BS The Legend of Zelda: Inishie no Sekiban

What IS Kodai no Sekiban?
For a more in-depth explanation that goes outside of the interests of this guide, see the Wikipedia article.

Well, I assume you suddenly found a "new" Zelda game exists, and are now very keen to know what it's all about.

Kodai no Sekiban is like a "second quest" (remember Zelda 1?) for Nintendo's famous Zelda: Link To The Past, which I shall refer to throughout as "ALttP". It has the same basic overworld of ALttP, but it is far more than simply a Master Quest, as they have added the rental shops and the timer events, as well as changing the contents of all the caves and houses and various other things.

This walkthrough anticipates that you have already played through at least a little of ALttP in order to have a general understanding of gameplay mechanics.

A Brief History of Kodai no Sekiban, or How It Came To Us
It may surprise you to learn that the game was not for the SNES at all! It was in fact a game for the BS-X (which stands for Broadcast Satellite, and X means "unknown"). The BS-X was a Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) base unit that sat underneath the SNES, not unlike the proposed CD drive. The games were sent via a satellite and stored on flash-RAM in the base unit. The player could also buy additional storage carts that sat atop it in a Super GameBoy-like adapter.

The game was broadcast live (one episode per week), and the majority of cutscenes etc. in the game actually had live voice actors for the story-driven parts. This is why when you are playing you will find several points where the characters move around but don't say anything through text.

Changes since ALttP
Since this is basically like a mod for ALttP, I will discuss what has been changed since that game. First, a quick rundown of the controls. The game controls the same as ALttP, except that you begin Week 1 with no sword (therefore A serves no purpose until you get the sword) and R now displays a help box; you can move the cursor around to find out what all the buttons and items do. This is because the game had no manual at all; people just downloaded and played right away so each BS-X game had some sort of explanatory feature built in.

Also you can change direction when running with the Pegasus Boots, an addition that only found its way into Link's Awakening (it's not in any of the others).

The Flute (or "Ocarina" for all your 3D-age Zelda fans) now acts like the Magic Mirror, and will warp you back to the beginning of the dungeon.

Finally, the game was divided into and playable in four separate weeks, each played out in real-time. This guide is divided up on a week-by-week basis to match.