The Zelda Game You Could Just Play through Satellite in 1995
1995was a big year. Toy Story and Die Hard: With a Vengeance were released. Not to mention the release of the infamous Windows 95. And for an incredibly special few in Japan, the time between August and November 1995 brought the opportunity to play a never to be released again Zelda title.
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The Zelda game in question is BS Zelda no Densetsu (BS The Legend of Zelda) and is the fifth game in the series. It is considered an “enhanced remake” due to its story and gameplay similarities to the original title, but the game features a different character alongside enhanced graphics and voiced spoken dialog. As such, it is also referred to as a spin-off.
This new Zelda game was the by-product of a new financial investment Nintendo had made a year prior, purchasing a nearly 20% stake in failing satellite streaming music company ST.GIGA.
Nintendo looking to leverage this new satellite technology developed a modem add-on for the Super Famicom. The peripheral was named the Satellaview and afforded owners the ability to download and stream games, magazines, and audio to their device.
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However, it wasn’t just as simple as buying the Satellaview. Not only did you need to provide your own Satellite dish, but you also needed to purchase a separate satellite tuner to connect to ST.GIGA’s platform, as well as pay a subscription fee. The upside was that the content you streamed was included in the fee.
The Satellaview attached to the bottom of the Super Famicom and in the top slot of the console, you inserted the BS-X application cartridge, which itself had a slot for plugging in the memory card. The BS-X cartridge did double duty as both the interface for accessing and downloading the content off of the network but also an interactive game in itself.
You created your own avatar character which would also be your avatar in many of the games and you navigated a small town where each building represented a different part of the software.
Over a hundred individual games ended up being released on the Satellaview, including small mini-games, remakes of existing titles, and brand-new exclusives.
Of note was a type of game labeled as a “Soundlink” title. These titles streamed game code and game audio to your console as you played the game, the catch being that you could only access this content on a specific pre-planned schedule.
The first-ever Soundlink title was the Zelda game in question and much of its differences from its NES predecessor were shaped by this new functionality.
In this game, you didn’t play as Link, but instead, you were the avatar you created in your BS-X cartridge. Name and gender were yours to pick and your physical appearance was derived from one of the mascots you selected while in the BS-X overworld.
Story-wise your avatar hails from a town with no name and you discover a portal. The portal whisks you away to Hyrule where you learn of Ganondorf’s abduction of Zelda from a magical old man. You then set out to find all eight pieces of the Triforce to then unlock the Master Sword and rescue the princess.
The catch was that the portal was unstable, and you could only be in Hyrule for an hour before being sent back to your town only able to return seven real earth days later. This became the structure for the game as you played the game in four hour-long episodes every Sunday in August 1995.
The in-game clock also played a large part in the game's interactivity. Certain story beats could only be accessed at certain points of the game, such as only being able to fight Ganondorf in the last 15 minutes of the last episode. You could also receive power-ups at certain times on the clock. The below explanation is pulled from a fan-made IGN guide as it explains it far better than I could.
Due to popular demand, the game was re-run in September, October, and again in November of the same year. More demand for the game had it briefly return as the player's choice game in 1997.
As well as the game itself being streamed to the console, the game featured voice acting, the first for a Zelda game. At key moments in the episode, the game would pause and prompt you to listen as voice acting from the old man was streamed in providing hints and suggestions, during other moments in the game you also heard voiced dialogue from Zelda and Ganondorf as part of the key story beats.
As you can imagine this game was only experienced by a fraction of the Zelda fanbase and attempts to preserve and emulate the game have been very difficult. It’s not currently possible to play the game in its original form.
This is primarily due to the fact the game wasn’t sold on a cartridge and was instead streamed to the RAM of the console, which was overwritten with new games and content.
However, dumps of old RAM cartridges have been located and the game's code has been emulated with some success. The original voice acting, however, does not seem to have been salvaged and, in some emulations, it has been replaced with subtitles or fan-made voiceovers.
Given all Satellaview games were in Japanese, fans have also had to translate the game, and is now available in multiple languages.
The game received a remixed version referred to as Map 2 which featured different map and dungeons configurations and was considered the second half of the original game it was based off. It began streaming in December 1995 and ran through to the end of January 1996. Map 2 was re-run in March 1996.
The Satellaview peaked at 100,000 customers in March 1997 and continued to receive games until the end of 1999, despite the relationship between Nintendo and ST.GIGA ending a year before. The console received three more Zelda titles that used the Soundlink functionality, each time in more mature ways as they learned from previous releases.
In a year where online gaming is widespread but the concept of streaming a video game is something that’s still being worked through by the likes of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, it’s fascinating to learn that in 1995 Nintendo was doing it all first.
Regretfully, they did this in such a niche and exclusive way that Zelda fans today cannot experience the game like those who did in 1995.
Nintendo has only once ever re-released one Satellaview game, BS Fire Emblem, which came out on the Nintendo DS in 2009. The game is considered a faithful remake with all the episodes packaged up into one cartridge and additional content included, however, the game is a standalone experience with no streaming required. At the time people wondered whether Nintendo would be remaking Satellaview games, but Nintendo has said nothing on the subject for over a decade now.