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Shadow Ninja 64 posted:I think one of my personal favorites is the statue in Super Mario 64 that reads L IS REAL 2041. That one little message sparked tons of debate and rumors about Luigi being hidden and unlockable in thousands of increasingly ridiculous ways. Did anyone ever ask someone at Nintendo what the texture was actually supposed to say? I've heard a lot of people saying it's intended to read "Eternal Star," but I don't know if that's ever been confirmed.
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Aug 30, 2010 22:09
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Killswitch sounds like what would happen if Suda 51 and David Cage collaborated on a game. I'd say the only one of these that I know anything about is the old Stop n' Swop dealie with the Banjo-Kazooie series. Basically, there were a bunch of items in the first Banjo-Kazooie game which could only be accessed by inputting special cheat codes (which were extracted from the ROM and appear to have been intended for debug purposes, not player use). These items served no purpose, and when collected appeared on a new menu screen called "Stop n' Swop." The implication was that these items would have some sort of use in the sequel. And, indeed, that was exactly what Rare intended them for. Stop n' Swop was going to be a feature where, by hot swapping back and forth between the first and second game, you could unlock stuff. Sadly, however, this feature never came to fruition, mostly because of changes in the N64 hardware which made such hot swapping much less feasible. As a result, Stop n' Swop was more or less abandoned... ...kinda. Even though Stop n' Swop was officially dead, people were still intrigued with the idea, and decided to start digging through the ROMs of both games to see if any remnants of the old features remained. While the might seem, simple it wasn't. See, the Banjo-Kazooie games are very interestingly programmed, in that they seem to be specifically designed to make it hard to look through the ROM for stuff. Case in point, no one even knew the secret items existed before the debug codes were hacked, even though some of these items had whole unique rooms and models associated with them. It was almost as though Rare knew people were going to hack their game looking for stuff and made their code as convoluted as possible to mask their secrets. Where Stop n' Swop gets interesting is in later Rare games. See, Rare likes trolling their fans. They really do. So in basically every game they've released since Banjo-Tooie, they've included some sly remark about Stop n' Swop and how "mysterious" it is. Case in point, in Grabbed by the Ghoulies there's a whiteboard with cryptic "hints" on how to get Stop n' Swop to work...which are of course total bullshit but still got people worked up for a few months. What I'm saying is Stop n' Swop is basically the greatest troll ever pulled off by a developer, and probably one of the reasons Banjo-Kazooie remained so relevant to a lot of people through the years. As an aside, one good thing to come of all this is that hackers, in looking for Stop n' Swop, have managed to pull out a ton of interesting "abandoned" features from Banjo-Tooie and Banjo-Kazooie, including... -A two-player co-op mode for the main game of Banjo-Tooie -Several unused maps in Banjo-Tooie -Several unused music tracks in Banjo-Kazooie -Bottles' Revenge (This is pretty incredible, it's a more or less full-featured mode which allows a second player to control enemies, and it even gets its own intro cutscene. No one knows why it was removed other than...well...it's a little awkward to play)
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Aug 30, 2010 23:21
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Amorphous Blob posted:Didn't they add Stop n' Swop related goodies to the xbox arcade releases? Yep, and that was more or less the end of the mystery. That said, with all the crazy crap people have managed to pull out of those old carts thus far, I don't think the hackery is going to stop any time soon. Like I said, thus stuff is really well hidden. Bottles' Revenge, for example, wasn't found until many, many years after the SnS search began, despite having its own models, dialog, cutscene, and radar screen associated with it.
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Aug 30, 2010 23:30
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Jail Game, by  Amorphous Blob posted:Something about paranormal activity in games really creeps me out. Maybe it's the way lines between the fictional actions in the game and the reality outside of it are crossed? I've always wanted to design a game that did this intentionally. Like, it would have to be part of a much larger, complete game, but just add in some obscure element that's really creepy but hard to find. Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Aug 31, 2010 |
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Aug 31, 2010 04:22
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Alberto Basalm posted:Ever played Eternal Darkness? No, but I've heard good things. It's a little different because you go into ED with the mindset of "This game is going to try to gently caress with my head." I'm talking about something more like that "Upside Down Sinners" room mentioned earlier.
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Aug 31, 2010 05:01
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Yeah I remember this. Pete said something about how there was something in Fable no one had found yet and that just sent people mental. Given his track record I'd wager it was just a baseless lie though. I love when developers say that. I seem to recall someone at Nintendo saying that about Ocarina of Time and causing a similar freakout.
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Aug 31, 2010 20:20
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miscellaneous14 posted:Yume Nikki is a whole lot of this. The game is pretty much made of completely loving random easter eggs designed to creep the hell out of you. The video of someone making "Uboa" appear was actually what got the game its' bit of popularity, which requires you to wander around a completely pointless and hard to navigate area until you find a little house with a girl in it, and keep flicking the lights on and off until you trigger something like a 1 in 200 chance that the room will suddenly start shaking violently and the girl will turn into a demonic face-thing that sends you off to what could only be described as hell if you touch it. This is basically all I've ever wanted from a horror game. I must play this right now.
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Sep 1, 2010 00:54
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Jetsetlemming posted:I found the Mario 64 one: Yeah, it really drops off when the whole "picture of my family" thing comes into the story. Still, I have a soft spot for haunted video game stories and this at least started off well.
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Sep 1, 2010 22:57
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Green Puddin posted:I think there is an article in there about someone finding the Light Temple and having some pretty impressive photos for it to boot (for my 11 year old mind at least). I remember that one. It was one of the better hoaxes I've seen, particularly because it came out during a time when Photoshop wasn't such a "thing," so it was rare to see such well-doctored photos. In fact, I don't think it was ever revealed just how the guy faked those photos, but it was very clearly image doctoring and not straight hacking (due to inconsistencies like Link's model being reversed in one shot).
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Sep 2, 2010 08:10
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 I can't believe this actually looked real to me at some point. 
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Sep 2, 2010 09:38
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I'd say that "fun" is a measure of how much a game entertains you, not necessarily how happy (or...aroused, I guess) it makes you when you play. You play a survival-horror game to be creeped out, for example. I'm not sure what negative emotions he thinks should be tapped in games. Boredom and frustration?
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Sep 4, 2010 08:42
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TOOT BOOT posted:I can think of a couple ways you could make a game that deletes itself permanently, but it would involve custom hardware and there's still the possibility some smartass EE would figure out how to dump it. This is perhaps the one area where they could have attributed a "mysterious" quality to the game. Saying something like "attempts to back up the game files have been met with mysterious freezes, system crashes, and error messages filled with nonsense characters."
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Sep 4, 2010 21:30
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:There was one I remember reading about a while back. It was an interview with the devs behind Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. I can't remember which of the games they were talking about, but they were asked if there was anything people had yet to discover about the game. One of them mentioned that there was a super-secret that had yet to be uncovered, but were reluctant to reveal any more on the subject. I never heard anything else about it, however. No idea if it was true, or it was just them screwing with the audience, but if it's the latter, it's probably one of the few cases of the developers doing it (outside of MK's 'Kano Transformations' counter, which was there solely to scam more cash out of players). I can kinda believe it in Shadow of the Colossus. There's so much "empty" space in that game that I wouldn't be surprised if there's something tucked way out of the way that no one's seen. Either that, or he was talking about the secret garden, but I'm pretty sure that was discovered fairly early on.
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Sep 4, 2010 23:46
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DiminishedAngel posted:I remember in the original Pokemon Red/Blue there were dozens of absurb rumors about how to get Mew but one of them ended up actually working (albeit through a glitch rather than any intentional system). The glitch, as I understand it, is that on that stretch of land there's no code in place for what Pokemon you should encounter, so it makes you encounter the last pokemon you fought. Specifically, it looks at the number of the pokemon you last fought, and loads that up. (Pokemon aren't just numbered for show. It's a big part of how the game is coded, too!) That said, there are many events (such as entering the Safari Zone or talking to the old man) which can alter this number. Somehow, that crazy sequence of events tricks the game into thinking the last pokemon you fought was #151, causing it to load up Mew. Missingno and the like are what happens if you convince the game the last Pokemon you fought was number 000, or some other number not connected to a Pokemon.
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Sep 5, 2010 04:42
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Lacool posted:Because every game ever basically takes for granted that the player has an infinite number of tries, and death is never a real punishment besides an inconvenience at most. A game that really and truly only gives you one shot, just like life, would have a really powerful message if done correctly. The trick is to do this in a way that's not just frustrating to the player. You can make death have a profound impact without that impact just undoing everything the player has done. I remember once I had an idea for a game where, if you died, you had to start the entire game over. However, upon your death, you could spend the points you'd earned to level yourself up. You could only level up by dying and starting over, so on each subsequent life you get stronger and could make it farther into the game (and get to the point at which you died more easily). That seems like a way to make death profound and important while at the same time not just making the player snap their controller every time it happens.
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Sep 7, 2010 23:45
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Wandering Knitter posted:If I had any skills I would work on something just to make my brain stop, but last time I checked you can't knit a video game. You could knit a screenshot.
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Sep 8, 2010 02:37
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mew force shoelace posted:That comes from something, if you are stepping through the game frame by frame for a speed run pressing up or B will advance the random seed by one step. Meaning if you want a pixel perfect game you have to do that sometimes. That mutated into 'holding up and B catches pokemon" I'm amazed so many people had button-press rituals for catching Pokemon, when I was the exact opposite. I always thought the secret was to not touch ANYTHING once the ball is out or you could blow your chances of catching the Pokemon. (This was also my ritual for getting good items in Mario Kart. Always let the items cycle fully to get the best stuff.)
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Sep 8, 2010 23:42
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Um, those both link to the same place. EDIT: And now they don't. Thanks.
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Sep 9, 2010 03:28
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Adus posted:Yeah, I wonder how long the videos took to make. If it wasn't for the whole painfully unsubtle BEN DROWNED thing at the very end I would have liked it a lot more though. Yeah, he should have just had the third file called YOU GUYS. EDIT: I think it might be because that particular music track sounds a little too much like the "Price is Right" failure music. vvvvvvvvvv Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Sep 9, 2010 |
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Sep 9, 2010 04:42
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I think it's also more spooky because it's all done with assets from the game, not "and when I loaded it back up, there was a picture...of MEEEEEEEEE!!" or anything like that. I get the feeling this guy just found a list of weird, glitchy gameshark codes somewhere and built a narrative around them.
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Sep 9, 2010 05:34
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Full Battle Rattle posted:You would have to have a pretty intimate knowledge of the code to the game to be able to do this, wouldn't you? I'm not a ROM hacker myself, but from what I know about the subject, not really. There's a site called The Rare Witch Project which used to create a bunch of "hoax" videos for Banjo-Kazooie which involved way more intricate hacking than this (at times even creating whole new locations.) The majority of the spooky things in these videos (the elegy statue appearing wherever Link goes, the hosed up Clock Town, and the bent-sideways Link for example) look like the kinds of random crap I used to see on gameshark sites back in 1999. Other things (like the sequence with the Skull Kid setting Link on fire) would involve more deliberate hacking of the game script but don't seem impossible either. Also, in addition to the gameshark codes, there's clearly a lot of clever editing going on here, particularly for the little "screamer" moments where Majora's Mask appears. Again, though, that's about five minutes in Windows Movie Maker. I'm not trying to put these videos down or anything. I'm actually commending the guy's creativity in putting all these elements together into a narrative. When I say "it looks like he took a bunch of random gameshark codes and put a story to them," I don't mean it in a bad way. It's a drat clever idea!
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Sep 9, 2010 05:54
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Wandering Knitter posted:I am a complete coward. Can someone explain in spoiler tags what happens in those Zelda videos? More or less exactly what's described in the attached posts. Just read 'em.
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Sep 10, 2010 01:26
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Wandering Knitter posted:I am a grade-A scaredy cat, Mister. Okay, here's the jist of it. In the post, the guy explains that he purchased his Majora's Mask cart from a MYSTERIOUS OLD MAN! While it looked like a bootleg, it played fine, and actually had an old save on it named "BEN." This save file seemed to be glitching the game a bit (causing people in-game to call him BEN instead of Link) so he deleted it. This is the point at which the videos begin. The game starts going nuts with creepy glitches. Music plays backwards, the Elegy of Emptiness statue keeps appearing at random, and he ends up stuck in a hosed-up version of Clock Town with no people. Then there's a weird bit where he appears in that Skull Kid encounter from the start of the game. No matter what he tries to do, he ends up bursting into flames and dying. Finally, the game boots him out to the file select screen. The BEN file has returned, and when he tries to use his old file it just shows a cutscene of Link dead and the Skull Kid laughing. That's the end of the first post/video. In the second... Again, the post gives some backstory. The old man disappeared without a trace, and apparently "Ben" is the name of some kid who drowned. Also, the guy's been having nightmares about the Elegy of Emptiness statue. So the video begins again, and the guy decides to load up the BEN save file. What follows is...a lot of random glitchiness. He gets warped around to various locations, and things usually end with Link getting set on fire and dying again. Eventually, he gets transformed into Zora Link near the water area I don't know the name of since I've never played Majora's Mask, and swims out into some water to find the Elegy of Emptiness statue on the sea floor. At this point Zora Link chokes to death and dies, and we go back to the file select screen. And when he looks at the files, they now say.... BEN DROWNED Oooooooooooooooooo!!! 
Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Sep 10, 2010 |
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Sep 10, 2010 02:16
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Killing Vector posted:Quick correction: In the backstory of the second video the guy learns that Ben was a kid who died, but not how he died. So the reveal at the end isn't quite as redundant as you implied. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure it said he died "up by the river" or something. Either way, I assumed he'd drowned by the time the reveal came. EDIT: Or not. I guess I'm just psychic, then.
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Sep 10, 2010 04:06
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The White Dragon posted:Personally, I'm kinda unimpressed. Pokemon Black was worlds creepier, whereas this is just like... I dunno, maybe it's the setup about This After All Being My Sophomore Year In College, or maybe it's just that somehow the word choice really seems to get forced as the story goes on, but it just didn't do it for me like Pokemon Black did. This is kinda bland compared to that, but maybe I'm just being too critical and my expectations climbed too high from reading the comments in this thread beforehand. For me the problem is that he keeps interjecting with "I WAS SO SCARED! THIS WAS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING EVER! I WAS ON THE VERGE OF TEARS IT WAS SO loving SCARY!" and on and on. I mean, I guess it makes sense in context, but I think it's usually best to let stuff like that speak for itself.
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Sep 10, 2010 07:33
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Szmitten posted:Oh hey, part 3 of the Majora story is done! Either the hacking is getting more clever or the editing is. Bits like the elegy statue moving around by the tree were well done and I'm not entirely sure how he did it. It seemed like a bit much that he ended up appearing in a location from the first game, but eh, a good video overall.
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Sep 10, 2010 20:03
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Lone Rogue posted:I find it interesting that while people find the glitches plausible, the game suddenly kicking into Ocarina of Time isn't. It's because up until this point, part of the creepiness was that all the creepy glitches were being done with assets from Majora's Mask. The dialog and music and everything were all things that are in the game, just being remixed in a creepy way. So it kinda breaks with that to have a location from Ocarina of Time thrown in, because now it's just like the ghost can do whatever the gently caress and isn't using the game assets at all. It seemed similar to (though much more mild than) that Super Mario 64 creepypasta where suddenly there's this photorealistic drawing of Mario and an image of the player's family and stuff. It's just creepier when this stuff is all in-cart for some reason.
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Sep 10, 2010 20:46
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Wandering Knitter posted:Well? Where's my scaredy-cat explanation for me? Oh, oh... He loads up the DROWNED save file and it puts him at the very start of the game, only without the opening cutscene. The first area plays more or less the same, only with slightly glitched sound effects. However, when he reaches the point where the Skull Kid turns him into a Deku Skrub, the game starts glitching out a bunch. Link doesn't turn into a Deku Skrub but rather stays as Link but with the scrub's animations. This doesn't last long, though, as eventually the cutscene just freezes and the "play a song" prompt pops up. He plays the Elegy of Emptiness. (According to the description, people had suggested he try this.) The screen abruptly goes black. A text appears over the darkness saying "You shouldn't have done that." Things get glitchy again, and once again Link is warping to all sorts of locations whenever he tries to use a door or exit. However, this time, every time a text box appears it just says "You shouldn't have done that." Also, in a bit that totally ruined some of the atmosphere for me, one of the places he appears in is the Happy Mask Shop from Ocarina of Time (sans the shop owner). MY IMMERSION! Anyway, after a bunch of this nonsense a new text box shows up saying "BEN is getting lonely." Link appears at that giant tree thing from the end of the game. He walks towards it, the Elegy of Emptiness statue shows up, more glitching, and we're back at the title screen. A text box says "You will be given one last chance." and then "Come play with us." And now, it appears the guy's old save file (the one called "Link") is back. That's the video. Here's a summary of the attached description. HE WAS SO SCARED! THIS IS SO loving SCARY! HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON! OH MY loving GOD! HE'S JUST A KID! HE'S TOO YOUNG TO DIE! BEN IS EVERYWHERE AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
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Sep 10, 2010 21:15
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RagnarokAngel posted:I get that it's just kinda my hope these kinds of people get over themselves and enjoy it rather than asking for the cliffnotes version. Horror generally isn't very good storytelling, though it can be. Horror is about atmosphere, if you don't feel the fear you cheat yourself out of what makes it great. I guess that makes me a little angry v Whatever. I just enjoy writing these little summaries. That said, I'm not finding this particularly scary. I'd say I'm almost too impressed by it to be scared. I can't focus on the ghostiness because I'm too busy saying "Oh cool, how did he do that?"
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Sep 10, 2010 21:23
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TACD posted:You forgot where a little kid's voice actually calls out 'WATCH OUT' before he appears in the field. That's actually a sound clip from Ocarina of Time. Navi says it if you target an enemy. So yeah, that's two things from Ocarina of Time tossed in there.
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Sep 11, 2010 01:10
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Lucidphoole posted:Ghost stories contained in a video game just aren't very scary. What's to be frightened of by a cartridge that holds a ghost. All you would have to do to be rid of it is turn off the console and walk away. Having your in-game protagonist killed multiple times by a character who shouldn't be there isn't scary. I think the guy writing it just kind of missed the mark by constantly shouting about how scared he is. I think a better tack would have just been something like "There's a ghost in my cart and he's trying to tell me something, but he can only use the in-game assets to do so, and I can't tell what he's trying to say." Go on that angle for a few posts and include videos of your "attempts" to "communicate" with the ghost. Don't go on about how scary it is, just seem fascinated. Then, have the ghost manage to get a message though. He wants you to do something in-game, or maybe enter a gameshark code or something. You say you're excited to have finally figured out the message. Finally, post a video with no attached commentary in which you perform this action and the ghost makes a message appear saying "Thank you. I am free." Screamer jump scare, cut, print. Then never post under that name again to give the illusion that the ghost got you. See? A little loving build up. That's how you do horror.
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Sep 11, 2010 06:54
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Presumably the Kinect can tell where "You" are vs. background objects. What if it threw up an image of you in a dark space with the killer sneaking up behind you?
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Sep 13, 2010 01:31
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RagnarokAngel posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE7YUEtpHoY&feature=sub This is getting less and less spooky with each passing update. So, is he trying to suggest that it's not just Ben in there, but the cartridge is in fact full to bursting with ghosts?
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Sep 13, 2010 08:48
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Mister Roboto posted:So ghosts wandering around, say, buildings, is plausible, but haunting a cartridge is where you draw the line for ridiculousness? This isn't about either of those. I was legitimately asking if that was the direction he was taking this because I wasn't sure.
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Sep 13, 2010 19:05
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Opposing Farce posted:I'd be done with that, with one caveat: no loving mech levels. It probably wouldn't hurt to jettison the treasure hunting levels, either. Just have fewer of them in relation to running stages. I thought the mech, treasure-hunting and even that stupid kart thing were okay as changes of pace, but there was just too much of them.
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Sep 16, 2010 20:24
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RagnarokAngel posted:You might but people today make a huge fit about the length of the game. Mafia II was what 6 hours? And everyone was like "IT'S TOO SHORT I SHOULDNT HAVE BOUGHT IT" despite everything else (Except maybe some driving padding) was fine. I think the scope of the game has something to do with it. Designing a city that huge and then only giving you 6 hours of things to do in it feels like a cop-out.
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Sep 17, 2010 00:33
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Skeezy posted:The Majora's Mask thing is starting to get a bit lame now: We should just probably start the countdown to Slenderman's first cameo, now.
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Sep 18, 2010 09:16
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Windalgo posted:Looks like that silly BEN.wmv is still getting into mischief. Oh, come on! Really? Dark Link is in on this now? This is going to end with a Smash Bros Brawl machinima, isn't it?
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Sep 20, 2010 09:34
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RagnarokAngel posted:Yeah it's definitely clear that was written in at the last minute because the scene where he dies is so much more potent than if he lives that I always had him die because him living is just too cheesey. Yeah, if Cid lives the resulting scene is hilariously  . As I recall, they even gave Celes a unique sprite for cheerfully waving goodbye to him as she sets off.
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Sep 27, 2010 18:46
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Krunnky posted:from wikipedia: The solo player areas feature numerous easter eggs and strange objects, areas and glitches to fuel the exploration efforts and wild speculation of many gamers. Rare staff have admitted that some of the oddities in the game were put there "for a laugh", and that the constant barrage of questioning emails they got were sometimes "a free source of amusement". This is why I love Rare. They always do this in their games, and it always loving works.
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Oct 6, 2010 03:13
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