour time limit while trimming things such as the voice acting in order to get it to work seamlessly with real hardware. This last one is the version I went with.
For all intents and purposes, BS The Legend of Zelda is essentially an enhanced remake of the original Legend of Zelda on the Famicom, but with several changes to turn it into an episodic experience. While the world is very similar to that of the original Zelda, it is shrunken down slightly. The goal of each episode is to find and complete two dungeons, for a grand total of eight dungeons. As such, you only have access to a small portion of the world in the first episode, but it expands as you go.
The way the game works is that you play through it in one-hour chunks as you experience each episode. I found myself having plenty of extra time in the first episode, but I really felt the pressure of the time limit in the later episodes. It's possible to get a bad ending if you don't manage to defeat Ganon in time, adding to the sense of urgency. I know this time limit won't be for everyone, but I liked how it freshened the original Legend of Zelda experience, and turned it into a slightly more linear game in the process.
Random events occur throughout your playthrough that grant you temporary bonuses such as infinite bombs. Some events can also hinder you, such as a storm that makes Darknuts spawn in the overworld. Unfortunately, due to the lack of voice acting in the MottZilla version, it's a bit hard to get a handle on what is happening, so I recommend downloading the game's schedule from the BS Zelda site in order to keep track of the events as you play. In this way, the MSU-1 version may be superior, but ultimately I don't regret taking advantage of the better compatibility of the MottZilla version to play this on my new Anbernic RG28XX.
There isn't much more to say, as everything else about this is pretty similar to the original Zelda. Aside from some quality-of-life improvements, such as the ability to swap items with the shoulder buttons, it plays the same. Of note: Darknuts suck just as much as they did in the original game! If you like The Legend of Zelda and enjoy the NES original, I can't recommend this title enough. If the episodic structure turns you off, then you can even check out the Third Quest and Fourth Quest roms in order to experience the altered world and brand new dungeon layouts. This is more than just a curiosity--don't sleep on this lost Legend of Zelda game!