In The Legend of Zelda Ancient Stone Tablets, go on a legendary adventure. Experience a classic gaming era as you travel to distant locations, solve riddles, and use strong weaponry. In this intriguing entry of the legendary Zelda game, solve mysteries and rise to the occasion.
BS The third installment in the BS Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets, was a four-part episodic game that could be downloaded for the Super Famicom’s BS-X Broadcasting System add-on. Each program could only be played once per week during the broadcast time after being downloaded from St. GIGA’s satellite radio service and stored on memory packs.
Using the same engine, gameplay, overworld, and characters as A Link to the Past, Ancient Stone Tablets is essentially a pseudo-sequel to that game. However, it has its own storyline, dungeons, side quests, and Mini-Games. The game has a time limit of 60 minutes, during which predetermined intervals of in-game action take place. The objective of the game is to get as many points as you can in the allotted time through a variety of actions. High-scoring players had the option of sending their scores to Nintendo in exchange for tangible rewards.
The protagonist of the game is not Link, who is absent from it; rather, it is one of the Hero of Light avatars that the player’s ID for the BS-X Broadcasting System draws into Hyrule. The main characters in BS The Legend of Zelda are the same avatars. The characters can be either male or female, and both have distinctive long red hair. The male avatar wears a baseball cap that faces backwards. The tunic that Link wears is worn by both avatars.
The Legend of Zelda Ancient Stone Tablets
Ancient Stone Tablets was only played once a week during a highly constrained broadcast window, unlike other games for the service. The game is no longer offered for purchase in its original version because the service was later cancelled. The majority of the content in a game restoration that uses elements dropped from memory packs containing the game’s data can still be played through emulation. Because the voice acting was stored in the system’s RAM, it was not possible to save it with the other data.
Story
Six short years pass between the events of Ancient Stone Tablets and the hero Link’s defeat of Ganon in A Link to the Past. A mysterious-looking fortune teller’s house has suddenly arisen in the village, and it is entered by the avatar of the guy from the far-off village Whose Name Has Been Stolen. The only thing the avatar finds is a magical golden bee, so it chases after it and enters the house’s back, where powerful magic takes the young person to the Land of Hyrule.
Hyrule is experiencing a period of peace and tranquilly, but Princess Zelda has a disturbing, recurrent dream about a darkness covering a temple, portending impending evil. She once sees a strange, brilliant light in the east of the sky. Aginah, the wise man Sahasrahla’s younger brother, who is currently residing in his former hiding place close to the Eastern Palace, also sees such a light and sets out to investigate.
The young person is found there on the ground. Zelda, who is also travelling in the direction of the light, encounters Aginah and together they transport the infant to Sahasrahla’s lair. They are perplexed by the youth’s peculiar attire and assume that he is not a native of Kakariko Village. Zelda learns from Aginah that Sahasrahla, the boy’s brother, had also felt danger encircling Hyrule and had left the kingdom in search of the protagonist, Link. Zelda believes that if this new child have courage, even though Link hasn’t yet returned, he or she might be the Hero of Light.
Monsters Reappear
A Soldier who protects the Eastern Palace later arrives before Aginah and claims that a horde of monsters attacked and killed the other guards defending the temple after Zelda leaves to return to Hyrule Castle. Despite his wounds, he relays this knowledge to Aginah as the only survivor. Aginah stays with the child in the hopes that Zelda’s faith in him or her will be validated. When the boy first wakes up, Aginah tells him about the monsters who are destroying their land and warns him about going alone without a weapon.
He claims that the Eastern Palace has a Sword and Shield, but he is too elderly to get there. He gives the young person an ocarina, a bug-catching net, a bottle holding a miraculous golden bee, and items that belonged to Saharshala. He explains to the child that the ocarina can be used to return to a dungeon’s entrance and that the bee will fight creatures but run from anyone brandishing a blade. The new hero then sets out on their adventure.
Tablets
The hero acquires two mystery tablets from the Dungeon Masters, the Armos Knights, and Moldorm after acquiring weapons and exploring the Eastern Palace and a shadowy dungeon concealed beneath the Waterfall of Wishing. Zelda is also saved by the hero from a monster attack, and she is accompanied to Hyrule Castle. The hero and Aginah meet Zelda in the castle after finishing their dungeon tasks, and they then explore the strange tablets. Aginah decides that in order to find information about how to interpret the symbols, they should go to his eldest brother’s home in Kakariko Village.
Aginah attempts to learn more about them but is unsuccessful, so she begs the hero to go and acquire more of them from the dungeon monsters. Zelda advises that once they have two more tablets, they go to Link’s house to get the Book of Mudora, which might be able to translate the text. Zelda summons the Fortune Teller to ascertain the whereabouts of the book while Aginah investigates the house, and the hero keeps looking for the tablets. Aginah eventually finds the book, and the hero and Zelda then encounter each other at the castle.
Gameplay
There are four distinct episodes in the game, each of which may be completed in 60 minutes. Since most of the land was inaccessible in the previous episodes, each episode concentrates on a certain area of Hyrule. At the conclusion of Episode 4, a relatively small portion of the Dark World is explored. Regardless of whether the player has finished all of the tasks at hand, the game always finishes when the timer runs out, and progress is recorded to the BS-X cartridge.
Any Stone Tablets and other things the player has acquired, together with their Rupees that go towards scoring, are carried over to subsequent episodes. The player can pick up where they left off in earlier episodes, however the earlier dungeons are now locked. Outside of them, a thief will provide the player with a big bag of dungeon loot.
Hyrule now has a number of stores, some of which sell supplies like food and medicine while others are Rental Stores that will lend the Hero stuff out for a ten-minute period in exchange for rupees. The item won’t be available for rental from the Rental Shop once the Hero has obtained it for themselves in a dungeon. A brand-new Gold Potion that is available in the Witch’s Hut allows the Hero to briefly charge Spin Attacks twice as rapidly and strengthens the first blow of a sword attack while also fully restoring life and mana.
At predetermined intervals, different timed events will take place. Some of these have an impact on gameplay, such as variations in the amount of precipitation, which will lead NPCs to go inside and hostile Zoras to come on land, temporary power-ups like sword beams, infinite ammo, maximum hearts, Fairies coming, or opponents on screen being affected by Bombos or Ether. Other incidents, like Zelda being attacked by Octoroks and a Sage falling into a river, are important to the game’s story and call for the Hero’s help. A Mole may also show up in a specified spot in each episode (which differed with each broadcast) and direct the player to a sizable cache of buried rupees.
The game made use of two technologies: Live Voice, which provided plot exposition and hints in the form of a live voice-acted drama, and SoundLink, which streamed orchestrated music (which included songs from The Legend of Zelda: Sound & Drama album). The narrator would address the player directly, but telepathic communication between the protagonist and figures like Princess Zelda and Aginah would also occur. The player could only hear the voiced dialogue of side characters when they were nearby.