Satellaview - BS-X: Sore Wa Namae O Nusumareta Machi No Monogatari

BS-X: Sore Wa Namae O Nusumareta Machi No Monogatari

Bundled with the Satellaview came a slotted application cartridge with the title BS-X : The Story of The Town Whose Name Has Been Stolen (BS-X それは名前を盗まれた街の物語, BS-X: Sore wa Namae o Nusumareta Machi no Monogatari?). The application on this cartridge took the form of a game, however its actual purpose was to serve as an interactive menu system for the console subunit. On start-up the player would enter a name, selected either a male or female character avatar, and then move the avatar around a virtual town. Houses and shops in the town served as download locations where the player could directly download games, particular game data, or digital magazines. The download would write game data into temporary memory locations which would remain until the player downloaded a new game to take its place.

Apart from downloads, players could also travel to in-game locations such as the Wall Newspaper Co. (かべ新聞社, kabe shinbunsha?) to read brief text-only postcard-like messages from St.GIGA and Nintendo that announced contest winners, revealed future games and future programming schedule details, and served to raise awareness for celebrity events relating to SoundLink Magazine performers' off-Satellaview activities. Furthermore, the avatar was equipped with an inventory and game currency which could be spent on various in-game items such as telephone cards, vehicle tickets, fish bait, and shoes that would enable the player to dash rather than walk everywhere. While the BS-X application cartridge had none of the challenges typically associated with games, it featured a plot of sorts and thus can be considered a video game in a narratalogical sense.

A series of downloadable games including Dezaemon (BS Version): BS-X Shooting (デザエモンＢＳ版　ＢＳ－Ｘシューティング?) (April 22, 1996), SatellaWalker (サテラウォーカー?) (June 29, 1997), and SatellaWalker 2 (サテラウォーカー２?) (Feb. 15, 1998) were also released featuring plotlines set in the Town Whose Name Has Been Stolen. The SatellaWalker SoundLink game series notably involved extended RPG-like adventures with the avatar as the main character and the two Satellaview mascots, Satebô (サテぼう?) (an anthropomorphic satellite) and Parabô (パラぼう?) (an anthropomorphic parabolic satellite dish) providing the main supporting roles. Designed by Noriko Kitamura (北村典子?) with help from Masaru Nishida (西田 勝?), these two characters featured heavily in all materials relating to the Satellaview appearing not only on the BS-X cassette, but also in the Satellaview manual and brochures, various print ads and magazines, and on certificates of achievement awarded with prizes for various events (see below for an example of a prize certificate bearing the likeness of Parabô).