Another Link to Another Link

http://thoseguys.tv/tldr-link-to-the-past-rocks/

Link to this week's article

As some of you may know, I've been also posting my blog articles on my friend Stevesesy's website thoseguys.tv. Since it's getting to be a hassle to write it once and then re-format all the pictures and captions, I'll just start posting links to the weekly article.

This week's article
Game Design Roulette: Save Points

Enjoy.

Stop N Swop's Eternal Mystery

I never liked this game.

There's something inherently mysterious about the Nintendo 64. Maybe it was because it was the first time I ever saw a game in full 3D. Maybe it was because so many games had tiny little secrets to fill up the extra space they hadn't planned on using. Or maybe it was because we owned at any one time, 3 N64 games and one of them was always Automobili Lamborgini. Probably the last one.

I was somewhere around 8 or 9 when I started to really get into the Nintendo 64, which is handy, because that's about when they started actually filling out their game library. (There were 9 US releases in 1996, the year the system came out...) I've said in other venues that I love older games because of the nostalgia that I felt, and the specifics of that nostalgia were the mystery of an unexplored world. Games like Link to the Past held my attention for so long because it seemed like there was always more to explore. By adding a new dimension to a game, my interest was exponentially peaked. Add on to the fact that I was fairly gullible and the internet was brand new in our house, I was able to extend the replay value of most games far beyond the normal time.


Here's something to consider, and something that I've had to face myself. There are no secrets in video games anymore. By a quick Google search or checking out GameFAQs, you can know every intimate detail of any game within a matter of days after the game's release. I was playing Ocarina of Time 3D on my nephew's 3DS (not owning one myself, mind you) and he gave me a few pointers on how to do some things. First I squelched my instinct to trump him. Yeah, I know that you have to shoot Gohoma with the slingshot. I've done it without a sword on my back! (Incidentally, I can't remember the last time I booted up OoT on the N64 without glitching away my sword...) He told me of a few secret places that, having owned this game for almost 15 years now I already knew. But it surprised me that he knew. He then explained to me that he saw it on Google...

This made me sad because his generation will never know of the wonders of finding secrets by yourself, by some douche-bag kid on the playground named R.J., or by sifting through billions of angelfire webpages to find them.

You asshole, R.J., you don't have ANY industry connections, do you?

I had extra hours of fun looking for cheats, secrets and glitches back when there was no certain, reliable source for game information. All while my brother was yelling at me because we had dial-up and he needed to make a phone call.

These were the codes for the unobtainable.

So, my friend's uncle works for Nintendo and he says that this is totally, real. In order to get the Triforce in Zelda, you have to play Saria's Song on the Fairy Ocarina 999 times and then get to Hyrule Castle by only doing backflips...

Codes like these were everywhere. Some of them, like the one mentioned above, were easily spotted as fake, even to a gullible 9 year old. (But, to my chagrin, I would for years claim that the Debug Code was a fake until PopFiction proved me wrong.) Sometimes they would offer something else, like a new sword, or a different color Epona. The stupidest one was a “secret ending” which more or less implied that Link and Zelda had sex. Which is rediculous, not because Nintendo would never allow something like that to be in one of their games, but because a princess and a common forest boy? Perish the thought!

Now, there was some logical reason that these codes existed, though even to me at 9, I thought was stretching logic a bit. First was that there was a Triforce shape on the Quest screen in the center of all the medalions. (They claimed that that would fill in). Second, in two out of 3 console Zelda games, the main point of the game was to obtain the Triforce. But most damning of all was the Unicorn Fountain picture and the Triforce from the treasure chest picture that Nintendo Power first displayed along with 98 other screenshots of the yet-unreleased Zelda 64. (Along with a beam-sword attack that would get dropped much to my disappointment.)

But while my search for new ways to lengthen my Zelda game play time took me to further horizons of stupidity than a 9 year old should be aware of, there was one game that intrigued my interest well into my adulthood: Banjo-Kazooie.

Her beak says no, but her eyes say yes...

Banjo-Kazooie, for those of you poor unfortunate souls who haven't played it, was the perfect platformer for the N64. The levels were varied enough, you had just the right amount of power-ups and attacks to fill out your roster, and there were just the right amount of collectibles. Something that Rare would take to extreme measures until they would parody it in the 360 game, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Plus, the songs are so catchy that even ponies can sing along.

Maybe if I smash my head against the ice for a few more hours...

About halfway through the game, you came to the obligatory snow level, which was Christmas themed. In a small cave at the back of the level was a tunnel that was blocked off by a wall of ice. Behind that wall was the mystical and fabled Ice Key. It would taunt you. Surely it was a puzzle. An enigma that you needed to solve. Let's see, there's fire in the cave, but I can't bring it over to melt the wall. Can I position Kazooie to shoot eggs at it? I can, with enough finagling, but they just bounce off. The variety of wall-breaking attacks in my arsenal either don't affect the wall or can't be attempted here. How the hell do I get that?!

Now, this was in a time when games were a lot more picky about space requirements. It didn't make sense for the game developers to include something and not make it usable or obtainable in the game. Or, at least, not for them to do that and then put it prominently on display somewhere in the game.

Of course, if you're a completionist like me and got all 100 Jiggies in the game, you were rewarded with something even more infuriating: A clip at the end of the game showing Banjo and Kazooie prancing tantilizingly close to the Ice Key and two large colored eggs. We were promised that they would be able to be collected in Banjo-Tooie, at which point seemed like a joke. Toting a sequel in a video game?! Now it's standard practice to turn any well-selling game into a trilogy. (Or, if you're Halo, into 6 games, a remake, and a new trilogy coming soon) But back then, to my juvenile mind, that seemed preposterous. That's like counting your chickens before they hatch. Sure, this game was fun, but there's no way that it was like Mario or Zelda. There was no guarantee that there would ever be a sequel.

Well, there was. It was even called Banjo-Tooie, as Rare looked at my little face and yelled, “SUCK IT!” (I'm still opposed to the name since it seems so glib.) I rented it and enjoyed it, and even was able to shoulder all the extra story and collectibles. All because I was promised that I could get the Ice Key and whatever the hell those eggs were. Well, I did and I didn't. I got the Ice Key, but not by entering Wozza's Cave from the front and passing that ice-door/wall thing as the clip from Banjo-Kazooie showed. I got it from a back door. I also got 4 eggs from little B-K N64 cartidges scuttling around the world. The unlockables for these were greatly disappointing. Don't get me wrong, I loved using Dragon Kazooie, but the rest of the unlockables weren't worth the wait. And even for a small child, I started to know what it felt like to have a game company lie to my face. (A feeling I would come to know very well)

I never ended up having to suck anything down.

Looking for relief and mollification that Rare had screwed the pooch on this one, I started to search for answers. My search would eventually lead me to the Rare Witch Project (now the much easier to type therwp.com). Here I found out that, just like everything else in Banjo-Kazooie, there was a code to unlock the Ice Key and six (WTF?) eggs in Banjo-Kazooie. My mind was blown, and being the skeptic to random codes I find online, I promptly rented the game and gave them a go. To my surprise they worked splendidly, but instead of satiating my curiosity, they only made me hungrier, a feat that 6 eggs has never once done in my life. (Four are usually my limit for breakfast at any time)

Suddenly, questions abounded. Why were there six eggs instead of the four that we saw in Banjo-Tooie? What was this mysterious Stop N Swop? And to what end or purpose were these originally planned for?
Now, only one of these has ever been answered satisfactorily. The Stop N Swop.

The original plan was to rely on the N64's RAM memory cache, which stayed active for about 40 seconds after the console was turned off. There's a patent made by Rare that details the idea of loading in a small bit of data into that residual RAM memory cache and keeping it active until the games were swapped out (I guess in Europe they spell it with an 'o') and the system started up again. The new data would trigger a flag in Banjo-Tooie which would unlock something and vice versa. Basically, linking the sequel to the prequel.
What happened (and is something that I might expand on in a later date) was that Nintendo was getting ready to get all the systems capable to run RAND-NET, something that would be crucial for the Disk Drive add-on that would be coming out shortly. (Lol) Part of this was to make the systems with more efficient RAM caches. The new version of N64 only had residual RAM of about 3 seconds, which more or less shot that plan to hell. (Also, it would eventually require more RAM to run the Disk Drive which is why we got the Expansion Pak) So, panicking, Rare decided to boldly pretend like this is what they had planned all along.

"See? The Ice Key and the *cough* four eggs!"

Now, as for their original plans, they're open to speculation. There is still rampant speculation as to whether or not there is anything that the eggs and Ice Key do in Banjo-Kazooie at all, other than open a new window in the pause menu. Of course, Rare, being classy, broke down shortly after the release of Banjo-Tooie and explained to the fans exactly what was going on...

Abstract math is hard...

Or, rather, they kept making cryptic statements on their Q&A section of their official webpage for years and goaded us even more by making a cryptic diagram on a blackboard in Grabbed by the Ghoulies depicting an Key + four eggs with ?'s in them = ???
Technically, the Ice Key and eggs were used in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts by linking it up with Banjo-Kazooie from the Xbox LIVE Arcade, you could unlock awesome powerups. And by awesome, I mean stupid decorations that no one could possibly want.

To beat the game, you must beat two other games twice.

The mystery goes deeper with the the eggs and Ice Key when running through snippets of code of Donkey Kong 64, hackers found the phrase “ICE KEY” hidden in the code, possibly meaning that there was going to be some connectivity with Donkey Kong 64 at some stage, too. Knowing the completion requirements for Donkey Kong 64, it was likely that you had to stop playing DK and finish Banjo-Kazooie 100% to continue in your progress.

I think at some point, Rare realized that their biggest mistake was trying to act like it never existed. By treating the Stop N Swop items like they weren't a thing, they dug themselves a deeper hole that made it less and less likely that the fans could be satiated by the real purposes of the eggs and Ice Key. No doubt that the powerups that you get in Banjo-Tooie were actually the powerups that you were intended to get with Stop N Swop, along with Bottle's Revenge, a dummied-out two-player co-op mode of Tooie. But as time went on it, and speculation became deeper and deeper, it was less likely that saying that what you got was the plan all along was going to go over well with the fans who meticulously pondered over every line of code in the original game.

To this day, though, I can't help but be awed by the sheer amount of intrigue and mystery that I felt when I first discovered that the eggs and Ice Key were obtainable in Banjo-Kazooie. It sparked a love of the strange in video games. Things that make me hiss at the screen, “Why do you even exist?!” things like blackjack at the ending screen of Final Fantasy IX. The Video Relaxant item in Earthbound. Yoshi on top of the castle in Super Mario 64. (Pointless prize of 99 lives, after you've done everything you possibly could in the game) To me, it's like they act like a beam of light coming from the cracks of a closed door. Mysteries that could only be understood if you were in the production team. It's largely the reason I want to get into game design. I'll be on the other side of that door. I'll be the one creating the puzzles and meta-games for obsessive players like myself to ponder and lose sleep over. I'll also do my best to make sure that the prize for solving the mystery is better than what the prize usually is: the ability to make a forum post that raises a few eyebrows.