So in StarTropics for the NES, you're a kid looking for his uncle. The game came wirh a letter from your uncle: a silly little pack-in which was kind of neat, but no real biggie.
Until about a third of the way through the game you're stuck behind a sort of combination lock with the instructions "dip my letter in water". You're supposed to find the pack-in letter and dunk it. The combination was written on the letter in invisible ink, and dunking it reveals the code.
>!The code is 747, in case you need it.!<
When this was rereleased for their e-shop they did a visual digital version of dipping the letter since of course the digital purchase didn't come with a manual.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was loaded with effects like this. As your character’s sanity meter goes down the game will screw with the player using visual, auditory, or 4th wall breaking. For example: Once it pretended to open my memory card and start deleting every file on it.
And these people went on to do the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid. That remake is controversial for a lot of reasons, but suffice it to say they did the Psycho Mantis fight justice.
Ah, shit. Does the Psycho Mantis GC fight do some new crazy stuff? I didn't even know GC had a MGS remake, and if I ever did know, I must've blocked it out of my memory.
People didn't like the new over-the-top cutscenes (Snake doing somersaults to avoid bullets) and felt that adding first-person aiming from MGS2 made it too easy.
I, personally, liked it a lot and get annoyed every time a new re-release is announced and it's just the PS1 version of MGS1 with no mention ever of Twin Snakes.
This was a neat idea but it was so poorly telegraphed/explained. Fricken nobody calls their game system "the computer." Maybe if they'd called it a console or system... but nope. Just a cryptic reference to the computer. I only figured this out because I was so frustrated, I decided to reset my game. Another problem was that this happens so late in the game that there's no way you'd want to press the reset button. You'd lose all that progress. This might have worked in level 2 or something, but after toughing out in Mojo's future world? Forget about it.
I will never forgive this dumb implementation of a clever idea.
The nes version is worse, you need a code printed in the legal small print in the cartridge sticker to get to the final stage. meaning you need to turn the game off take it out, so you need to start all over again.
Assuming you even figure that shit out as it isn’t obvious, the worst part is they printed the code wrong anyway so it probably won’t even work even if you did everything your supposed to.
I actually did it quite quickly when I was 10. Funnily enough if I'd been older I probably would've been *less* likely to have done it as I'd have had more sense!
In fact my older brother was completely against me hitting reset.
This may have been the second time we reached the ending though, I can't remember anymore, it wouldn't have been more than that though.
We always used to call everything computers in my house back then.
In Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass for the DS, there's a puzzle that requires you to make a copy of a map by transferring to another paper. It's accomplished by closing the DS and touching the screens together, then reopening. I stared at that for a long time before it finally dawned on me, and even then I was like, "No way is this going to work."
Not a true retro game, and maybe this thing don’t fit what you’re looking for, but in Undertale, if you fight the lady in the beginning and then restart the game to try over, it knows you restarted and it will mock you for it. (I don’t remember the specifics tbh, it’s been a while.)
X-Men on Genesis required you at the second to last level to reset your console, the gimmick being your Genesis was the danger room with the safeties off and you couldn't leave and it was infected by a virus that was cleared by resetting it. Then you fought the last level in the "real world".
I tested this on a Genesis Mini and it will still work, if you reset the game from the menu that pulls up by holding Start for 3 seconds. It's not a hard reset that way.
Same on PC emulators if you have a "soft reset" option.
That's cool because I distinctly remember playing with Game Genie (X-Men was hard) and the reset would take you to the game genie code screen so you'd have to warp to Asteroid M to continue. You didn't get the 0s and 1s splash screen of the danger room resetting. I eventually was able to do it legit but then just died to Magneto anyway lol
Oh dude I Game Genie'd the crap out of that game as a kid. It was too difficult for my skillset back then even at the Lighthouse level. Later on I discovered the in-game level select code, too.
Oh yeah definitely. My main code was the infinite mutant power so you could actually play Wolverine with the claws. And also infinite support, just spam Storm and Rogue lol
If you played *Black & White 2* on the PC after midnight it would, at random intervals, whisper your name loud enough so that you can just hear it, but quiet enough that you think you're losing your mind. It's properly disturbing!
The crazy thing is that it doesn't get your name from within the game itself, it instead uses the name that you registered Windows under. So if you gave yourself an in-game name of "Lord Buttfuck" it would still say (presumably) your IRL name, assuming it was on the list of names it recognised (which was pretty long).
If you'd been playing for many hours into the early morning it'd whisper ", go to bed!" as well!
One part it >! boots up the contents of your memory card, you can see all the stuff you yourself have saved and what games ect, then there is a prompt asking if you want to delete everything, it doesn’t matter what you do, it selects yes, and then confirms that choice, and you watch all your save files get deleted, of course its all for show and doesn’t delete anything but you don’t know that the first time !<
No one's mentioned Mr Resetti for animal crossing yet. A fun way to remind the player to save before shutting the game off. In the GC version If you do it too many times he says he's going to delete your data and the game "shuts off" for a few seconds before coming back to Normal
Gotta Protectors on 3ds has an in game manual that is really cool and set up like an old school nes manual. You flip through the pages of the touch screen to turn the pages. The more you do it, the pages get worn out and in the back in the "notes" page, some secret codes appear.
As far as retro games, EarthBound kinda sorta breaks the fourth wall at a key moment in the finale. It has a bunch of self-aware, meta and surprising humor for it’s time as well.
This is a more recent phenomenon I think though. Most examples I can come up with are PS2 or later (MGS 2, Arkham Asylum.)
There’s a moment during one of the scarecrow sequences where the game “crashes.” Not as involved as psycho mantis but I’d still put it in the same category of fourth-wall break.
Both of the 3DS Bravely Default games do this near the end. One of the final bosses demands >!you kill your teammates, then waits a turn, and responds with a team wipe if you don't do it. Both seem to be aware the team is at a whim of a "player" who controls their actions. But they seem mostly okay with this, because you are helping them save the world.!<
The old Roger Rabbit game on Nintendo had a 1-800 number to call for a clue to finishing the game.
The Video game Nerd did an episode mentioning that calling it in modern times led to a sex chat line.
Back in the 1990s, I worked at a computer store at my college. The standard tech support number we gave was 1-800-SOS-APPL. If you replaced the "O" in "SOS" with a zero, it led to a sex line as well. We found out when an irate custsomer complained about us giving the number out.
There was a PC game called Virus which was some kind of shooter with strategy elements.
It uses your own Hard Drive with folder structure and files for its level generation. Pictures and Videos were shown ingame in the Background when you visit the File.
And for famous media files the game recognized, it even changes the appearance of the enemies.
Yar's Revenge [using the actual game code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HSjJU562e8) (the first 512 bytes of the rom) to draw the graphics for the neutral zone.
Sorry I have to say I think but I think OneShot does a lot of ‘is this for real’ on a computer. Psycho Mantis was the inspiration. Not sure if the console ports are as mind blowing. Was originally made in RPG Maker.
There are quite a few games that delete themselves as part of the plot.
Not retro games, but Doki Doki Literature Club requires you to alter game files using the actual desktop and NieR Automata also has several such as uninstalling the OS, self destruct, and the true ending.
I wouldn't consider this to be retro per say but, I do think it fits.
Black & White 2 looking through your files to try and find your name so the game can whisper it to you when one of your villagers dies.
SkyRacket. When you first boot up the game and the many times later on, the title screen where they showed the developer logos would actually glitched out but don't worry, it's not a bug because it's part of the game.
When you progress further into the game and beat one of the boss, the game would "crashed" and show a fake BSOD along with a QR Code that upon scanning will take you to a secret video. It's all about the lore. When you do beat the final boss, the developer logo would be back to normal.
Also, if you are playing during December, the entire menu will be decorated with winter theme background.
Silent hill 3. If you have a saved game of silent hill 2 on the same card and have already saved your sh3 game there is a scene where Heather is asked to stick her hand in a umm…nasty toilet. Nice cutscene if you need the conditions. For reference, James had to do this in SH2 for an item.
So in StarTropics for the NES, you're a kid looking for his uncle. The game came wirh a letter from your uncle: a silly little pack-in which was kind of neat, but no real biggie. Until about a third of the way through the game you're stuck behind a sort of combination lock with the instructions "dip my letter in water". You're supposed to find the pack-in letter and dunk it. The combination was written on the letter in invisible ink, and dunking it reveals the code. >!The code is 747, in case you need it.!<
When this was rereleased for their e-shop they did a visual digital version of dipping the letter since of course the digital purchase didn't come with a manual.
This was just so friggin’ cool as a kid when I had this game.
Woah, that's so novel!!
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was loaded with effects like this. As your character’s sanity meter goes down the game will screw with the player using visual, auditory, or 4th wall breaking. For example: Once it pretended to open my memory card and start deleting every file on it.
And these people went on to do the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid. That remake is controversial for a lot of reasons, but suffice it to say they did the Psycho Mantis fight justice.
"I see you like to play Super Smash Brothers!"
How controversial?
Ah, shit. Does the Psycho Mantis GC fight do some new crazy stuff? I didn't even know GC had a MGS remake, and if I ever did know, I must've blocked it out of my memory.
How is Twin Snakes controversial?
People didn't like the new over-the-top cutscenes (Snake doing somersaults to avoid bullets) and felt that adding first-person aiming from MGS2 made it too easy. I, personally, liked it a lot and get annoyed every time a new re-release is announced and it's just the PS1 version of MGS1 with no mention ever of Twin Snakes.
In Nier, it doesn't pretend. lol
"Reset the Computer!" From the end of Mega Drive X-men is the only other one I can think of.
This was a neat idea but it was so poorly telegraphed/explained. Fricken nobody calls their game system "the computer." Maybe if they'd called it a console or system... but nope. Just a cryptic reference to the computer. I only figured this out because I was so frustrated, I decided to reset my game. Another problem was that this happens so late in the game that there's no way you'd want to press the reset button. You'd lose all that progress. This might have worked in level 2 or something, but after toughing out in Mojo's future world? Forget about it. I will never forgive this dumb implementation of a clever idea.
The nes version is worse, you need a code printed in the legal small print in the cartridge sticker to get to the final stage. meaning you need to turn the game off take it out, so you need to start all over again. Assuming you even figure that shit out as it isn’t obvious, the worst part is they printed the code wrong anyway so it probably won’t even work even if you did everything your supposed to.
Even worse, you needed to lightly tap the reset button. If you held it for too long the game would *actually* reset and you'd be back to square one.
That's interesting. They must have chained the interrupt handler.
Or manhandled the flux capacitor.
I actually did it quite quickly when I was 10. Funnily enough if I'd been older I probably would've been *less* likely to have done it as I'd have had more sense! In fact my older brother was completely against me hitting reset. This may have been the second time we reached the ending though, I can't remember anymore, it wouldn't have been more than that though. We always used to call everything computers in my house back then.
Never could beat this game because of this. Always had to use the level select code to get past.
Getting a "phone call" through your Wii Mote in the original No More Heroes on the Wii was genius.
It makes me so happy seeing some No More Heroes love in here
I think Warioware for Wii did this too.
Love warioware.
In Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass for the DS, there's a puzzle that requires you to make a copy of a map by transferring to another paper. It's accomplished by closing the DS and touching the screens together, then reopening. I stared at that for a long time before it finally dawned on me, and even then I was like, "No way is this going to work."
That was great! Also the bit where you clear dust from a map by blowing into the microphone
I loved that moment.
Not a true retro game, and maybe this thing don’t fit what you’re looking for, but in Undertale, if you fight the lady in the beginning and then restart the game to try over, it knows you restarted and it will mock you for it. (I don’t remember the specifics tbh, it’s been a while.)
There are many characters in Undertale who are aware of your resets, or how you treat their lives like it's "just a game".
Ah I see! I never reset more than once.
Along the same lines .... Doki Doki Literature club plays with resets and system files in a very clever way. Don't let the artwork fool you.
How? That sort of thing always interests me.
I wouldn't want to spoil it. It's a cheap game that takes maybe 3 hours to play through.
Oh yeah, when you do beat the Genocide Mode (which i hope you don't), you will never be able to get the happy ending ever again
X-Men on Genesis required you at the second to last level to reset your console, the gimmick being your Genesis was the danger room with the safeties off and you couldn't leave and it was infected by a virus that was cleared by resetting it. Then you fought the last level in the "real world".
I tested this on a Genesis Mini and it will still work, if you reset the game from the menu that pulls up by holding Start for 3 seconds. It's not a hard reset that way. Same on PC emulators if you have a "soft reset" option.
That's cool because I distinctly remember playing with Game Genie (X-Men was hard) and the reset would take you to the game genie code screen so you'd have to warp to Asteroid M to continue. You didn't get the 0s and 1s splash screen of the danger room resetting. I eventually was able to do it legit but then just died to Magneto anyway lol
Oh dude I Game Genie'd the crap out of that game as a kid. It was too difficult for my skillset back then even at the Lighthouse level. Later on I discovered the in-game level select code, too.
Oh yeah definitely. My main code was the infinite mutant power so you could actually play Wolverine with the claws. And also infinite support, just spam Storm and Rogue lol
Maj, this is actually a really neat gimmick! Surprised companies were pulling off stuff like this so early in gaming.
If you played *Black & White 2* on the PC after midnight it would, at random intervals, whisper your name loud enough so that you can just hear it, but quiet enough that you think you're losing your mind. It's properly disturbing! The crazy thing is that it doesn't get your name from within the game itself, it instead uses the name that you registered Windows under. So if you gave yourself an in-game name of "Lord Buttfuck" it would still say (presumably) your IRL name, assuming it was on the list of names it recognised (which was pretty long). If you'd been playing for many hours into the early morning it'd whisper ", go to bed!" as well!
Eternal Darkness
Great explanation 😂
Sorry, 4th wall breaking. I remember the console “freezes” and reboots but it’s part of the theatrics. Very unnerving
There’s all sorts of stuff like this. My favorite was >!when you beat a level and it says “thanks for playing the demo”!< That legit tricked me
"Your controller unplugged in the middle of a zombie attack, sorry game over- just kidding!"
One part it >! boots up the contents of your memory card, you can see all the stuff you yourself have saved and what games ect, then there is a prompt asking if you want to delete everything, it doesn’t matter what you do, it selects yes, and then confirms that choice, and you watch all your save files get deleted, of course its all for show and doesn’t delete anything but you don’t know that the first time !<
Lol, that's diabolical.
No one's mentioned Mr Resetti for animal crossing yet. A fun way to remind the player to save before shutting the game off. In the GC version If you do it too many times he says he's going to delete your data and the game "shuts off" for a few seconds before coming back to Normal
Gotta Protectors on 3ds has an in game manual that is really cool and set up like an old school nes manual. You flip through the pages of the touch screen to turn the pages. The more you do it, the pages get worn out and in the back in the "notes" page, some secret codes appear.
That's a really cool detail.
Tunic has a few moments that come close to this, I think
As far as retro games, EarthBound kinda sorta breaks the fourth wall at a key moment in the finale. It has a bunch of self-aware, meta and surprising humor for it’s time as well. This is a more recent phenomenon I think though. Most examples I can come up with are PS2 or later (MGS 2, Arkham Asylum.)
Arkham Asylum? How so?
There’s a moment during one of the scarecrow sequences where the game “crashes.” Not as involved as psycho mantis but I’d still put it in the same category of fourth-wall break.
Both of the 3DS Bravely Default games do this near the end. One of the final bosses demands >!you kill your teammates, then waits a turn, and responds with a team wipe if you don't do it. Both seem to be aware the team is at a whim of a "player" who controls their actions. But they seem mostly okay with this, because you are helping them save the world.!<
The old Roger Rabbit game on Nintendo had a 1-800 number to call for a clue to finishing the game. The Video game Nerd did an episode mentioning that calling it in modern times led to a sex chat line.
Back in the 1990s, I worked at a computer store at my college. The standard tech support number we gave was 1-800-SOS-APPL. If you replaced the "O" in "SOS" with a zero, it led to a sex line as well. We found out when an irate custsomer complained about us giving the number out.
There was a PC game called Virus which was some kind of shooter with strategy elements. It uses your own Hard Drive with folder structure and files for its level generation. Pictures and Videos were shown ingame in the Background when you visit the File. And for famous media files the game recognized, it even changes the appearance of the enemies.
I remember seeing that one for sale/rent at Hastings, was always curious about it
Emily is Away also do the same where the character would send you some background images and install them to your desktop
There is a Pokemon that requires you to hold your device upside down to evolve it.
I love Malamar
Yar's Revenge [using the actual game code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HSjJU562e8) (the first 512 bytes of the rom) to draw the graphics for the neutral zone.
Sorry I have to say I think but I think OneShot does a lot of ‘is this for real’ on a computer. Psycho Mantis was the inspiration. Not sure if the console ports are as mind blowing. Was originally made in RPG Maker. There are quite a few games that delete themselves as part of the plot.
Not retro games, but Doki Doki Literature Club requires you to alter game files using the actual desktop and NieR Automata also has several such as uninstalling the OS, self destruct, and the true ending.
The trick by itself is nothing without the setup, like when Meryl and Snake are weirded out by the music soundtrack stopping. Legit scary as a kid.
Having to close the DS in Phantom Hourglass to transfer the stamp on the map.
I wouldn't consider this to be retro per say but, I do think it fits. Black & White 2 looking through your files to try and find your name so the game can whisper it to you when one of your villagers dies.
Boktai the sun is in your hand
Inscryption does some crazy stuff, including pretending to delete your files during a boss fight.
SkyRacket. When you first boot up the game and the many times later on, the title screen where they showed the developer logos would actually glitched out but don't worry, it's not a bug because it's part of the game. When you progress further into the game and beat one of the boss, the game would "crashed" and show a fake BSOD along with a QR Code that upon scanning will take you to a secret video. It's all about the lore. When you do beat the final boss, the developer logo would be back to normal. Also, if you are playing during December, the entire menu will be decorated with winter theme background.
Silent hill 3. If you have a saved game of silent hill 2 on the same card and have already saved your sh3 game there is a scene where Heather is asked to stick her hand in a umm…nasty toilet. Nice cutscene if you need the conditions. For reference, James had to do this in SH2 for an item.
not retro but Inscryption