The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Zelda ALttP - BS-X Mascot Edition

Did you know that there was a pseudo-sequel to A Link to the Past released six years after the original and exclusively on a broadcast satellite service in Japan? The maker of this hack did… and thought it would be fun to port the player characters from that game into this one.

The files inside the downloadable ZIP replace the usual hero, Link, with either the Broadcast Satellaview boy or girl mascot, depending on which file you use, from BS The Legend of Zelda: The Ancient Stone Tablets… and that's it. No fancy gimmicks, no altered gameplay, no radical changes to the story (aside from some pronoun juggling). Just a good, clean character swap lovingly taken from the Japan-exclusive satellite game.

This hack also changes a couple other minor graphics that weren't used in The Ancient Stone Tablets (but are used in the original), but it's purely for aesthetics.

Updates in v1.0.3

"The Legend of Zelda: ALttP, BS-X Mascot Edition"
A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ROM hack by Joseph "Lithius" Collins

[1. (INDE) INDEX]
1. (INDE) Index --------------------------------- AKA, the table of contents.
2. (INDU) Introduction & Questions ----------- What's all this about, anyway?
3. (COTE) Archive Contents ---------- If you're missing any of these, well...
4. (HOTO) How to Use -------------------- Just in case you don't know by now!
5. (NOBU) Known Bugs --------------------------- They smell like crud vapors.
6. (SPTH) Special Thanks -------------------------- These people are awesome.
7. (COFO) Contact Information ---------------------------- How very dare you.

[2. (INDU) INTRODUCTION & QUESTIONS]
- "What is BS-X Mascot Edition?"
It's exactly what it says on the tin, my friend; a version of The Legend of
Zelda: A Link to the Past which has the BS-X Mascots in it rather than Link.

- "What's a 'BS-X Mascot?'"
The answer to this question is two-fold:
About six years after the release of A Link to the Past, Nintendo teamed up
with a company called "St. GIGA" to produce a special pseudo-sequel to the
game. This game, "BS The Legend of Zelda: The Ancient Stone Tablets," was
special as it could only be played TWICE in its entirety. Why? Because it
was designed to be played via the Super Famicom Broadcast Satellaview system
(which is where the "BS-X" acronym comes from).
Anyway, the game used your avatar from the Broadcast Satellaview game/menu,
"The Town Whose Name Was Stolen," so rather than play the game as Link, you
would play as "Mascot Girl" or "Mascot Boy" -- AKA, "the mysterious youth
that came from another world." These characters are the ones I've decided
to lovingly place into A Link to the Past.

Incidentally, you can learn more about this BS-X title and how to play it
on a replication cart or emulator at the BS Zelda HomePage:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/

- "So... this is a 'character swap' modification? That's it?"
Correct.

- "Why did you decide to do this? What was wrong with playing as Link?"
To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of A Link to the Past. ("BLASPHEMY!!")
In fact, as far as 2D Zelda games go, I GREATLY prefer Link's Awakening.
But that aside, what inspired me to do this was... actually playing the
aforementioned Satellaview game -- or rather, the fixed-up, "offline" version
you can make using the files from the BS Zelda HomePage. (See above.)
I actually had a lot of fun playing that remixed game -- much more fun that I
ever did playing the original! (Ganon's Tower can eat dirt...) So... after
taking a look under the hood of the BS-X and original games, I decided to go
ahead and pull the BS-X Mascot Girl into the land of Hyrule from six years
prior. And... then I decided to do the same with the BS-X Mascot Boy.
Because why not?

- "Did you make anything new for this hack?"
There's a few brand new graphics to replace ones missing from The Ancient
Stone Tablets... and one of the things I did for the Girl Version, I'm
particularly proud of... but otherwise, the graphics come from the BS-X game.

- "Did you change any part of the storyline?"
Honestly, no. I thought about it... I really did. But ultimately, I just
decided to keep things the way they were... aside from changing male pronouns
to female ones in the Girl Version, of course.

If you'd like some sort of explanation as to why Link's uncle is taking care
of some kid with rounded ears, well... just suffice to say that your "uncle"
found you when you were young... or something like that.

- "Is that your way of excusing yourself for not editing the ears of the
sprites so that they're pointed?"
No. It was a conscious decision to keep the sprites the way they are instead
of making them "Hylian elf-people," I assure you.

[3. (COTE) ARCHIVE CONTENTS]
- [Patches]
- JDC_ZeldaLttP_BSX Mascot Boy vx.x.x (H).bps
- JDC_ZeldaLttP_BSX Mascot Boy vx.x.x (NH).bps
- JDC_ZeldaLttP_BSX Mascot Girl vx.x.x (H).bps
- JDC_ZeldaLttP_BSX Mascot Girl vx.x.x (NH).bps
The most current version of the patches.
(H) = For use with ROMs with a HEADER!
(NH) = For use with ROMs with NO HEADER!
NOTE: If the Boy and Girl versions have different numbers, it
means that one receieved an update the other didn't.
- JDC_ZLttP-BS-X Mascots Changelog.txt
What's new? What's OLD? Find out here!
- JDC_ZLttP-BS-X Mascots Readme.txt
This is the very document you are reading!

DO NOTE: THE CHANGE LOGS CONTAIN SPOILERS AND MAKE NO ATTEMPTS TO HIDE THEM!
Most changes probably won't be real game-breakers, so you can probably
ignore the text files, if you want to play the game and try to figure
out what's brand new content and what's just rehashed stuff.

[4. (HOTO) HOW TO USE]
Things You'll Need
- The BPS file of choice that SHOULD have come with this TXT file
- A Link to the Past (U) ROM (which I will NOT provide)
- A program to apply IPS files to ROMs
- A Super NES emulator to play the game

Suggested Programs
- PATCHING: Floating IPS (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1040/) or
beat (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/893/)
Floating IPS is easy to use and very reliable. You can use the unheadered
patch on both a HEADERED or an UNHEADERED ROM with Floating IPS.
With beat, however, if the PATCH is for one kind of ROM, you can only
use that patch with that specific kind of ROM.
- EMULATION: SNES9X (http://www.snes9x.com/) or
ZSNES (http://www.zsnes.com/)
Both are fairly lightweight emulators. Just be warned. SNES9X likes to
associate file types to itself and ZSNES' sound engine is a little off.

How to Apply the patches to the ROM, The Simple Way
- Toss your UNMODIFIED ROM and the BPS patches from this archive into
into the same directory as your patching utility of choice.
- Open your patching utility. Direct it to the ROM and patch.
IMPORTANT: If using beat, PLEASE USE THE RIGHT PATCH WITH THE RIGHT ROM.
The patch may incorrectly be applied, otherwise.
Also note, if your ROM's modified date is different from the
one I used (which it may be, if you're adding this to a ROM
with no header), beat may tell you the patching failed.
You can ignore that. The patch should work just fine.
- Do the command that makes the ROM patched. (Varies by program.)
- If everything went well, your Link to the Past ROM should be patched.
NO CHANGE IN SIZE SHOULD OCCUR. If it does, something may have gone wrong.
- Enjoy!

IF ROM DOES NOT RUN, you more than likely tried to apply the wrong patch to
the wrong ROM or wrong type of ROM.

[5. (NOBU) KNOWN BUGS]
_v1.0.0 ONWARD_
- There seems to be some odd (or sometimes VERY odd) compatability issues with
the Girl Version and certain other ROM hacks due to the altered dialogue.
Most of these issues are graphical, strangely enough, but if you combine
certain patches with others, you may also experience scrolling issues in
dungeons and missing dialogue (such as the Save/Continue prompt).
If you intend to use this hack with another, make sure to add this one FIRST.
That seemed to be the most stable way to do things, in my experience.
Also, it's probably not a good idea to add this hack to any COMPLICATED ones,
such as A Link to the Past DX or Parallel Worlds as they may not play nice
together. (But I'd love to be proven wrong on that!)

[6. (SPTH) SPECIAL THANKS]
- Con -- https://www.romhacking.net/community/1110/
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/
For a TON of neat little hacks for A Link to the Past (none of which I used
in THIS hack) as well as his work on the Satellaview titles and unofficial
homepage.

- Romhacking.net -- http://www.romhacking.net (Duh...)
For an having an awesome community and a treasure trove of hacking
materials, resources, help, and pretty much anything you could want!

- kerberos7 -- http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=69540
They were able to dig up the address for Bunny Link's palette when I
couldn't find it. Thanks!

- PuzzleDude -- http://www.romhacking.net/community/1346/
Originally found Bunny Link's palette, from what I can gather.

- Sephiroth3 -- http://www.romhacking.net/community/504/
He made the premeir Link to the Past editor which allowed me to freely edit
the dialogue ("Monologues?") as well as edit the title screen.

- mdw -- http://www.romhacking.net/community/506/
Made a very nice table-based hex editor which made fixing up the ellipses
Hyrule Magic broke pretty easy.

- YY -- http://www.geocities.jp/yy_6502/
They made an extremely easy, feature-rich tile editing program which makes
editing graphics in ROMs a breeze! It's what I use all the time.

- Christian Maas -- http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/
For making a dang good hex editor.
Check out XVI32 if you're in the market for an easy-to-use hex editor!
(I ended up using this one once I figured out I could just replace ellipses
with a different character, then search for that later on.)

- FuSoYa -- http://www.romhacking.net/community/244/
https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/
He made the very helpful "Zelda 3 Compression Tools". This let me edit the
title screen more creatively and allowed me to change something in the
font which comes into play exactly one time during the game!

- BohepansTheThird - http://www.youtube.com/user/BohepansTheThird
My long-time friend has a habit of finding things I end up missing in my
ROM hacks and other things. And that... is something I can appreciate!

[7. (COFO) CONTACT INFORMATION]
If you have any questions, comments, etc. you can hit me up at the
ROMhacking.net forums (http://www.romhacking.net/forum/) under the username
"Joseph Lithius". I'll do my best to answer your inquiries!
Unless the inquiry is "What is the meaning of life?"
Everyone knows the answer to that one!

Enjoy the ROM hack(s?) and SERIOUSLY, SCREW GANON'S TOWER!!
~ J

No-Intro Name: Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past (USA)
(No-Intro version 20130701-030720)
ROM/File SHA-1: 6D4F10A8B10E10DBE624CB23CF03B88BB8252973