Author: rodneylives

Secret 1up Triggers in Super Mario World

I think it’s pretty obvious that, while the game is excellent in many ways, Super Mario World has so many extra lives that they end up almost meaningless. There’s all the traditional ways to build up your horde of Marios waiting in the wings for their chance at platforming glory: getting 100 coins, hidden 1up blocks, knocking a bunch of enemies off with shells, stomping on many enemies without touching the ground, and defeating lots of enemies with a single Starman. Then there’s those specific to Super Mario World: getting 5 Dragon Coins, finding a 3up Moon, getting a lot of gray coins generated by a gray P-Switch, having a lot of enemies on-screen when hitting the Goal Tape, and earning several in one of the bonus games.

But there’s one source of extra lives that few know about, or at least, I didn’t know about it. There are invisible triggers in some levels that, if you cross over their activation points in order, will generate a single 1up Mushroom. Looygi Bros shows off all 15 of these spots in the game here (8 minutes):

Why Nintendo decided to include these spots in a game where players will usually be walking around with double-digit life counts, I couldn’t tell you. Super Mario World is one of those Mario games where it doesn’t save progress after every level, so running out of lives is a real setback. But they could have just designed it so that it saved more often? I guess they just saw that it’s fun to earn lots of extra lives.

Acclaim is Back, For Some Reason

The decades of video gaming history there has now been have had many companies, developers and studios that have went under, due to one thing or other. Many of those names are revered, and their vanishing have left lacks in the world of vidyagaems that are felt to this day. A few of those: Atari (the current one has improved greatly lately, but it’s still not the same), Midway, Bally, Williams, Lucasarts, Rare (in its non-Microsoft incarnation), Telltale, SSI, New World Computing, and many more if I cared to dredge them out of the muck of my mind. And that’s just Western companies, there were plenty more in Japan, I just wanted to narrow the field down a bit.

One of those companies probably isn’t Acclaim. They were one of the biggest third-party publishers in the NES era, and they lasted to around the N64 era, but although they did put out some Premium Quality Entertainment (thanks Murderbot), they also put out a lot of what in Yiddish is called drek. Towards the end it felt like the drek percentage was getting pretty high, and it didn’t help at all that they kept pulling some dodgy ad stunts. They ran a context where they offered to pay couples to name their kid Turok, another where they tried to put ads for Shadowman on tombstones in cemeteries, and the less said ab0ut BMX XXX, possibly the game that destroyed the company, the better.

Well nostalgia certainly sells, even for the less savory publishers, and so it is that some people have decided one of the brands we needed to once again be subjected to is Acclaim. They released a promo video yesterday that unveils their initial releases, here it is (relevant portion 13 minutes):

The games shown:

  • GridBeat! appears to be a hacking-themed maze/puzzle/rhythm game.
  • Basketball Classics is a stylish retro-themed sports game that’s refreshing for being a new game based off of real players that didn’t come from the corpulent corporate cube of EA Sports. I’m pretty impressed they’re making this, it’s probably the game here I’m most interested in.
  • Ground Zero Hero is a cartoony action shooter that seems to take inspiration from Vampire Survivors and Nuclear Throne.
  • Pixel Washer is a retro-themed cleaning game that reminds me a bit of Powerwash Simulator, but maybe that’s because I’ve been playing that again lately.
  • Talaka is a combat platformer with sketchy graphics.
  • Toss Down I couldn’t get a strong read on, it seems to be an isometric shooting game in urban environments, with tornadoes around, maybe with a bit of classic 2D GTA in it?
  • The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest appears to be a kaizo-style 2D retro platformer. I’m sensing a theme with some of these games. I don’t have anything against retro styling myself, mind you, it’s like one third of this site’s entire reason for being.
  • HyperYuki: Snowboard Syndicate is a snowboarding game, obviously. It’s 3D, but has stylish and colorful low-polygon, cell-shaded graphics. I might have to follow this.
  • Katanaut seems to be a dark pixel-art sci-fi combat game.

The question remains, why did they feel like they needed to resurrect the Acclaim brand and logo? Having a leg-up from obscurity is enough reason I guess, but none of the new games are based on and of Acclaim’s old IP. Maybe they could revive Extreme-G, Turok or Wizards & Warriors, but they haven’t yet.

Use a GBA as a Switch Controller, No Fooling

It is true, but you do need some extra items. Not only the Gameboy Advance, but a Gamecube, a GBA controller cable, the Gamecube controller adaptor (the one made to support Smash Bros. games) and a Gameboy Player with boot disk. But if you have all of these items, none of them need to be modded. It’s all Nintendo code and hardware, baby!

The process is to boot the Gamecube and Gameboy Player with the GBA plugged into it with the cable. Then turn off the Gamecube leaving the Gameboy Advance on, disconnect the GBA cable from the GC, then plug it into the Gamecube adapter plugged into a USB port connected to the Switch. If the GBA is still powered on, it should be usable as a Switch controller at that point, until it’s turned off!

If you don’t have them all that kit, a modded GC or Wii will also suffice for the Gameboy Player. It’s all demonstrated in NotRealEric’s video. There is also some alternate hardware usable, including third-party adapters and connectors. The video is ten minutes long, but the setup is in the first 3½ minutes of it; the rest is demonstrating some use cases, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

The hardest to find of these devices now, if you don’t use modded hardware, is the Gameboy Player, which is quite expensive used. But if you do happen to have all the pieces, it’s quite the hack. It seems to work due to a controller-emulation program the Gameboy Player (or modded GB or Wii running mGBA) sends to the GBA, which, amazingly, is Switch compatible.

Maybe you have a magic combination of gizmos lying around to use this trick, and use a GBA as an extremely limited Switch peripheral? Yeah, let’s not kid ourselves, this is pretty silly and doesn’t have a strong use case, considering that Switches come with two Joycons, but it’s amazing that it works at all.

Tonight: Roguelike Celebration Preview Event!

This snuck up on me, and in fact I had thought I’d missed it, but it turns out it’s tonight! Roguelike Celebration‘s main event isn’t until October, but they’re having a preview event tonight with two long and one short talk. The schedule is here. It kicks off at around 3:00 PM Pacific time, which to convert is 6 PM Eastern, around 10 PM Greenwich, and Midnight CEST.

(EDIT: I had the Eastern times too late by an hour. The event will begin at 6 PM Eastern time.)

Tonight’s show is being done for free, but you still need a (costless) ticket for it, which you can get here. As has been usual the past few events, there will be a live MUD-like chatroom to participate in during the show, for interacting with other audience members, for submitting questions to the queue, and just for bumping around and exploring. The doors open a little before the talks begin, to let people get used to the space, and as a buffer against lateness.

I hope you can make it! Tonight’s talks are:

3:15 PM Pacific / 6:15 PM Eastern / 10:15 PM GMT / 12:15 AM CEST – 45 minutes

Fireside chat with Jon Perry: Host Alexei Pepers and Jon Perry will chat about game design and his contributions to UFO 50 such as Planet Zoldath, Party House, and Mini & Max! (Personal note: this is not one to miss. I have been obsessed with Party House, enough to write a gigantic strategy guide for it.)

4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern / 11 PM GMT / 1 AM CEST – 30 minutes

Building Synergy Networks for better Roguelike Deckbuilders, with Ezra Szanton: Roguelike Deckbuilders live or die on the quality of the drafting decisions they present. When a player chooses between 3 cards, what is going through their head? This talk is about how to achieve deep but accessible drafting decisions which result in memorable games that excite players. Synergy Networks are a helpful lens for creating sets of cards that achieve these aims. Modeling the synergies between cards as a network allows us to use ideas from network theory like path length, density and hubs. Digressions will include characteristics of synergies, broad types of synergies useful for brainstorming, and why anti-synergy is just as important as synergy itself. This talk is informed by my work designing Hellscaper and Mr Magpie’s Harmless Card Game, two roguelike deckbuilders.

4:30 PM Pacific / 7:30 PM Eastern / 11:30 PM GMT / 1:30 AM CEST – 45 minutes

Designing for System Suspense, with Alexei Pepers: The host will give a talk which she gave at GCD and had previously been trapped inside the GDC Vault.

Sundry Sunday: Susie’s Ideas

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

So, Deltarune Chapter 4. After the mostly-comical adventures of Kris, Susie and Ralsei through three alternate-world dreamscapes, the fourth got a lot darker with the revelation that there’s an entity trying to revive Titans, huge evil monsters that could rip up the world.

During the battle with a Titan near the end of the chapter, a point is reached in the fight where none of your attacks can get through its defenses. That is where Susie, the bruiser of the group, has her idea.

You aren’t told what the idea is, it just shows up in the menu as Susie’s Idea and a little graphic of her face. Selecting it is necessary to win the battle; it causes Susie to grab Kris and jump directly into the Titan, reckless behavior sure, but that’s just who Susie is. And it works!

Susie’s Idea has become a meme, with at least enough standing to get its own Know Your Meme page. chorālunar made a Youtube video of many of these meme images with (mostly) quirky music, akin to the old collections of cursed images set to Earthbound music. It’s five minutes:

Kim Justice’s 10 Arcade Treasures From 1982

Kim Justice has done a few of these videos and they usually have interesting games to look into. They try to present machines that aren’t as well-known to current eyes, so you’ll probably find at least one new favorite in each of their videos. Here it is (32 minutes):

The games presented are: Mr. Do!, Frenzy, Anteater, Nibbler, Kangaroo, Bagman, The Pit, Blue Print, Jack the Giant Killer and Abscam. I personally vouch for Mr. Do, Anteater, Nibbler and Bagman. A surprising fact revealed is that Midway’s Blue Print was actually an early production of Tim and Chris Stamper, long before Rare, and even before Ultimate: Play the Game!

The Ultimate Gameboy Talk

It’s a busy day for me coming up, so here’s one from my list of Youtube links: the Ultimate Gameboy Talk (1 hour 1 minute) by Michael Steil, but you don’t have to watch it on YT, as it’s also hosted on the website of Chaos Computer Club in various formats. The embed below is from Youtube though, since they usually have pretty good embedding:

This “ultimate” talk is ultimately about the hardware, its internals and quirks, and tricks that can be pulled off in it. Sure, it’s very technical and extremely geeks, but that’s pretty much the standard around these parts. Enjoy!

MADE’s Fundraiser

MADE is the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, a San Francisco-based video game museum loaded with playable examples. They’re trying to raise $500,000 to secure operations funding for the next three years. I’ve never been to it, but I’ve had at least one worthy person recommend them to me today, and so I decided to help spread the word. (Info link, fundraiser link)

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You gotta love a museum with a sign out front reading “Play Retro Games Here.” If I was in San Fran, I’d probably never leave the place.

The fundraising seems to be going slowly at the moment, which is a shame. They’re at just 2% of their goal. Please, if you have some spare change, you could probably do worse than to throw it their way. And spread the word if you can!

“Children love our classes!” Well I’d expect so, they’re a video game museum!

Crazy Bugged Balatro Seeds

There’s this Youtube video (SHOCKING, I know) about “The Only Impossible Seed in Balatro*.” (49 minutes) The asterisk is their way of saying, “It’s not really impossible, but that wouldn’t have nearly as much impact as a title.” Yeah, unfair.

The video is interesting, if you sift through it, for an interesting fact: a bug in Balatro’s seed-based randomness generation code sometimes produces a situation where one of its many number sources will get bugged, and produce the same number over and over again. This is the cause of the now-infamous seeds where, if you’re playing the Erratic Deck, all your cards end up as the 10 of Spades, as well as seeds that affect which cards you draw, and one where all the Jokers generated are Rare. The video is most interesting, I think, for describing that mechanism, and that is why it is offered here:

To get to the meat, it turns out there is GitHub out there that explains much about these bugged seeds, here.

Luxocrates’ Project to Get C64 Commando Music Running On Arcade

I am back from DragonCon, but got hit by a staggering blow from life (which I will not mention the details of here) that’s going to take me a long time to recover from. So in the meantime, please enjoy this 19 minute video in which someone on Youtube describes his plan to get arcade Commando (a.k.a. “Wolf of the Battlefield”) to play Ron Hubbard’s excellent soundtrack from the C64 port.

Arcade Command didn’t have bad music at all, but Ron Hubbard’s score is generally regarded to outshine it. The two hardware platforms are really different: the C64 has a 6502-workalike and the legendary SID chip, while the arcade version used a custom platform. This is a first video in a projected series, so at this point we don’t even know if he’ll be successful. Let’s hope.

Sundry Sunday: Attack of the Pepsimen

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Something has come up. I’m no longer at DragonCon. This weird animation (3 minutes), another done in the style of an old DOS game, will have to suffice for this Sunday. I’d have trouble describing it anyway, so I’ll burn it today on a day where I really can’t describe much of anything.