From 1995 to 2000, Nintendo ran an online service known as Satellaview for the Super Nintendo.

Once you had the Satellaview hardware, you could DL games from a Nintendo server and play them online.

Most of the game released for the BS were modified versions of classic NES games and one of the most interesting prospects of this system was real-time Zelda games.

Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS_Zelda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS_Zelda_no_Densetsu_Kodai_no_Sekiban

There's no reason Nintendo couldn't translate these games and make them available to an American audience via the VC. It would be damn cool, I'd be way more inclined to shell out cash for these than for games I have on carts.

It's hard to say whether or not it was a rip-off of the Sega Channel.

Sega Channel debuted in 1994, but was only available in the US.

Satellaview debuted in 1995, but was only available in Japan.

So Sega Channel was definitely first, but it's unclear whether Nintendo stole the idea from Sega or developed it independently.

Satellaview was ultimately a better idea though.

There aren't THAT many intracacies involved in doing it.

The most intricate game is the altered LTTP and I know exactly how it could work.

Instead of running live, the game would have to run in real-time from the time you start it. Aside from that, it would run as normal with the cutscenes, voice feeds, and everything.

The advantage to this to be you could start it whenever you felt like and if you fucked up, you could start over from Week 1.