BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets

BS Zelda no Densetsu Inishie no Sekiban (BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤) is a game that was released for the Satellaview (a Japanese-only attachment for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1997. The title was incorrectly romanized as Kodai no Sekiban for quite a long time. However, video recordings of the games original run confirm the subtitle Inishie no Sekiban. The game is almost like a "Second Quest" or "Master Quest" for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past since this game borrows heavily from it, but the storyline takes place after A Link to The Past.

BS stands for Broadcast Satellaview and the Satellaview unit is commonly referred to as the BS-X. Using this add on, gamers could download the game from the BS-5 channel of St. GIGA's satellite radio network and save it onto either the BS-X base unit's flash-RAM (included) or a BS-X Special Broadcast Cassette (an additional purchase or prize).

Gameplay
The game and its gameplay was mostly identical to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which it is modified from, however many mechanics were tidied up. The most notable change was to the Pegasus Boots; the player could now change directions when running with the Boots, and could also move between rooms and screens without automatically stopping as in A Link to the Past. The Shovel also got a makeover. While in A Link to the Past it was merely a plot device, it could now be used to dig for Rupees.

The dungeon items were also changed. Instead of three Pendants of Virtue and seven Crystals the player now collected the titular Ancient Stone Tablets, of which there were only eight.

Breakable walls, which in A Link to the Past were noticeably cracked, are in this game completely invisible. Only prodding with a sword will lead to their discovery by making the trademark hollow ringing sound. Each and every bombed-out area rewarded the player with Rupees, or pots concealing bomb and arrow refills, and so on. Sometimes the wall concealed an "Upgrade Thief"; the thieves who in A Link to the Past knocked into the player and stole the items they dropped now appeared in a helper role; he would upgrade their maximum of one ammo type (either bombs or arrows, each thief only upgrades one type, and once only), but for a cost. The price increased as the player progressed through the game.

When discovered in caves found on the overworld, these thieves gave out large quantities of Rupees if the player found them.

Presentation
The game was divided into four weekly episodes. These episodes were played live, at the same time as a video game tips show was running on the satellite network (it probably contained ads and such to promote the games currently being played).

Plot
The game's storyline differs from that of A Link to the Past. The main character is not Link, but a mysterious man known only as Mascot (So named because he is the "mascot" of the Satellite system). He resembles a small child wearing a baseball cap. There is also a Female Mascot, who performs the same quest (The two characters are selectable. It is presumed that in the storyline, both exist and possibly worked together or independently but at the same time.)

The game seems to take place shortly after the ending of A Link to the Past, but after Link had left Hyrule (as shown in the backstory of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening). Princess Zelda makes reference to Link, saying that Mascot reminds her of the famous hero.

Character Selection
The player could configure his or her name and gender in the Satellaview game-selection interface. This then carried across to the game. The female character was the A Link to the Past Link model with hair replacing Link's traditional green hat, while the male character was Link with a baseball cap. This was the third time a female character had been a playable protagonist in a Zelda game—the previous two occurrences having been in Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure (two of the three Zelda titles released for the Philips Cd-i), wherein Princess Zelda herself was the playable character.

Live Voice
All cutscenes were fully voice acted, live, much like a radio play. The players constantly heard the "narrator" (playing the part of the voice of Sahasrahla, a well-known character from A Link to the Past) give various tips and hints during play. During the final minutes his statements become more demanding and forceful, as time is running out.

The non-mandatory sidequests were also fully voice-acted; however since the player could come across that event at any point rather than at a forced time, and there was no viable way for the console to convey proximity information to the voice acting center, it is to be assumed that the voice actor for that character kept saying their script over and over for the entirety of the designated time (they can each be saved from about 18:43 until 18:56), whether any player was actually on the same screen (and thus in "earshot") or not.

The Zelda no Video documentary shows several minutes of Live Voice-enhanced gameplay in action, both of the opening cutscenes and of a sidequest, with the voice actor for Princess Zelda calling for help desperately (and very realistically) for the entirety of the clip.

The Clock
The game was played in real-time. Each episode was one whole hour, and so the gameplay was intense and compressed, with cutscenes in between. However, the game in its entirety took one hour, that means the cutscenes counted as part of the gameplay time.

There were several optional sidequests available, each with its own mostly text-only cutscene (they were not activated at any set time so could not feasibly feature live voice), the completion of which netted a score bonus and some Rupees, but getting this reward meant deviating and delays while reading through all the thanks responses, thus shortening the available game time even further. The player could also choose to bomb walls and explore caves and find countless chests full of Rupees (and, in turn, get points for opening them). While doing these sidequests netted more points for players hoping to win prizes, every minute of delay subtracted points from the value of that week's Tablets, and if the player got lost or waylaid in the dungeon or overworld and ran out of time it is to be assumed that they got nothing at all (judging by the specific wording of the "bad ending" scene in Week 4). Therefore, there were many odds to weigh up, and the player could not even pause the game to think his or her decision through.

Unlike other games where any clock feature stops when the player open a menu or pause it, in this game the clock kept on ticking no matter what. The enemies and everything else in the world as a whole do pause when the item menu opens, but the clock does not. So the player could not leave it paused and go off to the bathroom or get a snack or something like that, he or she had to keep playing or he or she would lose precious time. It is to be assumed that this made the game (in its original format) very addictive.

The clock affected gameplay enormously. At particular times on the clock various things might happen: health-restoring fairies appear, a Bombos or Ether magic attack destroys enemies onscreen, the player gets unlimited bombs, arrows or magic or can shoot magic rings from their sword, and so forth. An enormous variety of things can happen in each week, and the events and the times they happen at change between weeks, as well.

At a different time each week, fog descends on the overworld. This is a warning to the player to hurry about his or her business, because a very few minutes after that a thunderstorm breaks loose, restricting exploration by defusing any bombs planted and increasing the difficulty by replacing any normal overworld (i.e. not in a dungeon) enemies with Zoras, fierce lizard-like creatures that home in on the player and cannot be stunned with the Boomerang like their A Link to the Past forefathers could. After a few minutes the rain and thunder clears, leaving the fog behind, and after a while that too disappears.

The Rental Shops
A Link to the Past veterans will notice many changes to the overworld, most notably the additions of many Rental Shops. At these a player can purchase a sword upgrade (unless he or she already has the Golden Sword) or a Shovel (unless he or she already has it), for 100 Rupees each. However these items are rented, as the title indicates, for only ten minutes, so the player must make the most of them in order to make his or her purchase worthwhile.

It was most advisable to buy the Shovel, because with it the player could dig for a hidden Piece of Heart; there were an even number of these in each week, and the dug-up ones could not be retrieved in later weeks, so if the player intended to have the maximum hearts when he or she faced Ganon he or she needed to buy a shovel and get digging. The first time a shovel is rented each week, the shop owner marks the location of the digging spot on their map. Each week this can be one of four different locations, and the locations that are randomly chosen between change from week to week.

Since the Shovel can now dig up Rupees (it couldn't in A Link to the Past), it is a very lucrative means of filling up any spare minutes before the gameplay hour ends.

The Mole
The Mole is a strange character unique to this game. At a certain time he will burrow out somewhere (the location is different from week to week). If the player talks to him he or she will get 10,000 points but then he burrows down once more. If the player can again locate his diggings, he or she will find he has discovered a Rupee treasure trove. He will have opened a cave containing six treasure chests, and the quantity of Rupees found inside increases for each successive week.

The Separate Weeks
In each week the player could access only certain portions of the overworld. The areas shrouded in clouds were unreachable.

There were two dungeons per week, but the episode did not end when the player had completed all the objectives for that week, but only when the time expired. So in the meantime the player could complete sidequests and hunt for Rupees, Bottles and Pieces of Heart.

Once they acquired certain key dungeon items new areas of the overworld become available; for example once a player has the Magic Hammer he or she can knock previously impassable pegs down into the ground, enabling him or her to walk over them. Also, large and heavy rocks lie in the hero's path, but when he or she acquires various types of Gloves he or she can lift some or all of these rocks and throw them out of the way.

The End of the Game
At the end of the game, the hero solemnly places the Master Sword in its pedestal to rest once more, and then vanishes. They have gone back into their own world from whence they came. They saved all of Hyrule, and the others did not even know their name (characters in the game never refer to the player by their name despite entering it at the BS-X BIOS screen). Aginah walks off. Zelda walks away, turns to take one last look back, and then she too departs (whether or not this ending scene was voice acted is unknown).

Scoring
Each event on their journey, both major and minor, will net the player points. Every event below has a score value associated with it. The scores add up, so a chest will give points to the player, even if it contains a points-bearing item in turn.

* minus 500 points for every minute that passes (including the six minutes before play starts)

Strangely enough, there are no points given for collecting Rupees, slaying enemies or defeating bosses, however the items the player gets after defeating bosses do give points.

There is no feasible score limit; while the game allows for 8 digits worth of scoring, there is no way a player can ever reach this even if they do absolutely everything and collect the tablets as soon as possible. This is because the amount of score-giving items in the game world are strictly finite; there is thus no way to discover what the game would do if the score was surpassed.

Prizes
Scoring was an important feature of the game; while scoring had absolutely no effect on gameplay whatsoever, there were other post-game benefits. At the end of each hour of play the player was given a score readout. By submitting these game high scores (probably a coded password sent by mail, but perhaps sent directly via the satellite link) his or her score would be recorded, and if the player scored high enough he or she might have a free gift sent out, such as a phonecard or flash-cart.

Replaying the game
Because the Live Voice content was absolutely central to gameplay (and was not stored on the base unit or flash-RAM cartridge in any way whatsoever) and also due to the fact that the timer was based on a real-time clock set by the satellite itself, this game could not be played whenever the player chose like some of the other BS-X games, but only during the set hours. The game would not run at all outside these broadcast times. The game was rebroadcast in the following year, but other than that the game was rendered completely unplayable (until the advent of emulation). At the time of writing, Nintendo has not yet included this game in any collection of Zelda re-releases, nor has it become completely available in emulated form.

Broadcast dates

 * (taken from The Nintendo Database (page no longer exists)