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GameCube (Games)

The Many Secrets of Smash Bros. Melee 78

Posted by Zonk from the got-married-this-past-weekend-it-was-nice dept.
Via Joystiq, N-Philes has an article delving deep into the secrets of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube. A Developer Mode is accessible within the game which allows for battle tweaking, setting changes, and access to dozens of otherwise inaccessible battle maps. From the article: "Notice the stage is completely horizontal. Not only that, it's easily the longest fighting arena in Super Smash Bros. history (with the exception of the Home-Run Contest stage). Along the stage lie several moving platforms and multicolored grounds with different amounts of traction when walked across. It's clear that HAL used this area as a virtual playground to experiment with several different aspects of gameplay. Did you take note of the background? Confused? So is everyone else. The background is a giant picture of a pub. If you look closely you can spot several people enjoying tall glasses of beer atop the bar and tables. Despite the fact that it seems a little strange, it somehow adds to the illustrious prestige of Super Smash Bros. We wouldn't have it any other way."
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The Many Secrets of Smash Bros. Melee More

The Many Secrets of Smash Bros. Melee

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  • Time for a rating change! (Score:5, Funny)

    by niskel ( 805204 ) on Monday August 15, 2005 @11:51AM (#13322235)
    The ESRB said nothing about alcohol consumption in it's packaging warnings. Now I am offended that I have let my child play such filth. I will see HAL in court!
  • The link is to n-philes.com not n-sider.

    • Re:n-sider? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Runegscentral.org ( 907757 ) on Monday August 15, 2005 @12:40PM (#13322693)
      Hi. I appreciate that gscentral.com was linked for credit at the end of the article, but that seems to confuse the reader into thinking that N-Philes did the work. This is not true. I hacked the debug mode (amongst other codes for SSBM) in the summer of 2003. I would appreciate it if you could mention this better on Slashdot and tell Joystix to give credit where it is due. From a bystanders' perspective, it appears that they hacked the codes and made these discoveries as to what the debug menu is capable of. Nothing could be further from the truth, as a good few hackers spent a month testing everything years ago. The original source is crucial for credibility of your site, as others were also credited incorrected for the discovery of the Citadel in GoldenEye. To set that matter straight, it was Krijy who found it, and Zoinkity who made it fully playable. (Aside, the fact that I am no longer affiliated with gscentral.com is important, so I'd much rather the link go to gscentral.org, where the site is now being updated regularly.) Thank you for your full cooperation, Rune

      • Re:n-sider? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by blincoln ( 592401 )
        Nothing could be further from the truth, as a good few hackers spent a month testing everything years ago.

        I ran into similar lameness when I hacked the debug menus for the PS2 versions of Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance (available on my site [thelostworlds.net], for the curious). As soon as you post something like that, people start cutting and pasting it into forums and websites as if that's the hard part. Some of them even get upset if you challenge them on it, along the lines of "dude i get credit for posting it here first."

        Amus

  • Easter Eggs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by turtled ( 845180 ) on Monday August 15, 2005 @11:56AM (#13322267)
    I love when games add things in, and I just busted this game out yesterday. This'll come in handy tonight.
    • You need an Action Replay to unlock the debug menu.
    • Hidden debugs are usually pretty fun. I just wish that they were still readily accessible via button combinations on the controller, like during the 16-bit days. Now it seems that more often than not one needs a cheat device to gain access to these sorts of things.

      • Re:Easter Eggs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 )
        Of course, what I always wonder is - why hide them? Oh are you afraid your players might, y'know, have fun playing with the game?

        PC titles often come with a full devkit. Console titles? If you're lucky, you can pick your character. Yay customisation.
        • a PC game that ships with an editor has a seperate application for modding, and has the resources of a PC that can get additional content from many sources (keyboard for scripting, scanner for new textures, internet connection to download content created by other users) and has plenty of space to store additional information. Basically, the actual coding and artwork the development team does for these games is done on a PC, and additional tools are often required for some modifications. These games run fr

        • Re:Easter Eggs (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Paladin128 ( 203968 )
          The average console user is a LOT less tech savvy than the average PC gamer. These things are hidden for lots of reasons:

          1) lack of time for QA -- some stuff is buggy, and doesn't make the final cut. If it can cause the game to crash, it shouldn't be accessible to end users. Period.

          2) Breaking game balance -- if some characters in a fighting game, for example, are simply too good, and make the game not fun to play, they shouldn't be allowed.

          3) Flavor -- sometimes some stuff used in early stages is really du

        • Re:Easter Eggs (Score:5, Informative)

          by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday August 15, 2005 @06:30PM (#13326244)
          Of course, what I always wonder is - why hide them? Oh are you afraid your players might, y'know, have fun playing with the game?

          The issue is most of these "extras" would *not* be fun for the average person, and would in fact lead to a lot of people questioning whether they got a finished game. (In fact, they'd be right to ask.)

          There are 29 complete stages in SSBM, and apparently more than 60 with the developer menu. But that doesn't mean those 30-some odd extra stages are anywhere close to being finished or even very playable. They may be test stages with incomplete graphics, they may be buggy, unbalanced, or just not worthy of being in the game quality-wise.

          Some of these customizations were obviously disabled to protect the brand. Dark Link? That's probably something Nintendo just didn't want people to be able to play as at this point in time, anymore than Disney would want you playing a game as "Evil Nemo" or something. Maybe you don't agree with their decision, but you should hopefully be able to understand it.

          A lot of these options are also in there to help marketing departments. How do you think publishers get screenshots? It's a combination of actually playing the game (yes, they do actually play!) combined with a bit of manipulation through the developer controls. For example, in a certain actual game I won't name, the publisher might select a particular vehicle to drop in front of the character, then select a rocket launcher and blow it up. They will then put the game in slow-motion, turn the character so he's running away from the explosion, then pause. Then they will unlock and set the camera (with camera controls that mimic those of a real camera, including optical effects) and take a screenshot.

          So, there are a combination of reasons why these various things are in the game. Some are just tests. Some are things that were intended to be in the game but either didn't work right or were never finished. Some were intended to help market the game.

          But none of them are really worthy of being in anything you might call a "finished game". If Nintendo had released this game with all this stuff unlocked, you'd have been charitable calling it a beta. Closing this stuff off allows users to only see the final, polished product.

          Look at it this way. Every filmmaker shoots about 50 hours of film for a feature, or thousands of hours for a documentary. Why not just include all of it in the final film, with no editing? Wouldn't be very interesting or exciting to watch, would it?

          Knowing what to edit out is as important as knowing what to put in.
          • Yes, but such extra, random footage often ends up on the "Special Features" section of the DVD. I'm not saying that such extra crap should be in the game, proper - but an "extended features" section that requires a little digging to access would be nice.

            Yes, I know it's not polished - like the "Special Features" sections, the "director commentary", etc., you don't watch it until you've seen the movie enough times that you're really interested in all the details. But leave it accessible for those of us who
  • ESRB set a strong precedence that if a user can hack the game to allow something, then that content was clearly put in their to deliberately lower the rating while letting children see that filth. Why won't anyone think of the children?
    • I understand your point, but at some point, people will have to realize how stupid it is. With computer generated characters becoming more 'life like', we will soon be seeing characters that are assembled from skeleton, to muscle and tissue with clothing on top. If that stage of polygon count ever arives, the entire Hot Coffee verdict will be overturned because any game that can be hacked against regulations to remove layers to expose nude characters in a game will have to raise the ratings.
      • we will soon be seeing characters that are assembled from skeleton, to muscle and tissue with clothing on top.
        Erm, what the fuck? We will also have FTL travel to other planets in about ten years, and timetravel will be passe by then. Actually building a model that detailed wouldn't serve any purpose but to slow down whatever super computer (and I mean super-super-duper computer, with a few extra RAM upgrades) is running your game. Bones? Sure, they already do that to some extent (skeletal animation, maybe
        • Right, which is why Hollywood uses a system just like what the grandparent described for CG rendering today.

          Give it two console generations before cloth, bone and muscle animations are part of a convincing model.
        • Zombie games would benefit from bones, clothing, and skin.
          So would really gory fighting games. Mortal Kombat fatalities with that kind of system would rock.
          Since most of the innovation in video games is graphics oriented anyway, I don't see this too far off.
      • Well, at this point we can be assured that games will completely take out unintended content when they ship instead of just locking it out. However, the real question is: do the politicians understand how powerful hacking can be? The Sims was in the spot light for their ability to remove the blur around the private areas. Of course, nothing was underneath the blur (like a marquee). But what if a hacker also changed the texture of the characters to show explicit body parts? Hacking a game is changing the c
        • You overestimate the reach of the ESRB's change. To further your analogy: it was found that a pornographic image was hidden under a layer of White-Out inside of a children's book. Said book would no longer be suitable for children as thye can simply use outside tools (i.e. their nail) to uncover the content that was hidden and niot acessed during ordinary use (i.e. reading the book) and that book would then on be sold at adult bookstores.
          • Yes, scratching whiteout off with your nail is about the same effort for a child as getting an action replay and the specific codes to go into it to modify the game. Nice comparison.
            • The whiteout would also have to have been printed over with graphic depictions of hookers getting beaten down with a baseball bat by a guy wearing a jetpack, which kind of kills the children's book analogy.

              It's more like going frame-by-frame on an R rated movie to catch a microsecond glimpse of snatch that wasn't supposed to be there.
        • Actually, what you can add into a game and Hot Coffee were two completely different things. The reason for that is because Hot Coffee was already completely assembled: models, responses, sounds and everything. The only part of the game that was actually hacked was a few lined of code in the PC version to allow that part of the game to be accessed. In case anybody needs clarification, think of it like this:

          In SSB:Melee, you have to meet certain requirments to 'unlock' features in the game. Hot Coffee was a f
        • The ESRB rates the content placed on the game disc and distributed by the publisher. Example: The original version of Half-Life wasn't rated for the content of Counter-Strike (a mod), but when Sierra distributed a retail version of Counter-Strike, it was subject to the ESRB's ratings. In GTA's case, the Hot Coffee game already existed on the disc, and the only "hacking" involved was used to access the minigame. I suppose SSBM could also fall into this category, although none of this secret content would hav
        • What if in your children's book you had two pages stuck together and inbetween them there was a porno image. Kid's can't see it unless they "hack the game." Most people would see that as a very different thing than a book having a blank page saying "draw something here" and a kid drawing pornography onto it. That is the difference between downloading a hack that unlocks content and downloading a nude patch that adds the content in.
      • OMG, we might see Yoshi without his boots and saddle! Think of the children!
  • How do you access this developer mode? The article tells how great debug mode can be, but nowhere does it list how it's accessed. Anyone want to let me (us) in on the secret for some easy karma whoring?

    • Re:How do you access? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Look here [detstar.com]

    • Re:How do you access? (Score:5, Informative)

      by yanos ( 633109 ) <yannosNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday August 15, 2005 @01:19PM (#13323048)
      Yes, the article itself is pretty low on details on how to access this debug menu, but after some googling, I found this (from http://ssbm.detstar.com/debug/ [detstar.com]):

      If you have an Action Replay, Super Smash Bros. Melee already exists in your list of preset game codes... However, those SSBM codes will only work with SSBM version 1.0.

      So, how do you figure out what version you have, to decide which codes to use? Take your Melee disk, and turn it over to the shiny side. Hold it directly in the light, and search for tiny text on the dark ring. You'll have to experiment by holding your disk at different angles in the light, until the text is visible.

      Eventually, you should be able to find text that says "DOL-GALE-0-xx".The "xx" will actually be a number, which tells you which version you have. The -Det Erest messing around with textures - version numbers are below:
      00: Version 1.0
      01: Version 1.1
      02: Version 1.2

      Here are the codes to access the Debug Menu:

      v1.0:
      77H8-Y4CD-H4VRY
      JR3K-U29H-U6BH

      v1.1:
      69KC-WJGT-V09F5
      P5A0-GP46-M8EB7

      v1.2:
      VBF7-P9Y6-2788D
      TDA5-YA0R-8947W

      PAL:
      7X1H-THWE-401YB
      47K3-GPZC-DBY82

  • So how do we do this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Monday August 15, 2005 @12:22PM (#13322506)
    5 pages of all the wonderful things you can do with developer mode. Practically change anything you want in the game, get up to 6 player controlled characters, new levels, new models, new music, whatever you want. And not a single mention of how exactly to access it.

    Until you get to the forum link on page 6 and even then, a forum user (not the author) points out that you need action replay and specific codes to do 95% of what the article describes.

  • All I have to say is... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In under a year we played enough Super Smash Brothers to actually break the gamecube. We burned out the optical drive and had to buy a new one. Our save file has close to 2000 hours on it now. Talk about crack in video game form!

    Comparing Smash Brothers to other fighters, let alone other video games, is totally unfair. It's like comparing Firefly to other TV shows; you simply do not put professionals on a list full of amateurs, it is not fair to anyone involved.

    The real beauty of SSBM is that it is in m
  • "I always believed [Super Smash Bros. Melee] was the deepest fighting game of this gaming generation, but from then on, I was convinced it was the deepest fighting game ever."

    I guess this guy's never played a Virtua Fighter game before. Or any of Capcom's later-era 2D fighters. Geez.

    • Neither. Honest disagreement. I can't imagine why anyone would call Capcom's fighters "deep", and some people insist that Virtua Fighter is just a button masher. They, you, and I are all probably wrong about something. Most of the highly regarded fighters have their own merits. Smash Bros included.

      But this guy's taste is given away by the fact that he thinks more levels and character size options makes it deeper.

    • Re:Hyperbole or ignorance? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I will agree with you on Virtua Fighter, but Capcom's late era 2D fighters lacked the depth of their mid-era 2D fighters. Their last offering, Capcom Fighting Evolution was not all that deep because it boiled down to tons of Darkstalker character rushdown. Capcom vs. SNK 2 wasn't all that deep since it devolved into A-Groove Sak, Blanka, Bison, K-Groove Sagat, Blanka, Cammy or C-Groove Sagat teams (stupid Sagat crouching fierce punch).

      Capcom's deepest 2-D fighters (IMO) were:
      Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
      Va
      • Capcom's deepest 2-D fighters (IMO) were:
        Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike

        By the time 3rd strike came out, all of the local arcades had gone bye-bye or decided that they would only carry driving/shooting/fishing/ddr style games. Playing any fighting game on the Dreamcast controller makes my thumbs bleed.

        Vampire Saviour

        I'd agree with you here except for the lifebar problem; it changed the game too much. I prefer the second one (Vampire Hunter) out of the Vampire games.

        Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

        You are referri

    • Re:Hyperbole or ignorance? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MilenCent ( 219397 ) <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Monday August 15, 2005 @02:44PM (#13323990) Homepage
      Those games are deep, sure. And the things shown in this article don't make Super Smash Bros. Melee deep.

      But it is astoundingly deep, and it can be argued that it's deeper than those games you mention, if just because:

      1. It's not a straight, left-right fighting game. Of course there are 3D fighters like Tekken and SoulCalibur, but they're still essentially about a 2D plane. Smash Bros. provides a lot more territory to make use of, and vertical attacks play a much larger role in the game.

      2. Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage. You can even be at maximum damage (999%) and survive an attack. Thus, the direction in which you throw your opinion is as important as the amount of damage you do. Similarly, you can lose with very little damage. Knocking a player out of an area is an inherently deeper play mechanic than getting an arbitrary number high/low enough.

      3. Smash has a shield/dodge system that can allow a player to absolutely rule if mastered, but can be played entirely without it. (For my money, SoulCalibur's Guard Impacts are slightly cooler, but it's still neat.)

      4. Sheer variety of characters. Smash has one "character" that's actually two that play completely differently from each other, Zelda/Sheik, who can be switched between using a special move. There's also a character (Ice Climbers) who's actually two guys you play at the same time, and the "trailing" climber can die independently of the main one. Kirby has a special move that can become completely different depending on who he's fighting against (26 options). Yoshi doesn't have a triple jump, Kirby and Jigglypuff have many jumps. Peach has a move that gives her an item to throw, and can also float in midair and attack from that position. Fox is ultra-fast, but actually falls faster than other characters. Mario/Dr. Mario has a move that reverses an opponent's direction, which is evil to do to someone trying to recover from a fall. And Jigglypuff, of course, has Rest, which screws you over if it misses, but can instantly kill multiple opponents if it hits.

      Of course there other fighting games that have some (though not this much) variety, and variety alone doesn't make a game deep. But the thing about Smash Bros. Melee is that it's still balanced despite it all. That takes an amazing amount of play testing, and genius game designers. That's what makes them great.

      Hell I know players who swear by the *original*, N64 Smash Bros. And these games came from Nintendo and HAL Labs, neither of which had made a fighting game before. Very cool.
      • Before someone mentions Killer Instinct, that was more Rare's baby. (Though I admit I said "Nintendo and HAL Labs," which confuses the issue somewhat.)
      • > it can be argued that it's deeper than those games you mention

        Let's see...

        > It's not a straight, left-right fighting game. Of course there are 3D fighters like Tekken and SoulCalibur, but they're still essentially about a 2D plane.

        Within the context of quasi-realistic fighting, Virtua Fighter 3 made full use of all three dimensions. Battle areas had lots of height variations and some obstacles, and relative positioning in 3-space affected many elements of the battle system. Although VF4 retu

        • Within the context of quasi-realistic fighting, Virtua Fighter 3 made full use of all three dimensions. Battle areas had lots of height variations and some obstacles, and relative positioning in 3-space affected many elements of the battle system.

          There are other fighting games that are sort of like that as well (PowerStone and its sequel, which is a weird system but certainly no weirder than Smash's), which I had forgotten about. I don't know if they're more or less different or deeper than Smash's, I admi
          • > But the ONLY way to win a (standard) Smash game is by scoring Ring Outs, scoring damage is merely a means to that end, and that's a lot (but not all) of what's interesting about it.

            But your argument was that it made the game deeper. How does being more limited create depth? Isn't it a tougher problem if you have the opportunity to make a move that will K.O. your opponent if you succeed, but leave yourself open to a Ring Out if you fail? Similarly, from the defensive side, you could intentionally t

            • But your argument was that it made the game deeper. How does being more limited create depth? Isn't it a tougher problem if you have the opportunity to make a move that will K.O. your opponent if you succeed, but leave yourself open to a Ring Out if you fail?

              Replace the words "K.O. your opponent" with "Ring out your opponent" in the sentence. Your scenario is possible under both systems. Ring Outs require that players worry more about positioning, and less about just tearing down (or up) a number. But it
              • > Replace the words "K.O. your opponent" with "Ring out your opponent" in the sentence. Your scenario is possible under both systems.

                No, because being near a boundary automatically creates a Ring Out risk for both players, though not necessarily an equal one. I'm pointing out the extra dimension that having to worry about two different win conditions creates. If health is off the table, you're only concerned about position. But if you have to concern yourself with both position and health (and time,

                • No, because being near a boundary automatically creates a Ring Out risk for both players, though not necessarily an equal one. I'm pointing out the extra dimension that having to worry about two different win conditions creates.

                  And yet, having multiple win conditions is always a case of having a weaker design than having a single win condition, because more arbitrary factors are added to the game.

                  Sure, there *can* be situations where you can go after a health or positioning win, but there also can be situat
                  • > And yet, having multiple win conditions is always a case of having a weaker design than having a single win condition, because more arbitrary factors are added to the game.

                    I don't see any rational basis for that statement at all.

                    > Sure, there *can* be situations where you can go after a health or positioning win, but there also can be situations where you get a similar (though likely not identical) effect in a Ring Out only system.

                    No, because in the second case the only actual threat is being

                    • And yet, having multiple win conditions is always a case of having a weaker design than having a single win condition, because more arbitrary factors are added to the game.

                      I don't see any rational basis for that statement at all.

                      It's true because the design is more elegant. To some degree, game design is an exercise of communication to and from the player. Make the game more complex, and the game will need that much stronger a play experience for the player to accept it. That's not just learning a game,
                    • > It's true because the design is more elegant.

                      Elegance and simplicity don't automatically translate into strength of design. It would be extremely "elegant" to have a game where no matter what you did, you always wound up losing. It just wouldn't be very much fun. It might also be "elegant" to have a flight game that didn't concern itself with wind shear and G forces and the like, but that certainly wouldn't make it a stronger design than a more complex flight simulator.

                      To put it another way: Pon

                    • Elegance and simplicity don't automatically translate into strength of design. It would be extremely "elegant" to have a game where no matter what you did, you always wound up losing. It just wouldn't be very much fun.

                      False! Many arcade games have followed this pattern.

                      To put it another way: Pong vs. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Which game has the purer design? Now which one is more engaging? Which is deeper? Which is the better experience?

                      You think this is a slam-dunk argument, but it is not! Both game
                    • > False! Many arcade games have followed this pattern.

                      Touché. Though I meant losing in the local, situational sense, not in the overall sense.

                      > Pong is still playable today, and since it is a versus game, it's actually a way of testing the players against each other, rather than against a scripted set of missions, which means it's *possible* get tired of GTA:SA before Pong.

                      Ah, but GTA:SA has 2-player free-roaming co-op play, as well as 2-player rampages. And its open-ended design allows y

                    • Ah, but GTA:SA has 2-player free-roaming co-op play, as well as 2-player rampages. And its open-ended design allows you to roll your own mayhem for theoretically endless enjoyment.

                      I suppose. I like the free-roamingness of GTA, but using it just to smash up whatever you can, because you can, doesn't greatly appeal to me. It's a case of a series that, maybe similar to your feelings about Nintendo, I can respect from a design standpoint but will probably never play much of.

                      And I also disagree that more peopl
                    • > And I also disagree that more people would enjoy Pong over GTA:SA.

                      I assume you meant "GTA:SA over Pong". Since GTA:SA is the #1 selling video game of all time, I don't think the raw numbers are on your side. Yes, Pong is still fun...for about 10 minutes. But after experiencing evolutionary games like Warlords or Arkanoid, Pong just doesn't cut it anymore for long-term enjoyment.

                      > The gang-banger theme of SA really turned me and my friends off when we rented it.

                      A rental just can't do that ga

                    • I assume you meant "GTA:SA over Pong".

                      Argh... I wrote that at around 8:30 in the morning after a night that might as well have been sleepless. No fun.

                      Since GTA:SA is the #1 selling video game of all time,

                      Hmm, this sounds suspecious to me, though it has been very popular. Do you have some numbers to back this up? Wikipedia's list [wikipedia.org], at least, identifies two games that sold more as of June 2005, Super Mario 64 and GTA: Vice City. And that list doesn't include NES games, which I imagine would blow both of th
                    • > Do you have some numbers to back this up?

                      Couldn't find any cumulative numbers, though I did find this story [gamespot.com] which casts the Wikipedia numbers in severe doubt, since GTA:SA sold 5.1 million units in 2004 alone, and I think that's only a domestic figure.

                      Google yields plenty of stories citing the game as the fastest-selling game of all time, plus a couple from the UK and Australia talking about moving 1 million units in both places in the first week or so.

                      I admit that I've just heard the "#1 selling

                    • This article [wordyard.com], apparently published around April '91, lists 7 million copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 sold. This one [playright.dk] (analysis [pcvsconsole.com]) lists sales of 18M overall (and 8.5M for GTA:VC). SMB3 has, for a while now, been the canonical best selling game of all time.

                      NPD numbers are tricky in that they don't cover all stores, and the precise numbers themselves cannot be used publically without getting charged up the yang. And of course, they don't cover the Japanese market, where GTA games don't do nearly as well. (Media
                    • > Before releasing Pong, Nolan Bushnell & company produced Computer Space, the first arcade video game and somewhat similar (I think I heard) to Space War, but it was not popular, probably because it was too complex.

                      That's probably what they had at the arcade when I was a kid, then. It was basically 2-player Asteroids minus the asteroids, plus the option of having a variable-strength gravity well in the middle of the screen either with or without an accompanying planet that would destroy you on co

                    • That's probably what they had at the arcade when I was a kid, then. It was basically 2-player Asteroids minus the asteroids, plus the option of having a variable-strength gravity well in the middle of the screen either with or without an accompanying planet that would destroy you on contact. The controls were all buttons -- rotation, thrust, firing, and I think a shield.

                      That sounds like the arcade version of Space War that got released early on in the original arcade boom. BTW, there is an Atari 2600 port
                    • > I guess I disagree because I don't consider its use to be offensive. I don't think you've proven your point there sufficently.

                      To me, some cute icon that's jarringly out of place completely shatters the illusion of the experience. Even the medical kits in Splinter Cell nearly break the experience, because the idea of instant health regeneration in that environment is patently absurd.

                      > If he *wasn't* a random badass then maybe it'd be easier to get with.

                      I actually like the fact that he's unapol

                    • To me, some cute icon that's jarringly out of place completely shatters the illusion of the experience. Even the medical kits in Splinter Cell nearly break the experience, because the idea of instant health regeneration in that environment is patently absurd.

                      Well, the very idea of powerups is like that. It might actually be cool to play a game in which all powerups and damage were handled very realistically, where if you lost an arm, you'd have to go through the rest of the game without it. For various re
                    • > It might actually be cool to play a game in which all powerups and damage were handled very realistically, where if you lost an arm, you'd have to go through the rest of the game without it.

                      I'd love to see it, personally. But the gaming public at large just won't accept that sort of lack of forgiveness in a game anymore. For example, look at the uproar over the lack of an in-level save in Aliens vs. Predator 2 (an intentional design choice to heighten tension and force you to legitimately survive)

                    • I'd love to see it, personally. But the gaming public at large just won't accept that sort of lack of forgiveness in a game anymore. For example, look at the uproar over the lack of an in-level save in Aliens vs. Predator 2 (an intentional design choice to heighten tension and force you to legitimately survive) -- I think they had a quicksave patch out within a month or two.

                      Ah, that's one of the things that prevents more people from trying out Roguelikes, which as a rule contain some form of permadeath.

                      And
    • Yeah, this part in particular is hilarious:

      With almost complete certainty, the "wave dash" was never purposely intended to be in the game. It's exact reasons like this why fans and journalists alike proclaim Melee to be the deepest fighter ever created.

      As if SSBM is the first fighting game with this kind of stuff in it! AFAIK the term "wave dashing" is even taken from the Tekken series. The author also mentions the L-cancel, but similar cancels have been an advanced staple of most modern fighting games fo

  • Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker has something similar. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pnice ( 753704 ) on Monday August 15, 2005 @01:20PM (#13323067)
    There are 14 test rooms you can access if you use an Action Replay on Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. You can find them at codejunkies.com

    Screenshots of the test rooms can be viewed here:
    http://www.zeldavortex.com/index.php?do=viewarticl e&id=18 [zeldavortex.com]
  • That if you select Developer mode and press up while playing a female character, their dress disappears?

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