Navi Trackers (Tetra's Trackers)

After the BS Zeldas special, I thought it is worth taking a look at another Japan-exclusive Zelda installment: Navi Trackers. It's even based on another set of BS-X games, which was one of Eiji Aonuma's earliest projects, called Marvelous. There were three games in total, a singleplayer title on the Super Nintendo, but also two Broadcast Satellaview titles, where you had to collect stamps in a specific order. And this is where the idea for Navi Trackers came from.

It is a third game mode in Four Swords Adventures, which is only present in the Japanese (and Korean) version of the game. It was originally planned as a standalone game called "Tetra's Trackers", but then was added to Four Swords Adventures as an additional gametype, next to Hyrulian Adventure and Shadow Battles, probably because this wouldn't have been very successful as a separate game. I've never played it myself, but I did some research about it.

Storywise, it takes place right after The Wind Waker, where Link has to prove himself worthy of being a pirate in Tetra's "Pirate Test". Three other pirates are disguised as Link and battling with him in a little contest. The story is introduced in a nice little opening cinematic, which is quite famous, because screenshots from there were sometimes mistaken for a Four Swords 3D game:

Navi Trackers is more or less the closest thing to a Zelda party game there is. The gameplay is about treasure hunting and collecting medals and there's no sword fighting involved. All of the gameplay takes entirely place on the players' GameBoy Advance screens, the TV screen shows a map of the current level and the Navigator, who hosts the game.

Normally, the Navigator is Tetra, but you can also unlock Sue-Belle (the pot carrying girl from Outset), or the yelling Red King of Lions. The Navigators and all the other characters, who appear on the TV screen, are fully voice acted. They are also able to spell your name written in Hiragana, which is believed to be the reason why the game wasn't released outside of Japan. But there were older screenshots of the English version from E3 2003, which show, that it was planned to simply use a letter of the alphabet for each player like "Mr. T" or "Ms. A" in the English version. So, the real reason, why Navi Trackers was excluded from the US and European versions, is unknown.

E3 2003 version

final Japanese version

In the game you have to visit the pirates, who are carrying flags with numbers on them, in the correct order up to 100. This gives you medals and you can also collect up to four "Lucky Stars", which multiply the value of your medals and make you walk faster (similar to the Pegasus Seeds in Four Swords). To get the medals you have to pay three rupees for them, but the number of rupees is later multiplied by the Lucky Stars.

There are several items to help you including the Magic Hammer, Roc's Feather, Pegasus Boots, Shovel, Magic Cape, Warp Balloon, Pirate's Charm, or the Unlucky Pot. The latter is used to blind the other players, but you can also hit them with normal pots or the Magic Hammer, if you like. When you get hurt, you will loose rupees. With the Pirate's Charm you can ask the Navigator to help you. There is also a series of minigames, one randomly chosen minigame is played at the game start as a chance to get some items. And others are played during the game, hosted by the amazing Salvatore on the TV screen.

There are 12 different maps in the game, which have to be unlocked one after another. Each level also has a Secret Seashell. Every of those hidden shells unlocks additional features for the game like minigames, the other Navigators or the Expert Mode.

The nice thing is that you can actually play this alone against the clock or against a CPU controlled Tingle, unlike Shadow Battles or the original Four Swords, which are both not playable in Singleplayer. The GameBoy Advance graphics are quite beautiful and with the exception of the Link sprites absolutely unique in the series, so it's even more a shame, that this wasn't released world-wide. It would have been definitely a great addition to Four Swords Adventures. Due to the GBA connection it's also unlikely, that this game will somehow get a rerelease on the Wii, though you could use a Nintendo DS instead. So, this one is probably as lost as the BS Zeldas are.