Silly Legend of Zelda ゼルダの伝説 THE HYRULE FANTASY Microphone Hack

Channel:

Nerdly Pleasures (Great Hierophant)

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982

Published on January 11, 2020 11:35:17 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAtGi_y1s4Q

Game:

The Legend of Zelda (1986)

Duration: 2:25

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Using an NES or AV Famicom, no microphone handy and Pols Voice getting you down? If you can't blow 'em away, blast 'em away instead!

Info : This video required a combination of hardware and software hacking. The AV Famicom does not work with a Zapper at all through the controller port, it requires the two-wire modification shown here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/10/famicom-av-issues-and-solutions.html If you have a standard Famicom Light Gun, you can just plug that into the Expansion Port without modding. If you're using a NES, you'll have to get creative to use the FDS with it.

Next, all Japanese versions of THE HYRULE FANTASY ゼルダの伝説 (Disk System) / THE HYRULE FANTASY ゼルダの伝説 1 (Cartridge) allow you to kill Pols Voice by sword and bombs (arrows don't work in the Japanese versions), but if you're struggling there is an easy and cheap way to kill all of them on the screen at once. Shout or blow into the Controller II microphone for a moment and they should all be eliminated. All the Sharp Famicom consoles support the microphone, so this should work as well for those consoles.

Unfortunately, when Nintendo revised the Famicom into the NES and the AV Famicom, they eliminated the microphone function and there is no easy or simple way to modify these consoles to replicate the microphone's functionality. The microphone acts as a controller input as well as being funneled to the Famicom's audio output. Despite the microphone being placed on Controller II, it uses Controller I's input located at memory address $4016.

Someone at the nesdev forum identified the code snippet which Zelda uses to read the microphone. The microphone is read at a separate Data Bit (D2) compared to the regular controller buttons (D0). Moreover, it just simply read, there is no clocked shift register which must be latched beforehand as there is with the regular controller buttons, the microphone is read like a simple button. That got me thinking, "do I know any other NES/Famicom peripherals with a simple button reading method?" Then the Zapper came to me. I tried it on emulators first, but the final test was original hardware.

The hack is only a two-byte alteration to any Japanese Zelda ROM or FDS image. Open up the .NES or .FDS file in a hex editor like xvi32, use the hex editor's search function for the following hex string, AD 16 40 29 04 and change the 16 to 17 and the 04 to 10 (all hexadecimal). Save the modified file and you're good to go. This hack makes the game read memory location $4017 where Controller II always and the Zapper typically reside and the Zapper's button at Data bit D4. The Zapper needs to be fired about 10 times in fairly rapid succession for Zelda to think you're blowing into Controller II's microphone.

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