The Satellaview is an add-on peripheral for the Super Famicom that, in the 90's, allowed Japanese gamers to receive special content via Satellite broadcast. Docked beneath the Super Famicom and jacked into the homes Satellite receiver, it allowed downloads such as exclusive games.
These could be saved onto memory paks, which were housed in a special cartridge, just like the way a Gameboy cartridge sits in a Super Gameboy. This was way ahead of its time, years before Xbox Live or modern DLC came onto the scene.
A lot of this stuff has been found on old memory paks and archived for preservation, BS (a prefix for Nintendo IP on the system) The Legend of Zelda being the most famous one, a remix of the original NES Zelda game with a fresh 16-bit overhaul, and a choice of a new male or female protagonist, the hero of light.
These games were broadcast episodically, with the games only playable during the one hour broadcast, once the episode was over, you could not play again until the next weeks episode.
Other notable titles were Radical Dreamers, a text adventure/visual novel side story of Chrono Trigger, BS F-Zero Grand Prix, which had online leaderboards and BS Fire Emblem: Archanea Saga.
The game I would like to highlight is not really a game per se, so I cannot really review it, but it is still worth talking about. BS Chrono Trigger - Music Library is fairly simple, it is literally a single screen music player, that plays the entire soundtrack of the legendary SNES game, composed by Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu
But what a soundtrack, there are 64 tracks here, two of them unreleased, and it is beautiful, what I love about it is that these sounds are coming straight from the SNES sound chip, the way it was intended, the sound chip being perfectly recreated by the SNES core on the Pocket.
At the Bottom of Night and Memories of Green are among my favourite tracks, I have been using this soundtrack as background music while I work at my desk, for the last few days. I just sit the Pocket in the unplugged Dock and change tracks every now and then.
It is this concept that I find intriguing, the Pocket as a music player, Analogue designed it as a machine for the historical preservation of video games after all, and soundtracks are a huge part of the medium. This got me thinking, what if someone reverse engineered the BS Chrono Trigger - Music Library, and created a music player core for the Pocket?
Alas, I am not intelligent or technically minded enough for such a task, but for the guys out there who have decoded entire consoles, I am sure it would be doable. Imagine having the soundtrack to all your favourite games on the Pocket, each with their own custom visuals, for when the Pocket is used as a Music Player?
The screen display would be where people could be really creative, different graphics for each track, iconic gameplay segments, or something along the line of the Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda Game and Watch tributes that Nintendo released a few years ago, which can be used as an ever-evolving screensaver.
I could also envisage Best of compilations, for example Best of Metroid or Best of Final Fantasy. Things like this would give creators the license to come up with some amazing stuff in the visual department, it could be like the Amiga demo scene with everyone trying to outdo each other.
I would love to see my Pocket in its Dock showcasing cool pixel art and the soundtrack from any game I want, a feature like this would elevate the Pocket up a whole other level.
Right now, I am listening to the MSX SD Snatcher and MSX Metal Gear 2 soundtrack, in anticipation of Boogermann dropping the MSX core very soon, and I am dreaming of what amazing visual displays that creators could come up with, for these iconic games.
Anyway, I must stop daydreaming and get back to work on a preview of the MSX core. Till next time, Peace out.
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