BS The Legend of Zelda: Inishie no Sekiban/Emulation

This section is all about playing the game on a computer, the only way to play.

The legality of emulation

The original game was divided into four episodes, and each was available for exactly one hour on one single day. The game was played live with live voiceovers, so you COULD NOT play it outside of the broadcast hours. We have gotten confirmation from Japanese players that the game's flash-cart backup was rendered unplayable outside of this time.

Therefore, Nintendo is in no way losing any profits through the emulation of this game and the distribution of its ROMs. The first and last "rerelease" was merely a rebroadcast in the following year.

If one day Nintendo does rerelease it, all ROM information here will be removed and visitors will be expected to have purchased Nintendo's infinitely superior and fully working version. Until such time, emulation is unfortunately the only way for anyone to play this game. Read the BS Zelda Homepage's full emulation policy for more.

Where to get the ROMs

Because the game no longer exists even on its original media, the ONLY way to play is via emulation. Sadly this is not very accurate, but the game is less broken than it used to be even a few months ago, and together with this guide you can easily finish the game.

You can find both the ROMs and emulators on this page. Download the four ROMs at the very top and SNES9x from the link slightly below. Do not worry yourself with all the other files and patches on this page, you only need these four plus SNES9x. The others are not necessary for gameplay and merely allow other customisations and further experimentation.

Note that while the original game was in Japanese the English translation is now fully complete, and you are now able to play from beginning to end without seeing a single word of Japanese.

Which emulator to use

At the moment, SNES9x 1.42 or 1.43 gives the most accurate experience. The WIP versions of SNES9x will also work, but they have unnecessary slowdown issues that complicate gameplay.

You can get SNES9x from its official website or from Zophar's Domain, or from The BS Zelda Homepage itself.

Changing Weeks

When you download the game, you will find four ROMs. Each episode, originally one a Week, must be played separately. However in order to carry across your data from one Week to another you must rename the .srm file.

You will find the SRM file in the same folder you put the ROMs in. For example, say your Week 1 ROM was "Week1.smc" and the next is "Week2.smc", that means you rename "Week1.srm" to "Week2.srm" and so forth for each Week. If you've hidden file extensions one or more of these files may appear without the extension. If this is the case make sure you keep the filenames the same by NOT adding .srm if it's already there.