I Uploaded the Soundtrack For BS Legend of Zelda On YouTube Cause Nobody Else Had And I Felt Like It
A couple months ago thanks to an AGDQ run I discovered for the first time the Satellaview, and the game BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban (or BS Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets), a riff on A Link To The Past featuring an hour time limit and certain planned events in the game itself, such as unlimited bombs or a convenient lightning attack. It's such a cool premise for a game, giving the inherently fading nature of it, and it turns out it is not the only Zelda game to get the Satellaview treatment. Before then there was BS Zelda no Densetsu, a remake of the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. It has the same basic premise as Ancient Stone Tablets, where you can only visit a couple dungeons per weekly broadcast and includes timed events to keep the whole thing moving. I watched a stream of the game thanks to my favorite gaming related channel Retro Pals (Hi @sardoose! Hi @alexcat!) and was amazed by it's soundtrack! It's really synthy and grand, and also adds in weird sound effects that aren't really like any other Zelda soundtrack. Perhaps it's no surprise that the music was so on point, considering the Satellaview was part of the avant garde satellite radio group St. GIGA. Amazingly I couldn't find it anywhere online outside of this Archive page with like 11 views, so I uploaded it to YouTube to make it easier to listen to. The whole playlist is embedded on the top but a couple of my favorites below the break:
Title Theme (Game Music Graffiti)
What a parenthetical! The camera shutter sound effects here crack me up, like if Link was walking the red carpet. Listen to that shredding electric guitar 2:10 in! The way you know this game is obscure is the fact that in the late 2000s there were a billion YouTubers whose sole gimmick was doing metal covers of video game music and zero of them leaned on this.
Rearranged Overworld (Battle Edition)
Wanna know what Zelda music is missing? Sick drum breaks and the sound of whinnying horses.
Rearranged Dark Overworld
Another cool thing that happens in this game: at one point during week 3 it has all the dungeon monsters spill into the overworld, so it gets a little smattering of the dark/light world gimmick from Link to the Past into the original flavor. Plus we get this cool, creepy remix. Shocked some darksynth personality isn't pulling this one out at their live shows streams for people on the internet.
Zelda (Toy)
Can we just be real, for one fucking second? Why do more Zelda games not have lyrics spoken by the guy doing the Mr. Roboto voice? Why does Tears of the Kingdom not have backing vocals done by studio session singers? Cause Miyamoto is a coward, that's why. This reminds me of Stars on 45 in a good way, easily my favorite track out of the whole bunch.
Hope you get as much enjoyment listening to this weird ephemera as I did!
