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Hailinel

I wrote this little thing (it's not actually a little thing): http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/hailinel/blog/lightning-returns-wha...

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A Brief Look at the Satellaview with Fire Emblem

Here's a brief history lesson for you guys.

The Satellaview was a console accessory for the Super Famicom and a game streaming service that Nintendo ran back in the 1990s. It was sort of like the Sega Channel, in its own way. Games on the service commonly had titles that began with "BS," which stood for "Broadcast Service." Some of these games used a streaming technology called SoundLink to stream music, voice acting, and other live elements along with the game, and because of the various backend requirements involved, these specific games could only be broadcast at certain times of the day.

Among these games was a four-episode Fire Emblem title. The episodes served as prequels to the original game, but there's unfortunately no way to play the games in their original form, even with an emulator, because of the way that the sound was streamed. Well, you could emulate the game, at least. It would just be a very quiet game.

Anyway, I recently found this little gem on Youtube. It's a full playthrough of one of BS Fire Emblem's chapters, apparently recorded on video years ago. It's complete with music and voice acting, and it should give people a good idea of how such Satellaview titles actually worked, complete with loading screens and tutorial voice dialogue. It's over an hour long, so feel free to skip around.

Obviously, the game had it's share of limitations, as there are no battle screen animations, but in a twist, this Fire Emblem seemed to actually let you take your turn back in the event of a character getting killed, which was handy given that this game had a solid three hour time limit, assuming you played it from the start of the broadcast window.

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