What a load of BS Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets!

Welcome to one of the rarest Zelda games ever.

BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban, properly translated as BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets is a special game released on the BS Satellaview, a Japan-only addon for the SNES. Wikipedia has an article about it.

This particular game is a SoundLink title. That means it originally had voice acting and CD-quality soundtrack. But to do this, the SoundLink data had to be streamed directly from Satellite, meaning the game could only be played during specific broadcast hours. You had to be there on time, and you couldn't stop for anything. And if you missed it, you could never play it again. The entire game was broadcast in four "chapters" over the course of a month, with two dungeons each. It was only re-run three times.

Allegedly, the only known copies of this game floating around the internet were disrupted by this schedule, meaning they were never properly archived. Some emulators can't play them at all. Other emulators capable of loading the BS-X bios can at least get the game to boot up, but the indoor areas are nothing but garbage tiles and the sound effects don't work. Even if perfect emulation of the BS-X is achieved, it's not likely the original copies will ever be made to work.

Enter the hackers. Over the years, they developed tools and patches to fix the game and return it to a playable state. The hardest trick of all was re-building the indoor areas: It wasn't until VHS recordings of the original game surfaced that they were able to restore everything.

Now that the game is more or less fully refurbished, it can be played in several popular emulators any time you want.

Because the original game had narration and voice acting (if you can call it that), this is going to be a special Let's Play.

I'm settling for nothing less than video. Each update, I will play a chapter of the game and add voice commentary, featuring myself and a special guest. Then I'll post the videos for your amusement, enlightenment, and possibly mild boredom!
If you want to be a special guest, please send me a PM via this forum and I'll see what I can do!

Today's update is our inaugural episode!
Chapter One: The Eastern Palace with special guest PapillonReel !!

When I get home I'm gonna watch the heck out of that.

I thought this was just another hack that opening sequece is so bad. I can't belive it was a real thing.

Well, the localization reads pretty stiffly (not that it would be stellar material anyway). This pretty much is a hack, though.

Reel sounds exactly like I've always envisioned. (Enaudioed?) It's always gratifying when that happens. (Brickroad really threw me.)

How bizarre! I'm going to have to watch the original version w/ voiceacting and music too!

Thanks for expanding my horizons and knowledge

Holy crap, people finished the BS games? I remember trying to emulate the first BS Zelda and it being ... wonky. Has that one been hacked back together, too?

I know it's not usually kosher around here to share roms, but I think this is a special case: Can you post a link to a good, complete version of this game?

Neat! I knew about the Satellaview but I had no idea this game existed. This should be interesting! The story of how the completed rom came to be was fascinating too.

You guys did a good job with the commentary in the first episode. I'm so happy to hear the tradition of horrible, horrible puns being carried on in audio form!

> Save and Continue

In today's update, we explore the nuances of the game and find the Waterfall of Wishing has been sold off to Ganon's contractors and paved over with a new Level 2. Afterward, we clean up this no-horse town and discover the concept of time!

Chapter One, Part Two: The Waterfall of Wishing
Chapter One, Part Two and a half: Skippy and the Quest for More Inventory
Still featuring special guest PapillonReel !!

Ha, I always assumed "BS" stood for "Bandai Satellaview" but I guess not? Shocking. Still, uhh, "Brodcast Satellite Satellite View"? Nice.

Wow, yeah, that first post made me sure we were doing a crazy fan romhack. But no! We're doing a crazy officially sanctioned rom hack. Huh.

Hey Dart, I got a request! When you have a minute, start a new game with the girl character. No need to play far as I assume it doesn't affect much; I just wanna see her sprite in action. Or even screenshots would probably do.

For those of you wondering what this Parallel Worlds thing that keeps getting mentioned is, you can find it here. Apparently somebody has been planning a new release of the game that changes the difficulty from "stupid" to "slightly less stupid".

I mentioned I've been playing this in the "Like What You're Playing" thread, and really, I'm enjoying AST quite a bit so far. The remixed stuff adds some variety and flavour to the original game's engine without being too out of place, and it doesn't have the stupid difficulty that's symptomatic of your average ROM Hack. All in all, pretty good stuff! I recommend everyone give it a try sometime.

Also, for those of you wondering what the female character looks like, here ya go.

Holy crap, Dart, you sound like the unholy union of Solid Snake and Colonel Tigh. That's quite a voice you've got there.

I started playing this earlier today. Pretty interesting. About what I usually want from a hack but fail to find. I might actually try to finish it.

So I also tried the first BS Zelda, and this seems similar but different. It seems a lot more polished, for one thing, but that probably has to do with the source material.

In the other game, at least the version I'm playing, you get lots of random prompts on screen to tell you what the hell is going on. I gather that the text replaces voice that would come over the system if you were playing it on time.

In this game, it's more like shit just happens. I suddenly noticed that I had infinite arrows and was really confused. Its that more like how it was on the original game, or did it have voice prompts and they just didn't make the text in this hack?

I wish they had this set up into one file. I guess I can just do the weeks and transfer it over.

Oh, I prefer that! I'm going to play as her.

In the original game, Agihna would speak to the player. He would tell you when special clock events were about to happen, and it seems like he's even responsible for some of them, like Ether From Nowhere.

Anyway: Wednesday's update is most likely going to be postponed. My next special guest won't be available for recording until Thursday. So I'm going to do something special in the mean time.

I want you guys who are playing the game to post a screenshot of your results for Chapter One. You didn't see me do it on-camera because I stopped for time, but once the entire hour is up, a result screen will appear to tell you how well you did and give you a lead-in for the next Chapter.

I also want to encourage wacky fan art of Skippy's big adventure. Nothing graphic of course, just the kind of silly gags and observations we've been making so far. It'll be great!

Girl Not-Link is cuter than Boy Not-Link, and therefore better.

Oh, this will play on my Dingoo! Sweet! I'm going to try to keep up with an LP for once.

I wish they would fix this so that it would tell you what the hell is going on. Random Ethers is cool and all, but I'm sure there should be some explanation about items dropping like in the first BS Zelda.

Don't hold your breath! After patching the game to its current state, romhackers turned their expectations straight to the moon and started working on English voice acting, hoping an emulator could be developed to sync it to the game. (bsnes is getting close with a module based on the Expansion Port nobody ever used.)
Personally, I'm wondering how this could ever even possibly not suck.

Hey guys, you want to see something objectively cool? Well it's time for Chapter Two with special guest Brickroad !!

Witness Part One, where we discover Level 3, and ramble on different interesting subjects which actually have little to do with what's going on in the game!

Marvel at Part Two, where we continue to shoot the breeze and talk about romhacks as we finish Level 3: Under That One Screen That Was Useless in LttP, and move on to Level 4: Some Random Log in the Lost Woods.

And Watch with Slack-Jawed Amaze at Part Three, where Brickroad and I make fun of Chris Houlihan, finish up Level 4, point out changes from LttP we don't like, and sweep the overworld for those last few trinkets to pad out Skippy's inventory, thus bringing a close to Chapter Two.

I wouldn't mind seeing this. Why do programmers of fan games have a hard time grasping that excessively hard, imbalanced games are no fun?

Hey folks, it's time for a special mid-game intermission funtime video. With our feature game already half-completed, it's time to let Skippy take a break, step back for a minute and have a little fun. And by "fun", I of course mean eleven minutes of utter madness and insanity, courtesy of the one and only

PARALLEL WORLDS

Dull the pain with some Zelda-style jazz music and watch in silent horror.

Dear God.

At first I didn't think it looked that bad. But... then it just kept going. And it looked like the video was sped up on top of that.

I'm glad I never played Parallel Worlds, because it looks like it would've been a supreme disappointment. It's a shame, the graphical changes looked pretty competent and changes to the menu and stuff seemed alright. There were even a couple of interesting puzzle solutions used.

But the problem is that those few interesting puzzle bits were put in there by someone who obviously hates humanity and has no concept of fun, because they were surrounded by tedious slog and unfair cheap shots.

And fighting those goddamn sandworms three or four times? What?

Why is it so hard to make a good rom hack that's roughly the same challenge as the original game, maybe just a little harder? Why are any good ideas drowned out by tedious repetition and cheap design? Why do bad things happen to good people? Where's the beef?

That is among the worst things I've ever seen.

I kind of like the Parallel Tower part of that game. The clues that you gather from the shrinemaidens in each dungeon, and applying those clues to the tower's puzzles, is really quite a neat concept. It is, however, soured by the unconscionable dealbreaker of having to search the entire world for six (6) small keys, with no clues, to open various locked doors in the tower

Oh god what? The video didn't show that part of it. How could someone think to do that, it's Zelda. Zelda should not be that anti-fun.

You have to climb the Parallel Tower three times throughout the course of the game to get everything. The first time is about midway through the game to get the Magic Mirrorso you can go back to the Light World. The second time is near the end of the game so you can get the Chest Key and Kokiri Emerald, to retrieve the Master Sword. And the third time is so you can get the Silver Arrows, Ocarina, and access to Ganon.
Somewhere in that save file I accidentally used a Tower key in a regular dungeon and never found a replacement, so I couldn't get the Chest Key by normal means. I had to cheese out and use the Pegasus Boots trick from another dungeon to get the Mirror and Emerald. But that means I could never get the Silver Arrows and kill Ganon.

I guess what I'm saying here is Parallel Worlds.

Aren't you glad I picked Ancient Stone Tablets instead?

Kinda, but watching someone suffer through a bad game makes for terrific LPs, too!