The video’s a bit padded with injokes and gimmicks, but beneath it all the bug is really interesting. Many games have checks to ensure the validity of save data, but the developers of both games implemented theirs in an odd way, calculating a 16-bit checksum for the file data twice, once by adding and once by subtracting, saving them both, and them when the File Select screen is setting up adding them to each other and checking for zero with the negative bit set (the high-order bit). It usually works, except when the checksum is exactly zero, which happens one in 65,536 times.

When that occurs, the total will be zero without the negative sign, which will be detected falsely as corrupted save data. As luck would have it, naming your character “God” in the European version of GBA Link to the Past will trigger the bug, and make it so you can’t create the file. But the 1-in-65536 chance comes up every time you save and exit. (The file check is made upon loading the File Select screen, so just saving with a checksum of 0 won’t trigger it; if the player saves later in the same play session, non-zero checksums will be written over the bad ones.)

1-in-65536 is a rare event, but it’s not extremely rare, and it’s absolutely the case that over the years many players have had their games declared corrupted and made unloadable. If a player saves their game, say, 20 times through a playthrough, then that’s about a 1-in-3250 chance of losing all their progress, and both games sold much more than 3,250 copies.

Skawo demonstrates the bug in action in The Minish Cap here, in the peocess responding to some naysayers (10 minutes):

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A good old-fashioned website! It’s hope to information on the construction of a wide variety of console platforms! Docs on the NES, the Sega Master System, the PC Engine (a.k.a. Turbografx 16), the Mega Drive (a.k.a. Genesis), Gameboy, SNES, Saturn, Playstation, Virtual Boy (yes), Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, GBA, Gamecube, Xbox, DS, PSP, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii and Wii U.

The Copetti site: Architecture of Consoles

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While most sites have already regurgitated the news into your waiting beaks, this time we’re recounting the release dates chronologically, so you’ll know what order to expect everything. Specific games of possible interest to a hazy mirage that I imagine to be our readers are in bold:

FEBRUARY
8th: Nintendo Switch Online Gameboy & GBA Support, Fire Emblem Engage Expansion Pass, Metroid Prime Remastered
15th: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass DLC volume 3
22nd: Metroid Prime Remastered on cartridge
24th: Octopath Traveler II, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe

MARCH
6th: Dead Cells Return to Castlevania DLC
17th: Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
20th: Spring begins. Releases for Spring: Splatoon 3 Expansion Pass, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC Wave 4,

APRIL
11th: Tron: Identity
21st: Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp
27th: Omega Strike

MAY
12th: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

JUNE
Some time in June: Harmony: Fall of Reverie
1st: Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection
2nd: We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie (what is it with the word “reverie” this month?)
21st: Summer begins. Releases for Summer: New Samba de Amigo, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster

JULY
21st: Pikmin 4
28th: Disney Illusion Island

AUGUST
29th: Sea of Stars

Some time in 2023: Fashion Dreamer, Decapolice, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam

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It’s a game that involves moving colored blog creatures around to connect them in groups of four or more to clear them out, which sounds pretty typical at first. But doing this also creates bombs that you can also connect, to make them into bigger bombs, and clear out larger fields of clutter as you do so, as voices proclaim things like “So happy!” and “Mega happy!”

The tilt sensor comes into play in that it allows you to determine from which side of the screen new objects enter from.

Korokoro Puzzle only got the one entry, but we have it from Kimimi’s that it hides a whole lot of gameplay within its little rectangular case.

Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster: Happy! So happy! Mega happy!

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