Category: niche

How Speedrunners Pay Off Their Animal Crosssing New Horizon Debt Quickly

Argh! This video from Press A! on Youtube promises big by promising to explain how speedrunners blast through the over 5 1/2 million Bells needed to fully upgrade their (pre-2.0) house in Animal Crossing New Horizons, but then in typical game Youtuber fashion they explain nearly everything else about the game, the debt, and all the other things speedrunners must do along the way! Here is the 12-minute video, but I’ll give you the gist below:

First: the glitch only works on version 1.2.1 or earlier, so nowadays it requires hacks to downgrade your Switch to do them. And the trick also means having at least two users on the same Switch, both with residents on the island.

The trick involves duplicating items, then selling the duplicates. The items are duplicated by putting an item that can have other objects put on top of it, like tables or the cardboard boxes in the Recycle Bin, down near the border of the town square area.

First, an expensive item is put on the table or box. The Switch promo item given to the first player upon starting the game is typically used by runners. Both players are brought in, then the second player spins the box while the first player picks the item up off of the box. If done on the same frame, Player One will pick up the item, but Player Two’s rotating of the box will mean it also remains on the box. Now there’s two copies of the item. This process can be repeated immediately, filling up Player One’s inventory with the item. They then sell the items for profit, and continue.

I miss the days when you could just find this out from a text file on GameFAQs, but then tricks like that are a lot harder to discover randomly these days without something like Youtube’s discovery algorithm to uncover them, although it too is random and scattershot, or else following a ton of Discords to seek out all of the little gaming communities where all this data is hoarded.

So that is how they do it, but since it’s specifically on an old version of the game that you can’t even play anymore it’s of limited use to normal players. New Horizons changed so much in that first year that this information is largely of use as a curiosity unless you’re involved in the frankly bizarre speedrunning community.

My own trick for paying off your house means breeding expensive roses, ideally blue but black will do, then growing tons of them in the fields of your island and selling them. If you have the DIY recipes to make wreathes or crown from them, then it doubles their sale price. It won’t pay off your house of in under two hours, but if you can get your starter roses from elsewhere, you can pay it off much faster that way, maybe in a couple of months. I’ve explained the details of that process before, and in multiple places, but hey at least I didn’t just post it in a Discord where non-obsessives will never see it.

There, that’s my annoyed internet oldbie rant for today. Come back tomorrow where I’ll shake my fist at something else, probably AI slop. Ta!

Brawl in the Family Compilation Kickstarter Nears Completion

Nominally about Smash Bros., its name just goes to show that classic gaming webcomic Brawl in the Family has been around a long time now. It started in 2008, and while it hasn’t published new cartoons since 2014, its creator Matthew “BitFinity” Taranto keeps making new content, some of which we’ve linked before, like Megalixir.

BitFinity has a Kickstarter going for an “ultimate” version of all the Brawl in the Family comics, and a wealth of additional material. It’s already made its base target and is chasing stretch goals now with five days to go. The next goal is new Brawl in the Family comics, and plenty of people would like to see that I think! Here’s a promotional video for it.

Matthew doesn’t know who the hell I am, but I enjoy his work, and I think you’ll enjoy it too, so please consider it? And one of the levels is a King Dedede-ish plush toy, and won’t that be nice to have and to hug?

Aww, he’s adawable.

That’s it for today. The search for interesting things to link stretches ever onward. See you tomorrow!

DOOM: The Gallery Experience

Found by long-term MeFite Going To Maine, DOOM: The Gallery Experience is a DOOM mod that changes out all of its various elements for museum equivalents. Ammo becomes drinks from among Wine, Beer, Gin or “Watr”; Health has become Cash (which you can spend in the gift shop) and Armor becomes Cheese. (You still pick them up like powerups, though.) And there’s still secret passages to find. The map is generally the same as that as the first level from the shareware game, although the demons have been moved out and replaced with objets d’art, all of which can be examined for information on the work.

You can either play it yourself on Newgrounds, or get the general idea from this Youtube video (4 1/2 minutes):

AGDQ Begins Today!

I’m putting aside Sundry Sunday for today, to let you know that the (relatively) long-lived week-long charity speedrunning marathon, AGDQ, or Awesome Games Done Quick, begins TODAY, just a couple of hours after this post goes up! It snuck up on me this year!

It’s one of two GDQ marathons every year. The other SGDQ, usually happens in the middle of the year. I usually do an overview for each marathon of runs that I find interesting, but I feel like that’s more for me than anything you’d find useful? Still, there’s some terrific runs lined up this year. The complete schedule is on their website.

Of course GDQ does other speedrunning events throughout the year, including Frame Fatales and Hotfix, but the ceremony and energy of doing it before a large audience, both in-house and online, builds the hype to mammoth levels. Every year they raise millions of dollars for their chosen charities.

Here’s an informal list of things that I find to be highlights. When I mention times, I’m generally speaking from the context of US Eastern time.

Sunday launches with a run of Pikmin, a game that’s intrinsically suited to speedrunning, and soon after there’s one of Kirby Air Ride City Trial “Any%.” I’m not sure what that means (City Trial games are by their nature time limited anyway), but I presume it’s clearing off the checkboard, a huge list of achievements to aim for. Then there’s a Wind Waker Any% run near the end of Sunday that finishes it in a bit over an hour, that probably takes advantage of the late-game skips that have been found in the treacherous final room before the Ganondorf fight.

Monday leads off with two Alan Wake II DLCs, then Lego The Hobbit, which I’m sure will have much more entertainment value than the trilogy, somehow, of Hobbit movies. Later there’s a PC port of Turok 2, Super Lucky’s Tale, and a selection of retro games including Ninja Gaiden II, Snake Rattle N Roll, Dick Tracy and then a 42 minute Final Fantasy Legend II, which I’m sure will be as bizarre as that game’s storyline, followed by a bit of UFO 50. Approaching 1 PM there’s a more substantial UFO 50 set, followed by Super Meat Boy, Mario Maker for the 3DS, Sonic Origins and a Metroid Prime race. Then as a bonus game (one for which there’s a donation incentive), there’s Breath of the Wild, played with two players on one controller. The day concludes with several substantial runs: Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare DLC, Horizon Forbidden West and Yakuza.

Right after midnight Tuesday morning there’s Shenmue and Beat Slayer, and at 8:43 is VA-11 Hall-A. Later Castevania: Portrait of Ruin, Unicorn Overlord, Ys VIII, Spyro Reignited, then the amazingly difficult F-Zero GX, then Super Mario Bros. “Any% STA.” I’m not sure what STA means in this context. The last run of the night is the recent Silent Hill remake.

Wednesday morning there’s the Batman Forever arcade game and Gauntlet IV for the Genesis, which hews very closely to the arcade original, but in “quest mode,” a special console-only scenario. Other interesting games include two Sonic titles, a bonus inventive of all the romances in Fallout: New Vegas, a Super Mario 64 A Button Challenge TAS showcase and Rocket League workshop maps. Starting late at night and rolling into Thursday is what I presume to be “Awful Block,” since it leads off with the notoriously awful Superman 64.

Thursday has a surprisingly long run of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, an all-dungeons run of Tears of the Kingdom, and Sega’s “Chunithm Luminous Plus” arcade rhythm game. There’s a number of longer runs in the later half of the day.

Friday has a sequence with Castlevania: Dracula X, Gimmick 2, Froggun Encore and No One Can Stop Mr. Domino, and later on FFVII Rebirth and GTA Vice City. Afterward look out for Nintendo World Championships (not the cart from the 90s, the recent Switch release), Tetris: The Grand Master and a PS1 “Mystery Vs. Tournament.” There’s Kaizo Mario World 3 as a bonus incentive, and a standard Mario World race late at night, and another arcade rhythm game.

Saturday is the last day, starting with Peggle Extreme, Metal Gear Solid, Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble and Mega Man 10. Around 10 AM is the traditional super long Pokemon run, this time a race of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. (Are the runners playing different versions?) Then there’s two Elden Ring runs, then one I posted about before, the eagerly awaited Crazy Taxi with live backing band. (Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!)

The last three games are Ocarina of Time with a no logic randomizer, that is, the game mixes things up without regard to how finishable that makes the game, leaving it to the player to use glitches to overcome any blocks, then Echoes of Wisdom Any%, and finally a Super Metroid randomizer race.

SNES Mice on the NES, and how both systems read their controllers

As it turns out, as explained by the below video (here’s a direct link, 10 minutes long), the NES and SNES have very similar control setups. Both controller ports have seven lines, and both read them using a shift register that can be used to read arbitrary numbers of buttons. The SNES basically just has more buttons to read.

Due to this, there’s homebrew NES software that’s made to use the SNES mouse, and even emulators that will convert your PC’s mouse into simulated SNES mouse signals, which will be fed into the emulated NES and the software running thereon. (It isn’t all buttons, but it sends the displacement as a binary number.)

The video comes to us from the account of CutterCross, who’s making CrossPaint, an NES art program that uses the SNES mouse. A demo can be gotten from itch.io.

Gamefinds: GAR-TYPE

We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.

It’s a new year, and probably going to be an exceedingly crappy one, so let’s at least start it out with something amazing and wonderful. For while it’s a world where millions of people make extremely stupid decisions, it’s also one where some people work diligently to make bafflingly detailed works of art like Lumpy Touch‘s GAR-TYPE, the R-Type/Saturday Morning cartoon crossover you didn’t know you’d love. CW: pixelated cartoon gore, but that sounds worse than it is.

To reuse my Metafilter description: Help ace fighter JON STARBUCKLE, stationed on the USS ACRES, pilot the GAR-TYPE D to destroy GORESTAR, a planet-eating threat, with your choice of three different weapons: Ravioli, Macaroni or Spaghetti.

There’s so many genius touches in this, like the signs for Italian restaurants in the first level, or the name of the Lasagna Base, or the unexpected boss of the second level. It vividly realizes the aesthetic of the anime-influenced Japanese shooter. Even if it’s too difficult for you (and it might be too difficult for me), you can enjoy the trailer and playthrough video below for a tour of its ridiculous action.

Here’s that trailer (1 minute):

And the playthrough video (19m):

GAR-TYPE — Newgrounds, itch.io ($0, Unity: HTML5, Windows & Mac)

The Letter-Writing System in Gamecube Animal Crossing

I’m opening this post with a special message to any anthropomorphic animal video game characters who happen to be reading this. As we will see, they rate this special prologue quite highly, and so it will make us very popular to any Dottys or Apollos in our audience, being exactly the sort of thing they want to hear. In the secret, inner language of their minds, I’m sure it confirms all their biases and makes them feel good about themselves:

I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I .I.I.I.I.I.I.

Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series has a lot of weird systems in them. Some games wear the grass down according to character walking patterns; all the games have the “Stalk Market,” a risky way to make a lot of money; most of the games have a lost-and-found; and so on.

A system that was in the first game, and I’m not sure was ever adapted for later games (but then it might have been) was letter-writing, not just to other players in the same village, but to the villagers. They’d save the letters you wrote them and show them off to other players if they moved to another town, and even write you back. Of course, parsing and intelligently responding to any text, no matter the language, was beyond computers of the time (and despite what AI enthusiasts will tell you, still isn’t), so the game has to fake it in some way. But, how?

Well, what is the purpose of writing letters to characters in the game? It gives villagers something interesting to show people when they move to their villages, and, it’s a roleplaying exercise for the writer, a way to pretend the animal denizens of your town are real people and not simulated game mechanics present to make the game seem less empty.

Both of these design goals work best if the person writing the letter actually writes real letters, and not random jumbles of characters, so Animal Crossing has a mechanism to reward players for writing what appear to be real letters, and not placeholder gibberish, and its system of ranking text to attempt to reward actual letter-like writing is quite complex. It looks for punctuation that looks generally appropriate, capital letters after sentence-ending punctuation, triples of characters that commonly appear in English, and sequences of characters followed by spaces that approximate the word lengths of English. Of special interest: these are elements that have to be tweaked by language, and so they pose a special challenge to localization.

Hunter R., popular Animal Crossing Youtuber, released a video that explains exactly how GC Animal Crossing scores letters written to villagers. As it turns out, the text that scores the very best looks a lot like that in the preamble to this post, up above. Go figure! Here is his description (10 minutes):

How Villagers “Read” Your Letters In Animal Crossing (Youtube, 10m)

EDIT: My mistake! Originally the villager-friendly message near the beginning of this post was missing a trailing period, which would cost it some points when brought under the exacting animal eye. It has been corrected.

Sundry Sunday: Rhythm Heaven Reanimated

Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven games are still a bit obscure, but have a passionate fanbase. They share design sensibilities with the WarioWare series, which is because both share a character designer, Ko Takeuchi. They both have a distinctive clean-line look, and a similar sense of humor.

About four years ago, some of those fans made one of those reanimation compilations of the series, and the fruits of their labor is unusually keeping in spirit of the original, which itself samples many different art and musical styles. The reanimation feels like it could have been one of the remixes from the games itself.

Speaking of, the reanimation covers all of the remixes, of all of the games in the series, with the result that the full sequence is eighteen minutes long! It’s quite faithful to the originals, despite the vastly different animation styles, and it even scored an appreciative comment from Takeuchi himself! Here it is, but be warned: you’ll watch it for a while, then see one of the videos mention it’s only half over, and you’ll think to yourself, no way:

An aside, a different reanimation project near to my heart, but unrelated to video games, is the highly-memeable 2004 collaboration that animated They Might Be Giants’ Fingertips (6 minutes, original page). Note, in its original Flash incarnation, different elements would be selected on every play, an aspect that is unfortunately lost in these renderings.

Before Mario Visits the Nintendo Museum

Before Mario is a Blogspot blog (remember them?) devoted to Nintendo’s company history before they made video games. Well, their December 13th post doesn’t fit that bill entirely, since the museum is quite new, but they did focus on those aspects on display that don’t deal with their freakishly popular electronic products.

Nintendo got their start making playing cards (images from Before Mario)
Er, so we’re consuming Kirby’s plastic bottled regurgitation?

Nook (the music playing program)

I found out about this program that runs in the background and plays time- and season-appropriate Animal Crossing music. It’s free, there’s versions for Windows and Mac on the site, and I found a copy on the Arch depository so there’s obviously a version for Linux too. It even has a rain option.

Pretty simple today, but it’s free and fun and free. It’s freeee!

Nook ($0, Windows, Mac and Linux)

Team Fortress 2’s “Story” Has Been Concluded

How long has it been since you thought of TF2? I played it a bit, enjoyed it for a while, but in the end FPSes aren’t really my thing. Guns and shooting people, realistically, even in a heavily stylized and humorous way, not for me. But I can respect all the work that went into it, and it’s a landmark of both gaming and gaming culture.

Team Fortress 2 has an official comic that lays out the story of the game, such as it is. It had six issues, then it just trailed off in 2017. Well, they finally made one more, to wrap it up. The game’s not done yet no, people will probably be playing Team Fortress 2 until the world collapses, and the stories of those many games are the real saga of TF2. But there is a backstory to all those stories, and it’s told in those comics.

At the end it even has a holiday theme. Seven years later, Soldier breaks Merasmus out of prison, and then tells him the true story of why The Administrator has BLU and RED fight each other. Well, kind of. Then the Korean mafia gets involved. Merasmus dies, but comes right back as a ghost, because he’s Merasmus. Other things happen.

Then we go to Scout’s house for Smissmas. Find out what happens next yourself, but I will give you the panel near the end with all the mercs together. Because it’s Smissmas Eve, and a fitting coda to the entire Team Fortress 2 thing.

Look at all the Sandviches! But, uh… which one is Pyro? Is that a delicate question?

By the way, if you choose to download that CBR it’s a doozy, it’s over three-quarters of a gigabyte because the images are all saved as PNGs.

Bowser Generosity in Mario Party

In Mario Party games, the most dreaded spaces tend to be the Bowser Spaces, where the King of the Koopa himself intervenes to ruin your, or even all the players, day(s). It’s pretty consistent overall: prepare to lose a number of coins, or even one of your Stars, those game-winning MacGuffins.

But what you might not know is that, usually, if you land on one of his spaces and you don’t have any coins or Stars, Bowser usually gives you a small number of coins instead! It’s one of the series’ many catch-up mechanisms, designed to keep trailing players in the game.

In this video (9 minutes), Nintendo Unity shows us the result of a destitute player landing on a Bowser space throughout many of the games in the series. You see? He’s not so bad after all! Now if we could only do something about his kidnapping habit, it’s hard to put a friendly face on that one.