Role-playing video game
Typically action RPGs feature each player directly controlling a single character in real time, and feature a strong focus on combat and action with plot and character interaction kept to a minimum. Early action RPGs tended to follow the template set by 1980s Nihon Falcom titles such as the "Dragon Slayer" and "Ys" series, which feature hack and slash combat where the player character's movements and actions are controlled directly, using a keyboard or game controller, rather than using menus. This formula was refined by the action-adventure game, "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which set the template used by many subsequent action RPGs, including innovations such as an open world, nonlinear gameplay, battery backup saving, and an attack button that animates a sword swing or projectile attack on the screen. The game was largely responsible for the surge of action-oriented RPGs released since the late 1980s, both in Japan and North America. "The Legend of Zelda" series would continue to exert an influence on the transition of both console and computer RPGs from stat-heavy, turn-based combat towards real-time action combat in the following decades.
Satellaview games from The Legend of Zelda series
BS Zelda no Densetsu is an action-adventure game first broadcast to Satellaview owners in August 1995. It is the fifth game developed by Nintendo belonging to "The Legend of Zelda" series, but it does not feature Link, the protagonist of the prior four games. Instead it features the same main character that the player selects in the Satellaview game, "BS-X", and indeed the games are linked functionally and roughly through plot. As such "BS Zelda no Densetsu", together with "BS Zelda no Densetsu: MAP2" and "BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban", is generally considered to be a spin-off title from the main "Zelda" series. Stylistically similar to the original top-down "The Legend of Zelda" for the NES, but utilizing the 16-bit graphical capabilities of the SNES, "BS Zelda no Densetsu" is also occasionally regarded as an enhanced remake of the original game. This conception most likely arises from the superficial stylistic similarities of the games and the fact that the game is no longer playable in its original form and thus the differing plot of the game is more or less unknown to the general gaming public.