A Satellaview research blog.

On the proper naming of certain game titles.

The reason for the lack of updates is due to slow developments.
The reason for -this- update is also due to slow developments. This is a small little rant about the naming conventions of key Satellaview titles – how a few of these have confusing titles, and a few had been mis-named for a while due to to the emulation scene not having quite fact-checked.

On “Kodai no Sekiban”, “Kodai no Ishiiban”, and “Inishie no Sekiban”

The proper title of this specific BS Zelda is apparently a ridiculously confusing play on words that is difficult to properly romanize because how you -read- the title is not the same as how you pronounce it. Here’s a few quotes from the BS Zelda forums to help with this.

“Going back to something a bit earlier, I’ve looked into matters with the Inishie no Sekiban vs Kodai no Sekiban issue. From what I gather, “Kodai” and “Inishie” are synonyms meaning “ancient.”

Apparently just as Ishi (石) and Ban (盤) together counterintuitively make Sekiban (石盤), Ko (古) alone can be counterintuitively pronounced “Inishie”. This is why the recent PS3 RPG, “白騎士物語 -古の鼓動-“, translates to “Shirokishi Monogatari -Inishie no Kodō-” or “White Knight Story -Ancient Heartbeat-” instead of “Shirokishi Monogatari -Ko no Kodō-“.

So even thought “古の鼓動” literally breaks down to:
古 – Ko
の – No
鼓 – Tsudumi
動 – Dou
when taken together it becomes Inishie (古) no (の) Kodō (鼓動).

What this means is that “Inishie no Sekiban” (BSゼルダの伝説 古の石盤) seems to have been an alternate name for “Kodai no Sekiban” (BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤). The only difference being the character Dai (代). Under this theory I ran a Google search on “BSゼルダの伝説 古の石盤” and lo and behold, the Berriblue blog and one other site both refer to it by this name. It’s not a perfect explanation, but I for one feel comfortable letting it go at that.”

I myself go by the theory that the game should be romanized based on how it’s pronounced, because while Japan can be confusing with it’s writing, it’s pronunciation doesn’t change that much.

(BTW, “BS Zelda REMIX” doesn’t really exist as a Satellaview broadcast – it was a misnaming for the MAP 1 Dai-3-wa ROM which has since taken on a life of it’s own.)

On “BS Tantei Club”.

The proper title for the game is BS 探偵倶楽部 雪に消えた過去 (BS Tantei Kurabu Yuki ni Kieta Kako)

Some ROM download sites refer to it as “BS Tantei Club Saihousou” or something like that. I do not know where this name came from. Any help figuring that out would be helpful.

On the “BS” Prefix.

Although ROM sites will put the “BS” prefix in front of every game title, whether or not they were on the actual game title is much less consistent.
For example, “BS F-Zero Grand Prix”, and “BS Super Mario USA” both have the “BS” prefix – note how they’re both special soundlink versions of a standard release… but there’s no “BS” in “Tamori’s Picross”, “All Japan Super Bombliss Cup 95”, or “Kodomo Chousadan Mighty Pockets”, or most “plain” SFC rereleases.
This can be a bit of confusion in and of itself.

On the Prizes the Satellaview gave out.

Recently on this BS Zelda thread we’ve been trying to figure out info on the prizes St. Giga distributed as rewards for Satellaview players. I decided to put up some of the info here as well for reference.

Most the information comes from the Satellaview History Museum, SFC MANIA, and Satellaview Heaven which I linked on the right.

From what I read, a lot of the games had certificates of victory for the high-scoring players. I haven’t seen any of them with my own eyes but the SFC MANIA article on BS Fuurai no Shiren seems to have a low-res picture of it’s specific one. These are likely highly collectible.

On the note of non-certificate prizes, Calling cards were common. For those who don’t remember the days before the cell phone boom, calling cards were cards that were used to pay for phone calls. Satellaview Heaven has up a picture of a BS Shin Onigashima one, and on Yahoo Japan Auctions I saw descriptors for a Satellaview Tsushin calling card and a Samurai Spirits calling card.

St. Giga also gave out a lot of self-branded items. A watch and a purse were featured on Satellaview Heaven and descriptions of a purse were noted. The “Pin Badge” is also likely such.

Other than that, though, I am uncertain of what the others would be… either way, these prizes seem like little trinkets produced on the cheap. No trips to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, sorry.

(pictures are linked in the forum thread.)

EDITING THIS due to updates, thanks MadHatter:
First off, on Yahoo Japan Auctions (last I saw it) is a Satellaview Tsushin Parka. Anyone wanna buy it for me? 😉
But besides that, Madhatter’s been translating the list of news articles from “Ge-mu Toranoana” (I’ll need to update the articles I have that previously referenced this for the proper name – it’s apparently based on Comic Toranoana.) listings on Kameb’s Satellaview History Museum.

Along with what I mentioned, he’s noted some of the more interesting items that were being given – apparently Golden Mario Statues, the imfamous Nintendo collectible prize, were distributed at some point – likely for BS Super Mario USA.
Game Paks were also distributed – nothing too collectible mind you, but Super Mario RPG and Kirby Super Deluxe were good games, don’t you think? Already the prizes sounds a lot more interesting.

Magazine Articles.

Excuse the long absence. This time, an actual crisis came up. I’m not gonna babble my personal stories here though. Instead, I shall thank MadHatter at the BS Zelda forum for picking up my pace in researching. I’m gonna have a few interesting articles to put up now. Let me start with this one.

For a while now I’ve been trying to nab old documents on the Satellaview – thanks to Madhatter I actually have some excellent little articles. I unfortunately am not the Master of French, but I can already see some news. 😀

These have all been thumbnail’d so they don’t actually clutter up the page too much…
(Mirrored on my own webspace for convenience.)

Read More…Read More…

Machine Translations are still (not) fun – But these are important links.

You may have seen a few of these JP site links on the list of links to the right.

Tonight I’ve decided to try using excite to translate them. Here’s some results. In the meantime, I will describe each site’s contents.

SFC MANIA – This blog has some neat pictures of Satellaview games, as well as links to zoome videos of BS Kirby on Omachahako. These videos are great to watch, as they show more of the simple Kirby games.

SATELLAVIEW HISTORY MUSEUM
– A website which has a list of the Satellaview’s “Soundlink” broadcasts as well as schedules for a lot of the months the Satellaview was functioning.

SATELLAVIEW HEAVEN – Another blog. This has info on games like BS Simcity and SatellaQ, and it has pictures of Satellaview merchandise; likely, prizes from the game contests.


Machine Translations are (not) fun.

I’ve decided to try to sue Excite’s Machine translation to translate the Japanese Wikipedia article on the Satellaview. I hope it’s good for something!

EDIT: I’ve now alos looked inot the RANDnet Article.

There’s also a set of articles about some of the Satellaview broadcastings.