Some secrets are obvious, some are well hidden, but a few of them just blow my mind. Like in SMB3, where to get a warp whistle you have to crouch on a white block for three seconds, and then get a chest behind the end of the level
How on earth did people figure that out?
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Nintendo power magazine.
I’m not sure how we found this out and I played it when it came out.
How did everyone know to blow into the cartridge as well as a “fix.” 😆
Either the magazine or call the hotline for tips.
This is innate knowledge, according to my 5 year old
I refuse to correct them, Dad is just Mario god
It still bothers me that dude randomly found it while playing the game during the championship round of “The Wizard”.
Phone hotlines, Nintendo Power, playground word of mouth…
Man that must have been a time.
The magazine and word of mouth.
That wasn’t too hard. All white blocks can do that. It’s very reasonable to do it accidentally once, then try it on every other one.
I can think of tons of these. Super Mario world had some wild ones.
GET THE POWER!!!!
Curiosity
Let’s just say the kid that had Nintendo Power was very popular at recess.
Playing 200000 hours at the same level
How the fuck did people figure out to kneel at that cliff in castlevania 2 and the hint isn’t even in the game?
A LOT of these kinds of things were just spread by playing with friends. I miss that kind of interaction
I mean it’s not as old as you think.
I was the first of my friends to beat CoD World at War’s campaign and unlocked nazi zombies nobody believed me though the first day at school lol
If you’ve played games long enough or have a good pattern recognition you could feel something was different so you’d just mess around with the anomaly. Sorry if you do have that quality it takes away the fun of a game once you recognize them
I remember when I was like 6 and playing this my friend down the street told me about it. Word of mouth was a big thing. Same with the Mortal Kombat cheat kodes.
Believe it or not, we knew about this secret before the game even came out
I remember being like 8 back in the 90s and calling the Nintendo tips / hints hotline to help me figure out how to do something in Pokemon Blue.
Man if you think that one was hard you should read up on Bubble Bobble.
Nintendo had a 1-800 number that you could call and talk to “game experts” and they would dole out the tips.
As well as gaming magazines.
A lot of the old-days cheats were put in the game as aids during development and testing. If a tester found a bug in Level 5 it was a good idea to have something in the game that let others get to it without having to play levels 1-4.
After the game came out the cheat codes and secrets would then get leaked and published in magazines (and then spread via word of mouth).
I watched my babysitter show my older brother and then I showed my younger brother, and that’s how games used to be like
I found it by getting distracted lol earlier in the level I was ducking on one of those white pillars to avoid a flying turtle, and my brother started saying something so I just turned to look at him and when I look back my character was behind the screen. It took me a while to figure out it was only the white ones you could do it on, but after that I started going behind everything I could.
Remember, back then they tested their games and usually had to actually play them to do the tests. Since there wouldn’t be a “flash save” style way of loading a game mid playthrough they would need to actually get to the level to test it. Shortcuts like the warp whistles and such were put in to help test and made known after launch through the “tips” and info given to the magazines back then. Sort of like the Konami code that was in games going all the way back to Gradius (1986) for the NES.
For those who grew up past the point of Nintendo magazine and hotlines, we were taught by others. Eventually, we realized these were patterns in games. These are now called “gamer habits”. In 2D platformers, this is things like walking to the left at the start of levels or trying to walk into walls. In other games, it’s things like filling up every part of the map in case of treasure or walking into walls.
There was no internet. We had nothing better to do than spend HOURS exploring every active square of the game field. 😀
Fuck around and find out.
Still remember those endless nights dialing into the Nintendo helpline, trying to figure out these sneaky secrets. Those were the days? 😅
Their uncle who works for Nintendo that none of the rest of family seems to know exists.
I don’t remember. I did this but don’t know how I knew.
The movie The Wizard came out in Dec 1989 in USA. SMB3 came out in Feb 1990. That movie revealed the warp zone as part of the finale.
I brought my nes to college in the early 00s, and none of my roommates knew about the 3rd whistle.
Fuck around > find out
Also a game cartridge cost 60 to 100 dollars with inflation so when we got a game you played that game exclusively and sucked every minute out of it. You had time and patience to try these things so you could share on the playground.
I was watching the local news with my parents when they showed how to do this. My brothers and I jumped up, ran to the bedroom, and tried it out. It worked!
I’m curious, was there even any feedback after you crouched there for 3 seconds? Like a noise or anything that let’s you know something happened.
I remember learning on the school playground the Mortal Kombat blood code (ABACABB)
November power. There would be full guides for games, like legend of Zelda or Castlevania and stuff too