Secrets that require patience in video games

Revised: Secrets in games

Alternatively, the secrets in video games that that no one would even dare give two shits and a fuck about.

So in Sonic Adventure at the very, very end of the last stage Final Egg, there's this platform that takes you up to a room where, if you can stomach the long grueling ride up, you can find four extra lives.

Has anyone actually waited for the damn thing to come down? I had to wait two minutes for it! Its funny how there's all these extra little paths and rooms with goodies in Sonic Adventure that are analogous to the earlier 2D Sonic titles. I never see those again (Aside from perhaps those Advance titles).

Have any of you ever had to wait for something to happen in a video game but didn't want to, or secrets that you know in a game that you know you wouldn't bother to check out but are cool none-the-less to other people? How about some hidden area where you find some really neat goodies? Or how that pointless secret you found in "X" game? What ever the heck it is, why don't you discuss it. Discuss.

EDIT: Changing topic name/question because it sounded too specific.

 

I didn't know about this particular secret, but to adapt a line from your original message I couldn't really give a fuck about the later stages of Sonic Adventure - all these years later and Sonic Team clearly still can't produce a 3D Sonic game with a fully working camera system! In terms of pointless secrets, how about the "lost sponsor" message in Daytona USA or the NiGHTS debug code that few will live long enough to even input completely? Does anyone really know of a longer or more complicated code?

 

If I posted them here, they'd cease to be secrets.

 

Try the Aardvark pushwalls in Wolf3D.

 

Waiting for the tornado in Castlevania 2. Sadly this impossible to figure out secret was necessary to continue through the game. How many poor children had to wait for the next Nintendo Power to come out to tell them what the horrid English translated game could not.
-ud

 

I wasn't aware there was a debug code even found in NiGHTS. Tell me more

 

some of those fighting game unlock codes from the 16 bit days were pretty difficult.

One that comes to mind are the Boss unlock codes from the SNES versions of Fatal Fury 2 (Play as bosses) and Fatal Fury Special (play as Ryo)

 

Unlocking that f'ing Palm Tree in Fighters Megamix.

 

Play as the AM2 TreePlay the game for 84 hours. Then, choose Kuma with the Z button, and you will play as the tree.

That one?

 

Yes. That one.

 

It's not SUPER secret...but I only found out about it online.

In Warioland II (I think...either that or 3...it's the one that works on both GB and GBC, black cart), the first level opens with Wario sleeping in bed. You wake him up by moving the D pad and going on your merry way. If you wait for a length of time, Wario will uh...I guess sleep through the first level and you go through an alternate path through the game.

 

triggering the sonic 3 level select code, the legit way.
It sure takes a lot of patience

 

Do current gen games even have secrets like some of the above? I can't even think of any off the top of my head.

 

Anyone remember the trick on Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf (Genesis) where you had to amass 100 strokes on a course + input a code to play that hidden Fantasy Zone minigame?

There were a few Sega Master System games (and Zanac on the NES if I recall correctly) that featured "Secrets" or "extra continues" if you reset (or paused) the game many times.

Afterburner on the SMS comes to mind, and a few others.

 

It wasn't THAT horrible. With practice it was pretty easy.

 

The Debug Code for Star Wars Shadows of the Empire.


Select a save game slot and enter _Wampa__Stompa as a case-sensitive name. Note: The name is case-sensitive, with "_" indicating as a space, and two spaces between both words. Select the medium difficulty level. Begin game play and change the control option to the "Traditional" setting. Use the following actions to transform into the corresponding "character".


Enable the "Alternate characters" code and pause game play. Hold C-Up + C-Down + C-Left + C-Right + Z + L + R + Left and the Analog-stick Left halfway for approximately five seconds. A sound will confirm this part of the code. Keep the buttons held and hold Analog-stick Right halfway until the same sound is heard. Keep the buttons held and hold Analog-stick Left halfway until the same sound is heard. Keep the buttons held and hold Analog-stick Right halfway until the same sound is heard. Keep the buttons held and hold Analog-stick Left halfway until the same sound is heard. A message will appear at the top of the screen to confirm correct code entry. Press L, R, Analog-stick Up or Analog-stick Down to select a debug mode option. Press A to activate the selected option. After the debug mode code has been activated, the debug menu can be redisplayed by pausing game play and holding C-Up + C-Down + C-Left + C-Right + Z + L + R + Left and Analog-stick Left halfway for approximately five seconds. The debug options include selections for all items, invincibility, stopped opponents, killing Dash, teleporting within current level, level selection, and disabling collision detection. Note: Some versions of the game have additional debug options including changing the fog color, gravity settings, and toggling the textures.

Games just don't have secrets like they used to. I assume that (combined with the internet) lead to the downfall of Tips and Tricks magazine. I mean the last time I used codes in a game was Grand Theft Auto for PS2.

 

x

 

There's a game called Destory All Humans that came out in 2005 for Ps2 and Xbox that I was a tester for, so I know a lot of bugs that didn't get fixed.

One of them is in the sandbox mode, you can pile up cars into a "wall" and when you have enough of them together, fire another car through them and crash the game.

If you throw people into walls and such they occasionally get stuck. There's a part in this drive-in movie theater where it's easy to stick people into the screen.

Random areas in the farmland have invisible trees, branches with no tree trunks, trees hovering off the ground, etc.

For the last boss, there's a chainlink fence that surrounds the area she's in. You can hang out on the outside of the fence and blow her away as you can shoot through the fence, but her shots will be stopped.

In the sandbox modes while you're in the UFO, it is possible (although extremely difficult) to use a bomb to flip a tank or car up into the air and catch it onto your flying saucer. This will push the saucer towards the ground, and if you do it near a mountain or something sometimes you can get it to push the UFO through the ground. You can then fly around down there but you'll be limited to the mountain area as there's no way to descend any further. You get to see all of the buildings in their "destroyed" state (as they hang out down there until you kill them up above.) Once you do this there's no going back unless you exit the level.

In the second level, putting a bunch of objects onto the saucer's landing site, then landing will either:

- Pop the object through the ground and make it disappear
- Make the object pop through the saucer and up on top of it, upon which you can take off again and fly around with it
- Crash the game
- Get stuck inside the saucer (in particular, the Ferris wheel on the second level.) You can then fly around but if you try to get out you'll be stuck inside of the object that has been stuck to your saucer. These also happen if you put an object on top of the saucer and take off with it, although it's very rare to get it stuck or to crash.

There's this part where you have to follow this general without being seen, near the ocean. Your little alien dude dies when immersed in water. If you can kill the general (which fails the mission) and then throw yourself in the water at the exact same time, when the level resets all colors in the game will go negative. They didn't fix this, they just made it real, real, real hard to reproduce.

One time we crashed the game by exploding multiple heads, so there were 4000 brains littering the ground, and then rapidly collecting them all. This one I think they let go as "closed acceptable" because it was too rediculous.

There's also an invincibility code, a get all weapons code, an instant telekinesis and full ammo code, I'm pretty sure they were in the final game but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

Also if you happen to have this game, try walking around invisible and just listening to the conversations the people have with each other. Some of them are pretty funny, especially when the Men in black are interviewing people trying to find you.

Civilian: All I saw was a pigeon!

MIB: Was this pigeon four feet tall with a ray gun?

It's much funnier in real life.

 

I remember that - and the Fantasy Zone game only lasted about 10 seconds, right?

And still, when it was over, I wanted to do it again, just to see Fantasy Zone running on Genesis, and to see if I could make it last longer, somehow... man that was torture.

 

That reminds me, playing 250 two-player matches of Mortal Kombat II in order to play a secret Pong game definitely belongs in this topic.