The Satellaview, roughly translated into English, means "games from space," or at least that's the definition we came up with after failing to find it in the dictionary. As for the specifics, this little hot tamale connected to the Super Famicom (sorry, no SNES equivalent for us gamers unfortunate enough to live in the States) via a connection port found on the bottom of the system itself. In case you were ever wondering what that port on the bottom of your SNES was for, now you have an idea.

Then again you're probably thinking to yourself, what about the SNES-CD attachment? You mean the one that got the ax some years ago? Yes, you're right, the SNES-CD did attach to the bottom of the system like so...

Though, unfortunately for the SNES-CD, by the end of 1993, Nintendo felt that "the need to continue developing an SNES add-on became obsolete." However, that didn't stop them from releasing the Broadcast Satellaview-X (BS-X) in 1995, utilizing a similar design scheme to that of the SNES-CD.

This innovative hardware would usher in a new era of gaming where gamers would be able to download new content, news, and even games via a satellite link (rumor has it these same satellites were used to spy on Mars). But there was a catch (there's always a catch), though the downloads were free, users could only access them during certain hours of the day (between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM) when the content was being "broadcast," as it were. On top of that, you were subject to watching advertisement after advertisement while your games were downloading.

For the endeavor of turning this dream into a reality, Nintendo partnered with Satellite Digital Audio Broadcasting Co. (or St. Giga for short) to help bring this content to households all over Japan. St. Giga itself is a satellite TV station that broadcasts digital music and data programming. Between 1995 and 2000, St. Giga would broadcast TV shows for most of the day then at four o'clock gamers everywhere could sit in front of their television and play their favorite BS-X games... Well, provided they were being broadcast on that particular day (yep, that's right! Not all games were offered as a whole). In fact, players would often have to download games on specific dates and they were able to check these dates via the newsflash board found through the BS-X interface. Once downloaded these games could be saved to an 8-megabit BS-X Memory Pak that oddly resembled the Super Gameboy.

The Broadcast Satellaview, being the power house that it is, sported a 512 Kb memory chip to help boost the Super Famicom's capabilities, as well as a 1 Mb ROM chip that contained the operating system necessary to run the Satellaview. In addition to that, the Satellaview also came equipped with a 256 Kb flash memory for storing games should the user not have access to the BS memory pak. Naturally, 256 Kb didn't offer much space so old games would have to be deleted before they could be replaced with new ones (moral of the story, always buy a memory card).

Setting up your Satellaview involved first connecting it to the bottom of your Super Famicom and then into this sort of "L" shaped thing, which was some how connected to an AV selector via what appears to be a cardboard tube of some sort... Er, you know what, here's a diagram...

Luckily, navigating the Satellaview was made easy through it's intuitive interface (which in itself was like a game, unlike the diagram). Player's were first asked to enter their name and select a gender. This information would be carried across games where your character was represented by an unnamed Satellaview mascot (depicting whichever gender you chose). Such as in BS The Legend of Zelda: The Ancient Stone Tablets.

Once you've selected a gender and chosen a name it's time to hit the streets. It's a good idea to wander around for a bit and get a good feel for where every thing is. Each building here represents a different station or game and there were four stations in particular;

Electronic Magazine

Where gamers could surf previews of new games and even check out demos.

Nation-wide game competition

A place where users could solve quizzes online and even play with your friends in multiplayer games.

Data Present

If you were looking for cheats, maps, or tips then this was the station for you. Data Present had all the latest information to help you get to the next level.

Town News

Town news was home to all the latest gossip and was a place where you could go to see scores posted online. If your score was high enough you may have been lucky enough to win a prize, such as a telephone card or a flash cart.

In addition to this, Satellaview even offered groundbreaking interactive advancements, such as Live Voice and a Real-Time clock. Live Voice was offered in a few games, such as BS The Legend of Zelda and BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets. In these games players were helped along by a live narrator who would guide them through the game and even offer helpful tips and advice. The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets in particular featured a Nintendo first where every cut scene was fully voice acted live over the air. However, because of the inclusion of Live Voice BS Zelda games could not be played at any time like most BS-X games, but only during special hours.

The Real-Time clock added a new level of depth to the game. Rather than play BS Zelda as a whole the game was broken up into small episodes, each an hour long. These episodes were played in real time (no pausing to go to the bathroom, or you might miss out) including cut scenes and time spent with the game paused. Doing side quests earned you extra points but subtracted precious seconds away from the clock. These episodes were further broken up into weeks, each week unlocking a different part of the map.

The Real-Time clock also had a great impact on gameplay. At certain times a number of different things could happen to both impede and help you (such as having unlimited bombs or arrows, or maybe health restoring fairies would appear), and at a different time each week a dreaded fog would descend upon the Overworld followed by a thunderstorm that would restrict exploration (by putting out the fuses on your bombs) and increase the difficulty of the game by changing all Overworld enemies to Zoras.

Unfortunately, in spite of all its cool innovations and flashy lights (complete with bells and whistles) the Satellaview just never caught on and St. Giga officially stopped broadcasting Satellaview content on June 30th of 2000, closing the doors on it forever. Though all was not doom and gloom at Nintendo. They were still determined to create an online gaming experience and another innovation was just around the corner...