Tag Archives: Nintendo

A Video Game Puzzle That Baffled People Twice, Thirty Years Apart

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confused

In the past, we’ve discussed the topic of intuitive puzzles vs. non-intuitive puzzles.

Non-intuitive puzzles used to be the bane of many video game fans — so much so that they spawned an infamous trope, That One Puzzle, describing a puzzle with a solution so utterly non-intuitive that it bordered on the nonsensical. One of the most infamous came from the Monkey Island series, where you needed a wrench, but instead of just finding one, you had to hypnotize a monkey with a banana on a metronome and use IT as your monkey wrench.

See what I mean about nonsensical?

These days you’re more likely to encounter a non-intuitive puzzle in an escape room or other physical puzzly activity than a video game.

But today, we have a doozy of an example for you. This non-intuitive puzzle managed to baffle people twice… thirty years apart.

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StarTropics was a video game released for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990. It featured a protagonist named Mike, who was visiting his scientist uncle in the South Seas. Mike wielded a yo-yo and had to search for his missing uncle, eventually exploring the island, the ocean, and outerspace along the way.

The game became famous for a non-intuitive puzzle that baffled many players. At one point in the game, you needed to find a three-digit code to utilize a transceiver your uncle had in his shoe. The only clue was “dip my note in water.”

But there was no way to do this in-game.

The solution was simple, but eluded many players because it wasn’t in-game. It was something the players actually had to do.

You see, there was a physical letter from the uncle included with the instruction manual to the game. That was the note you had to dip in water to reveal the three-digit code.

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So, yes, the game did tell you what to do, but it’s not intuitive because at no other point in the game do you have to do something outside the diegetic space of the game. It’s not like you need to jump up and down to make your character jump.

This sort of fourth wall breaking puzzling can certainly add to the gameplay, but it’s also very confusing for players not familiar with the concept.

For instance, more than one escape room game I’ve encountered outwitted and baffled some players by utilizing images on the game box itself (or even the bar code) as part of a puzzle. Since this is “outside” what the player has been told is part of the game — the components inside the box — this is clever, but also unexpected. (An entire video game, File://maniac, was built around this concept.)

That puzzle was confusing enough for players, but it got worse almost thirty years later.

In 2019, the game was ported over to the Nintendo Switch, the latest Nintendo console, allowing a new generation of gamers to rediscover this cult-classic 8-bit adventure.

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Except they forgot about the puzzle and the letter and the dipping into water thing.

So there was literally no way for new players to solve the puzzle, because there was no letter included with the instructions.

This wasn’t the first time StarTropics had been ported over to a new console. But it was the first time they forgot to do something to help players with the letter puzzle. Often, it was a digital copy of the letter, complete with an animation of it being “dipped” into water and revealing the code.

But the Switch version didn’t have that.

So players were stuck.

There’s creating a really non-intuitive outside-the-box puzzle, and then there’s breaking the game entirely by removing the only clue to the solution.

So yeah, StarTropics. A charming game, but baffling in all the wrong ways… twice… thirty years apart.

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Puzzles Come to Animal Crossing for May Day!

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[Image courtesy of Nintendo.]

The latest edition of the video game franchise Animal Crossing — New Horizons — has been out for a few months now. But recently, they ventured into the world of puzzles as a special promotion.

Thankfully, friend of the blog Jennifer Cunningham — puzzler, artist, musicologist, and former Tabletop Tournament Champion — has returned to the blog with the lowdown on the recent May Day event.

So, without further ado, let’s turn things over to Jen for her piece on Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Possibly one of the most anticipated video game releases of the year, Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrived at just the right time, hitting Nintendo Switch consoles at the end of March.

The latest installment in the Animal Crossing series finds its players arriving at a beautiful island paradise. There are multiple goals in the game including expanding your home, gaining wealth, collecting insects and fish to donate to the local museum (or to sell for profit), and of course improving your island’s appeal so that popular singer/songwriter K.K. Slider will play a concert for you and the other residents.

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[Image courtesy of VG 24/7.]

Players across the world have gone wild for this game, making it their entertainment of choice while stuck at home at this uneasy time. The social aspect of the game, which allows players to virtually invite their friends to their islands, share gifts and resources, and even to chat, has helped many feel less isolated.

And the makers of Animal Crossing are doing their part to keep the game interesting and engaging for players who have likely been obsessively playing since the release date. As months change, so do your island’s insects and fish, and special events ensure players keep coming back. An Easter-themed event called Bunny Day saw players collecting eggs to build themed objects, and more recently an environmentally centered event called Nature Day encouraged activities related to planting trees and flowers.

May Day on May 1st was part of the Nature Day celebration. Starting on this day, everyone’s favorite raccoon/tanuki mogul Tom Nook gave players a special ticket for a May Day Tour on a special getaway island via Dodo Airlines. Unlike other island excursions that players may take, this particular tour package had an unusual surprise. Players were transported to an island with a puzzly secret: a maze!

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[Image courtesy of Jennifer Cunningham.]

Normally Animal Crossing doesn’t involve much in the way of problem solving — it’s a pretty straightforward collect-and-build-style game — so to challenge players with a puzzle was a surprise.

The entire May Day Tour island is composed of a hedge maze, blocked off in spots by boulders, trees, and shrubs. Using a simple shovel supplied at the maze entrance, players must collect resources such as fruit, wood, and iron ore to build more tools and make their way through the maze.

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[Image courtesy of Newsweek.]

In addition, players could collect “Bell vouchers” which can be traded in for Bells (the game’s currency). At the end of the maze awaited the main prize as supplied by a mysterious returning character popular to fans of the game’s previous generations. (I admit as a new fan, this wasn’t a big draw for me, but for die-hard fans, this was a very big deal.)

The maze was intuitive, and it didn’t take long for me to figure out how to navigate it, although it does involve a lot of backtracking to meet the necessary steps in the correct order.

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[Image courtesy of Super Parent.]

That said, the maze did offer some challenges. I completed my first attempt fairly quickly, but failed to maintain enough fruit in my stores to remove three boulders and access a group of bell vouchers. (For a bit of context, consuming fruit boosts players’ strength, allowing them to dig up whole trees or break boulders).

Thankfully the maze offered a reset option. It took me about three attempts to finally perform every necessary action in the correct order to collect all of the maze’s prizes.

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[Image courtesy of Animal Crossing World.]

Overall, while not the most challenging of puzzles, it was refreshing to do some problem solving in a game that can admittedly get a little repetitive. There was a hint within the game’s dialog that there may be more islands of this sort, and I do hope that is true. Likely these will be included in future events to keep players coming back for more.

If you haven’t jumped on the Animal Crossing bandwagon yet and want to try your luck at the maze before it’s too late, the May Day event runs through May 7.

Thank you Jen for that marvelous report!

Will you be participating in the May Day Animal Crossing event, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

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Farewell, Kazuhisa Hashimoto, Creator of the Konami Code

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We talk about codes a lot in this blog. We’ve discussed codebreaking, hidden messages, encryption, spycraft, and password protection in the past. But we haven’t talked much about another kind of code, the sort that grants secret access to new abilities, powers, and other benefits.

In the video game world, these are commonly known as cheat codes. There are various famous ones from different eras of gaming, but one code stands head and shoulders above the rest: the Konami Code.

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[Image courtesy of Newegg.]

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.

Ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s, the Konami Code was named for Konami, the video game publisher whose games utilized this code. It was first used in the Nintendo version of the arcade game Gradius in 1986, giving the player the full set of power-ups (rather than forcing the player to earn them throughout the game).

You see, the video game designer and producer working on converting the game, Kazuhisa Hashimoto, found the game too difficult to play during his testing phase. He then created a cheat code to make the game easier, allowing him to complete his testing. The code he chose became known as the Konami Code.

It’s most famously associated with the game Contra, a side-scrolling platformer that pitted Rambo-inspired heroes against an invading alien force. The game was famously difficult because one hit could kill you, and you only had three lives for the entire game. Entering the Konami Code granted the player 30 lives and a much greater chance of success.

(I, of course, could beat it without the Konami Code. But this article isn’t about me and my old-school video game wizardry.)

The code became part of video game pop culture, continuing to appear not only in Konami games, but all sorts of other games, up through the modern day. Often with different results.

In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, you got extra lives. But if you used it in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, it would unlock a playable version of Spider-Man. If you use the code in Assassin’s Creed 3, a turkey will wear the character’s famous hood, weirdly enough.

The code has transcended gaming as well, not only becoming the name of a famous wrestler’s gaming-centric YouTube channel, but appearing everywhere from Family Guy and Wreck-It Ralph to Dance Dance Revolution and Rocket League.

It even allows for a bit of festive fun on the website for Bank of Canada. On the page revealing the new $10 bank note, inputting the code hilariously activates a rain of money-confetti and plays the Canadian National Anthem.

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Sadly, the reason that I’ve got the Konami Code on my mind today is that Kazuhisa Hashimoto passed away this week. The veteran game designer was 61 years old, and after being hired by the company in his twenties, spent nearly 30 years working for Konami, first on coin-operated games and later on console titles.

There’s not a huge amount of information readily available about Hashimoto or his life outside the world of video games. In fact, some articles about Hashimoto claim he was 79 years old at the time of his death. And the one photo I can find that’s attributed to him appears to be a picture of Star Trek actor George Takei instead.

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We here at PuzzleNation mourn the loss of this influential designer and contributor to pop culture. May both his games and his famous code live on as fine, smile-inducing examples of his hard work and playful nature.

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The Puzzly Legacy of the Game Boy

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This week marks thirty years since Nintendo’s handheld travel-friendly Game Boy system launched in stores. This small gray machine with the two-tone greenish-yellow screen, affectionately known as The Brick for its shape and weight, is a part of not only many childhoods for puzzlers and gamers my age and younger, but part of the foundation of mobile gaming as we know it today.

It’s not uncommon for people to play games or solve puzzles away from home these days. A myriad of options now live in your pocket thanks to smartphones — including PuzzleNation’s Daily POP Crosswords and Wordventures! (Oh, I simply cannot resist a shameless plug.)

But the entire mobile gaming/puzzling industry hit the big time because of the Game Boy. From its Nintendo successor the Game Boy Advance and rival Sega’s Game Gear all the way to tablet games, the Playstation PSP, the Nintendo Switch, and app games galore, it all kicked off with the Game Boy.

There are many seminal Game Boy titles — Kirby’s Dream Land, Pokemon Red/Blue, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Wario Land, Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins — many of them topping “best of” lists across the Internet, but you cannot have a conversation about the success of the Game Boy without discussing the iconic puzzle game that was packaged with the system.

Tetris.

I can hear the music right now as I type this blog post.

You can’t help but wonder if the Game Boy would have been as successful or popular without the insanely addictive puzzly gameplay of Tetris packaged with it. I found several comments on the Internet on related articles that stated they would’ve happily glued their Tetris cartridge directly to the Game Boy, because they never played any other games.

Granted, there were plenty of other puzzle titles for the mobile game platform. Alleyway, Boxxle, Catrap, and Pipe Dream come to mind, along with ported classics like Q*bert and some of the early Yoshi games.

But can any of them hold a candle to the puzzly legacy of those seven blocky game pieces and that inimitable music?

Doubtful.

I mean, it’s not coincidence that Tetris has its own dedicated board on our Pinterest page and not any of those other puzzle games.

Really, Tetris and the Game Boy were a match made in heaven. You had one of the most addictive puzzle games of all-time and the perfect long-lasting mobile device to ensure you could keep playing the game wherever and whenever you wished.

And thirty years later, the mobile puzzle game revolution that dynamic duo started is alive and well.

Thank you, Tetris. And thank you, Game Boy. You’re part of PuzzleNation history.

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Streets of Steel: An Early Look at a Kickstarter Campaign to Follow!

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We’ve covered many interesting and ambitious Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns over the years, each with their puzzly goals and aspirations. Some reinvent an old classic, while others forge a new path by creating a unique solving experience.

The subject of today’s post is doing a little of both. Enjoy as we delve into the world of Streets of Steel!

Streets of Steel endeavors to capture the spirit of ’80s 8-bit Nintendo fighting classics like Streets of Rage or River City Ransom, all while creating an engrossing play experience built around cooperative combat.

As a huge fan of games like this (particularly the Double Dragon franchise, which has a similar gameplay style), I was immediately intrigued by the idea of translating the side-scrolling video game experience to the tabletop realm.

Check out this intro from the Kickstarter page for the game:

Steel City has fallen into disarray. You and your crew must clean up the streets in this 1-4 player SideScrollin Co-Op boardgame

A generation ago, Steel City was a shining beacon of cooperation, peace and prosperity. Neighbors cleaned up after their dogs. Graffiti rarely used offensive language. PTA meeting attendance was high. Then, the Disaster struck. Now, Steel City is a mere shadow of its former glory. Roving bands of thugs terrorize honest citizens. Evil corporations dump toxic waste in the street. PTA meeting attendance is low.

Tired and fed up, a few brave Steel City heroes have banded together to stem the tide of carnage. YOU are one of those heroes. YOU will clean up these STREETS OF STEEL.

The campaign has already reached its funding goal, and now supporters continue pushing the total higher, reaching several stretch goals that increase the quality of game pieces and add new mechanics to the gameplay itself. (And there’s still time to become a backer!)

I reached out to creator Ryan Lesser, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about the early development days of Streets of Steel.

When asked about how Streets of Steel came to be:

I was thinking of other ways, besides my first board game High Heavens, to bring a combat-heavy tabletop game experience to non-hardcore gamers. Randomness and dice rolling are both pretty much non existent in High Heavens, so I figured I would go heavy on that.

I also wanted to make a cooperative game, where High Heavens is competitive. Those two goals had my mind crunching, looking for cool gameplay that could support that. Pretty quickly, I thought to bring the beat ’em up video game genre to the tabletop.

When asked how the development process (both in game design and Kickstarter launch) was different from his previous game, the thoroughly enjoyable mythology-fueled player-vs-player game, High Heavens:

In a lot of ways the dev was similar, but specifically, the co-op play was very different. Instead of creating a tight but expandable experience that pits players against each other, every decision that I made for SOS was to bring them together as a team. Every single new idea, move, power, etc that was generated, had to serve the purpose of team play.

I also designed this one, not alone, but with a partner-in-crime. Matt Moore and I have been working together since about 2006, when I hired him as an Artist at Harmonix. Since then, he has become an Art Director himself at other companies but all the while we have both played, and jammed on ideas for board games. This time I formalized things and he came on board to help me finish the game. He spent a large amount of his time on SOS crafting the Baddie Behavior Deck… our AI system that tells the game what to do against the players.

Another big difference is that instead of leaning heavily on ancient mythology, as in High Heavens, I wanted to invent my own, new IP based on all of the inputs I had during the 80s. It was sort of my Weird Science, but instead of trying to make a human, I wanted to make a board game. In SOS, you can see not only my own inventions, but lots of influences from movies, TV, music, comics and of course, video games.

He definitely nailed that aesthetic. Each player controls a different hero, each one a pastiche of fighting game characters and ’80s movie tropes. Average Joe, for instance, definitely wouldn’t have looked out of place as a member of Cobra Kai, or among the Warriors as they battled their way across town. And yet, for video game fans, there’s no denying the resemblance to Ken from Street Fighter.

Mayor Van Dammage, on the other hand, is every cop-movie authority figure joke simultaneously. He’s the exasperated police chief, the partner with one day until retirement, and the cigar-chomping rogue cop on a mission, all at once. And with a name strongly reminiscent of one of the hokiest tough guys in film history, every player will find something recognizable with him.

Plus the bad guys are topnotch. Check out this quick Instagram clip of Ryan getting the Boss Mutie’s expression just right (in a ghastly way, of course):

As a co-op game, players must work together, combining their skills, wits, and items acquired in the game in order to stop the bad guys and save Steel City. All co-op games rely on strong problem-solving, strategic thinking, and careful resource-management, which just happen to be three skills that puzzlers have in spades.

And I suspect this game will give puzzlers and fighters a challenge well worth their time.

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse behind the curtain for Streets of Steel. There’s still time to back it on Kickstarter and contribute to the game’s production and success! Click here for all the details!

And be sure to check out their Kickstarter Live broadcast on Friday around 11am EST!

Thank you to Ryan Lesser for not only taking the time out to talk to us, but for opening up the archives to show us some of the development process for the game! Here’s hoping Streets of Steel reaches even greater heights of success before the campaign is through!

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Game Boy: A Puzzly Step Forward for Mobile Gaming

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It’s no secret that we’ve got skin in the puzzle app game. The Penny Dell Crosswords App is our flagship project, and it’s part of a thriving puzzle app market.

But if you think back, mobile puzzle gaming really started decades ago with Nintendo’s Game Boy handheld video game console. It was a precursor to the smartphone app system we have today, even if the Game Boy didn’t exactly fit in your pocket.

And at a time when classic video game systems are being revived and re-released — the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo, and the Sega Genesis have all seen repackagings in the last year — could a Game Boy revival be far behind?

The crew at Gizmodo think so, and they made a list of 25 Game Boy games that belong on a revived system.

And as you might expect, there are several puzzle games suggested.

It makes sense, because many industry experts attribute some of the Game Boy’s success to the fact that every machine was packaged with a copy of Tetris, the addictive piece-moving game.

But that wasn’t the only puzzle game to make an impression on young gamers. Dr. Mario was all about pattern-matching in order to eradicate different colored viruses with stacks of similarly colored pills.

Either as a one-player challenge or in competition with another player, Dr. Mario taxed your ability to strategically use each pill provided, trying to eliminate as many viruses as possible.

And for a pure puzzle solving experience, there was Mario’s Picross.

This was a logic art puzzle where you had to use the lists of numbers along the top and side of the grid to deduce where to place black squares in order to reveal an image.

Although there was a timer attached to each puzzle, it wasn’t nearly as stressful a solving experience as Dr. Mario or Tetris, and it introduced an entirely new form of puzzle-solving to many young gamers.

Without the Game Boy and these puzzle games, it’s hard to imagine the success and growth of puzzle apps like the Penny Dell Crosswords App.

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