"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