So when a secret lays hidden for years, if not decades, the impact of the discovery feels so much stronger than simply Googling for cheat codes. Sometimes these Easter eggs are found by hackers obsessing over lines of video game code, others are discovered purely by accident, and still others were spilled by developers who simply couldn’t keep a secret any longer. Whatever the case, these secrets, codes, or glitches are a reminder that nothing stays hidden forever – sometimes it just takes fifteen years to find everything a game has to offer.

Final Fantasy 9’s Nero Family sidequest

In Japan, there are a series of strategy guides called Ultimania. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re some of the most exhaustive video game guides in the world, with rundowns of every quest and item, interviews with developers, and more. Naturally, Final Fantasy 9 got the Ultimania treatment in Japan. In America, we got… well, probably one of the worst strategy guides ever designed. Written by BradyGames, the “guide” was essentially a paid advertisement for Square’s PlayOnline service, forcing you to enter keywords on a website for tips on how to do basically anything in the game.

Because the BradyGames guide is one of the most worthless things ever printed on paper, the Nero Family sidequest (opens in new tab) effectively went undiscovered in the West for over a decade. It wasn’t until some GameFAQs posters (opens in new tab) noticed an incredibly convoluted quest in Ultimania that was never mentioned in the North American guide, and tested it out for themselves. Solving the quest is a lengthy, laborious process, requiring players to go to the Tantalus hideout on disc 4 to meet with members of the Nero family, complete an event or boss fight, head back to meet another member, then repeating the process several more times. Completing the quest will net you a Protect Ring – not a huge reward, but hey, sometimes going on a previously undiscovered journey is more valuable than the destination.

Play as Master Hand in Super Smash Bros. Melee

Super Smash Bros. Melee released in 2001 as a launch window title for the Nintendo GameCube, and it wasn’t until 2008 that someone discovered a mind-blowing secret – there was a way to actually play as Smash Bros.’ imposing final boss, Master Hand (opens in new tab). Of course, the reason why it took so long to figure out and replicate is because activating the trick requires a very specific and totally unnatural set of controller commands to be input very precisely. If you’ve done it right, you’ll have pulled off what’s known as the Name Entry glitch.

First, you need to plug a controller into port three of your GameCube. Then, you point your cursor over the name field on the character select screen and hold A and B. Release A while holding B, scroll down to the Name Entry field, and press A again while still holding B down. It’ll probably take more than a few tries, but if done properly, you’ll be able to play as Master Hand, complete with all of his powerful laser and grappling moves. Unfortunately, other players won’t actually be able to defeat you because Master Hand was never meant to be a playable character, and you run the risk of causing your game to freeze, but none of that matters when you’re flying around the screen as a giant glove.

Halo 3’s hidden birthday message

Bungie loves packing its games to the rafters with secrets and Easter eggs, and the studio isn’t afraid to get real weird with how it hides them. Case in point: one of Halo 3’s longest buried secrets was hidden right in front of players’ noses, and wasn’t found until 2014 – seven years after Halo 3’s release. The secret? A birthday message from a developer to his wife (opens in new tab).

The only way to find this secret is to boot up a copy of Halo 3 on December 25, head to the title screen, and hold down both thumbsticks. The main menu should dissolve and a large, translucent Halo ring will start to form in its place. If you look closely on the edge of the ring, you’ll see the words “Happy Birthday, Lauren!” appear in dark, blocky letters. While this appears to be the last secret hiding in Halo 3’s depths, there’s no real way of knowing – Bungie is intentionally keeping mum, preferring to leave any other potential mysteries lingering as a question mark on one of the most beloved first-person shooters ever made.

Mortal Kombat’s hidden diagnostic menus

The Mortal Kombat games were full of hidden characters, special fatalities, and so many other secrets that describing how to pull some of them off makes all those other weird video game urban legend cheats seem plausible. Like the one in MK2 that requires you to press down and start the moment a digitized image of the game’s sound designer appears and shouts “Toasty!” so you can fight a hidden character named Smoke – these games were filled with stuff like that.

One particular cheat remained so hidden that it took over twenty years to uncover, only being found after some adept hackers pored over the arcade cabinet code. They found that if you press the player one and two block buttons in a specific order on Mortal Kombat 1-3’s arcade cabinets (the order is different for each game), you’ll unlock a special diagnostic menu. Dubbed the EJB Menu (opens in new tab) after series creator Ed J. Boon, these screens allow players to instantly access every fighter’s ending, turn on free play, display the word ‘Hello’ on the screen, and more. 

Metroid’s “Everything” password (NARPASSWORD)

Veterans of the original Metroid on NES remember the struggle to collect everything in the game and finish it in enough time to see the best ending. Countless hours were logged by thousands of players, but all of that could have been avoided knowing what we know now: all this time there’s been a password that unlocks everything in the game right from the start.

Because of the fail-safe built into Metroids password system, it was near-impossible to know that NARPAS SWORD0 000000 000000 would be the savior to many Metroid fans desperate to see the final credits. Thanks to this wonderful thing we call the Internet, the beauty of NARPAS SWORD or NAR PASSWORD or however you interpret it can be shared among the masses, making one of the most difficult NES games ever made a little more manageable.

LMD in Donkey Kong for Atari

Perhaps the most well hidden Easter Egg appearing on this list, I’m not sure anyone would have even noticed the three letters that could appear on Donkey Kong’s title screen even if they met the parameters accidentally. Of course those parameters are ridiculous anyhow: set a specific high score, die by falling, set the difficulty to 4 back at the title screen, and let the intro loop play.

What was so secret that such a complex method of discovery was needed? What could possibly need to be hidden for 26 years before someone finally found it, and only then after the developer tipped us off to its existence in a blog post? The developer’s initials, LMD, which will appear at the bottom of the title screen. That’s it. I don’t mind the initials; if I had the chance to hide my initials in a game I’d totally do it, but the work it takes to see them is just crazy. No wonder it took 26 years.

Goldeneye 64’s Line Mode

For years Nintendo swore that the only cheats available in Goldeneye were those we had to unlock through playing the game. There were no button sequences to be found, Nintendo maintained, and any attempts to figure some out would be futile; that is, until players actually did find button sequences that unlocked a ton of cheats, including some not available via the normal unlocking method.

One of those cheats, line mode, is the only non-unlockable mode in the entire game and turns the entire game into the music video for Take On Me by A-Ha. It’s a nifty little mode that doesnt really add anything to the experience (except 80s flashbacks), but the fact that it exists at all after Nintendo’s insistence is amazing in itself.

Wesker’s Desk in Resident Evil 2

Who’s going to check the same location 50 times after the first time tells you there’s nothing useful there? Apparently someone somewhere did while playing Resident Evil 2, and thats how the discovery of Film D was made. What’s on the film that took 50 searches to dig out of Wesker’s desk? A photo of Rebecca Chambers after a pick-up game of basketball. What a treat.

We know that this hidden gem was officially revealed in a book called Research on BioHazard 2 Final Edition in Japan the same year RE2 launched, but we’d bet that North American players had no idea this existed until years had passed. If it weren’t for that book, I STILL don’t think we’d have found it today, almost 20 years after the game released.

Chris Houlihan room in Link to the Past

In case you’re unfamiliar, the Chris Houlihan room is a hidden area in Zelda: A Link to the Past named after a 1990 Nintendo Power contest winner. It’s basically a fail-safe that the game sends you to if the game is going to crash, but what seems like an inconsequential addition was once one of the Zelda franchise’s biggest mysteries.

Because the game launched back in the days before the Internet, no one even knew the room existed. The World Wide Web is what brought this place to light, only becoming widely known twelve years after the game initially launched in 1992. Anyone who stumbled upon it before that probably thought the game was haunted by someone named Chris and tried to perform an exorcism on the cartridge; or was that just me?

Wave Race Blue Storm’s jerkface announcer

Wave Race: Blue Storm for the GameCube hides a comical Easter egg where the announcer turns into a half-interested, overly-sarcastic jerk. Things you’ll hear him say include “you have chosen poorly” at the character select, “if you were any good, you’d get a turbo by hitting the gas when the light turns green at the start of a race”, and “you don’t have an inferiority complex; you’re just inferior” when he REALLY wants to be a jerk.

The game initially launched in 2001, but it took nine years and an intrepid NeoGAF forum member to discover this antagonistic announcer because of how well hidden he is. First, you have to change a display on the Audio Options menu to vertical fog, then put in a long code of button presses, THEN go back and start a race. Surprising as it may be, I totally understand how this guy could have stayed in the shadows: who would think that rising fog would lead to this jerk?

Deus Ex: Invisible War’s Flag-Flushing Disco

Deus Ex: Invisible War admittedly does not live up to the quality of the original game, but this Easter Egg is too good to pass up. In the final level, pick up a flag and take it to a toilet in the bathroom, then flush said toilet. You’ll suddenly be warped to a rip-roarin’ party at Club Vox with all of the major characters in the game getting down with their bad selves. For a game as serious as Deus Ex, this is quite the surprise.

This is another Easter Egg I’m surprised we ever found, because getting to the disco dance party takes some really weird steps. I’d bet that most people didn’t look at those flags in that bunker and think to themselves “You know what? I’m going to move that to the bathroom. That’ll show that dastardly UNATCO!” Whoever first discovered this, we’re glad you did: everyone should be invited to this party.

Marathon Infinity’s Hangar 96

The Marathon games on the PC and Macintosh are a great example of how Bungie got its start in making great shooters. While the games certainly laid the groundwork for the smash hit Halo series, they also showcased just how well Bungie could keep secrets within its games: they hid an entire multiplayer level within the game, where only the most tech-savvy players could find it.

With a lot of digging, someone finally figured out the key to unlocking the level: finding it centers around combining hexadecimal terms seen on terminals in-game, then turning the combined hex term into readable code and reintroducing it into the game’s files. I have no idea who would even think to try that, as some players (like me) just know how to hit the start button, but the idea of hiding a full map in a game’s code is astounding. 

Splinter Cell: Double Agent’s Seal Rescue

Throughout the original Xbox version of Splinter Cell: Double Agent’s co-op stages, there are a series of hidden side missions where you and a friend must rescue five seals from imprisonment. That doesn’t sound like anything too out of the ordinary, except I’m not talking about Navy SEALS; I’m talking about the ocean-dwelling, balance-balls-on-their-noses animals that clap their fins and make honking noises.

Four years after Double Agent’s release, two of the game’s developers posted a video revealing the hidden co-op side mission, where a team must find and rescue five baby seals using a variety of seemingly inconsequential items. (Here’s a video showing it off.) Without the reveal, these seals might have stayed hidden forever, but I’m glad that we could bring peace to the seal people of Splinter Cell.

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Sometimes a change of pace is good. We may love a game to pixels and be happy to while away our days in its digital landscape, but once you start hitting 10, 20, 50-hour benchmarks, variety starts to become a necessity. It’s not hard to inject something different into the mix–some mini-games here, a couple of side missions there, maybe a boss or two with their own gimmick to nab our attention again. Come on devs, mix it up a little! Go crazy!

Well, okay, maybe not too crazy, because the more one thing differs from the game around it, the more likely it’s going to feel out of sync. That’s especially the case with boss battles that are so unique that it doesnt feel like they even belong in the same game anymore. Theres different and then theres straight-up mismatched, and if you push it to too faryou already did it, didn’t you? You did it eight different times. Aww, frick.

Navarro – Uncharted

Uncharted is, for the most part, pretty open-ended in terms of how you beat down the waves of enemies thrown at you. As long as you follow the don’t-get-dead rule, you can shoot/snipe/blow up mooks to your heart’s content. All that goes out the window when you go toe-to-toe with Navarro, the game’s devious final boss–and by toe-to-toe, I mean his gun to your face.

From the wide-open battlegrounds that fill the other 99% of this game, the final battle funnels Nathan Drake onto a heavily guarded tanker as he tries to stop Navarro from leaving the island laden with ancient cursed gold. The ensuing battle is comparatively claustrophobic, as Nathan is cooped into a small portion of the ship with only destructible boxes to hide behind. Regardless, its tolerable, and taking out the gun-toting maniacs that fill the ship is all a matter of skill. Then you get to the final-final encounter, disarmed and staring down the barrel of Navarro’s rage (and also his gun). Cue jumping between boxes and throwing perfectly timed punches, where even the slightest deviation from the developers’ plans ends in failure. Jeez, somebodys a control freak.

GLaDOS – Portal

A game-changer among first-person shooters, Portal broke the gun mold by focusing more on puzzle-solving and physics manipulation than killing. Excluding the disturbingly cute turrets, Chell doesn’t cause any sentient being harm during her excursion through Aperture Science. That is until GLaDOS tries to dispose of her still-living body, at which point the portal gun becomes a weapon of mass DOStruction.

Once Chell reaches GLaDOS’ secret lair, the object of the game goes from shooting yourself across rooms to shooting the AI with rockets, knocking off and incinerating pieces of hardware that contain her personality. However, a straight-up boss fight feels really out of step with what comes before, since Chell’s most violent act in the testing chambers is knocking over some egg-shaped bullet-douches. Plus, the fight is timed, so thoughtful pondering is right out while you try to deal with this brand-new kind of pressure. There are still puzzle-solving elements to it, since you have to figure out how to get each object from point A to point Burn, but in a lot of ways the change just doesn’t compute.

Fontaine – BioShock

The story of BioShock is, first and foremost, the story of Rapture. Discovering what led to the citys downfall creates its own natural sense of rising action, so no need for clunky trope signposts to get you through. Instead, things develop organically from Raptures shattered ruins, instilling a sense of melancholy when you finally leave it behind. Oh, but you have to beat this generic three-tiered boss before you go. Thats cool, right?

Compared to BioShock’s natural build-up, its conclusion suffers from final boss shoehorning with the fight against Fontaine. Before the encounter, Bioshock’s only “boss fights” are the optional, player-driven Big Daddies battles, and those don’t yank you out of the experience for a bland beatdown. Fontaine, however, is completely separate from the rest of the world, a level unto himself. All of a sudden you’re focused on a straightforward boss fight with no room for different choices or play styles, reducing the game to a pseudo-magical shootout. Compelled to take part in this forced charade? There’s a man vs. slave joke in there somewhere

Mz. Ruby – Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Sly Cooper is a man–er, mammal–of many talents. From sneaking to swiping to stealing the hearts of (literal) foxy ladies, there seems to be nothing Sly can’t do. Which is good, because in the middle of some plot-important sleuthing, he travels to the jungles of Haiti and must defeat the heinous reptilian mystic Mz. Ruby in a voodoo dance off. Oh lordy.

Mz. Ruby’s main method of attack is throwing objects conveniently shaped like Playstation buttons, which you have to match to keep Sly from getting knocked on his furry ass. Apparently this hurts our lady lizard somehow, because each time Sly passes one of her trials she loses a fat chunk of health. If it’s confusing how that’s supposed to work, its even more confusing how it’s supposed to fit in a game comprised of stealth mechanics and boss beat-ups. Thankfully, it doesn’t take much to bring Mz. Ruby down–you just need the power of dance.

Doppelganger – Prince of Persia

Unless youve had your head in the sand for the past ten years (and I mean, even if you have), youve probably heard of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. But did you know there was a Prince of Persia before that? No, its true! And it got quite a bit of attention in its day for having one of the most confusing bosses gaming had yet seen. A shadow version of the main character, the Prince’s doppleganger does everything exactly as you do, so it’s impossible to kill him without getting killed yourself. A difficult boss isn’t weird for Prince of Persia, but the answer to defeating him is about as out of place as a Swede acting as Iranian royalty. You do nothing.

In a move that was new for not only Prince of Persia, but gaming itself, the answer to defeating the doppelganger was to have the Prince sheath his sword and walk up to the shadowy other, joining with him in one form. This pacifistic solution bewildered many players back in the day, since there are no other circumstances where the Prince can lower his sword without being ruined by enemies.

Adel – Final Fantasy VIII

If there’s one thing Final Fantasy has taught me, it’s that the solution to everything is to beat the shit out of it. Childhood rival, vicious dictator, malevolent half-sword, half-clock god, the answer’s the same. Kick the ever-living bejesus out of it, and the universe will thank you. That’s why when I first played Final Fantasy VIII and got to the Adel fight–where you have to avoid hurting a friendly party member attached to the boss chest–my brain started to smoke.

Following a series of events infinitely too complicated and dumb to explain, monster sorceress Adel comes down from her space prison on a wave of sky-demons and absorbs leading lady Rinoa, forcing the party to fight Adel while not brutally killing their friend. That means all ranged attacks are out, as are summons, and for a game where summon-spamming is a perfectly legitimate strategy, that throws a wrench in the works. We can really only take so much insanity, Square-Enix–and we’re the folks who were fine with Quina.

Gruntilda – Banjo-Kazooie

Banjo-Kazooie is the kind of game that prides itself on being weird and non-traditional. I mean, there’s a sentient cheat code book! And garbage disposal whale-sharks! And you win the main character’s sister back during a game show! This quirky title plays by no rules but its own, and its rules are freaking weird. Well, except for the final boss. Yeah, that is weirdly normal.

Like Portal, Banjo-Kazooie is solidly about one thing through most of its run: hunting around while funny stuff happens, and probably saving your sister at some point. However, it turns into something else right before the credits roll. Banjo and Kazooie climb to the highest point of the game’s overworld and fight the kidnapping witch Gruntilda, at which point things play out like a pretty generic boss fight. Its disappointing when you look forward to more corny fun and get the same kind of final battle youd play in any other game. Well, at least they bring in colorful bird-lizard-creatures to assist, after you fill their statues with eggs. There’s that weirdness we know and love!

Strider battle – Half Life 2: Episode 2

I hate you so much, Magnusson. First you show up like I’m supposed to know who you are, then you won’t get over a twenty-year-old exploded casserole, and then you give me this thing. This ungainly ball I have to use against five-story-tall robots while their little underling friends try to turn me into mincemeat. Thanks for nothing, you jerk.

One of the most difficult fights in all of Half-Life 2, the strider battle that ends Episode 2 is made five times harder by the Magnusson Device–a magnetic ball you attach to striders, then shoot to blow it up. While the idea of one-shot-killing a strider is sick as hell, it’s less amazing in practice. The devices can only be found at far-between dispensaries, so God help you if your aim is bad. Then if you manage to attach it to a strider you better be ready with that shotgun, because if youre not fast enough itll deactivate and you have to start all ovER AGAIN GODDAMNDJSKLFJSDKLFDAFDSJKLFD. Since this is the only “boss fight” where you do anything like that, the minute-long practice session you get beforehand doesn’t help much. So yeah, fuck you Magnusson. I’m glad I ruined your lunch.

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Screencheat, out this week on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, is designed precisely around this principle. You can’t see your enemies. You have to watch their screens.

Come meet the developer as we face off against director and artist Nicholas McDonnell of Samurai Punk live at 4:30PM ET/1:30PM PT/9:30PM GMT.

Dig the show? We air twice a week, so make sure to follow our Twitch channel! When are we live? Here’s our schedule:

Tuesday 4:30PM – 6PM ET/1:30PM – 3PM PT GamesRadar+ joins fascinating folks from every walk of life, playing their favorite games and other treasures from the history of gaming. This is you chance to chat with creators from the world of music, film, comics, and everything else under the sun.

Thursday 4:30PM – 6PM ET/1:30PM – 3PM PT Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Maybe that’s why video games seem so remarkable. We meet with the creators of the best games to demystify the process.

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Today Bluth and Goldman joined us to discuss their years of collaboration and why now is the right time to transform Dragon’s Lair into a hand drawn movie for 2016.

Dig the show? We’re here four days a week, Monday through Thursday so make sure to follow our Twitch channel! When are we live? Here’s our schedule:

Tuesday 4:30PM – 6PM ET/1:30PM – 3PM PT GamesRadar+ joins fascinating folks from every walk of life, playing their favorite games and other treasures from the history of gaming. This is you chance to chat with creators from the world of music, film, comics, and everything else under the sun.

Thursday 4:30PM – 6PM ET/1:30PM – 3PM PT Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Maybe that’s why video games seem so remarkable. We meet with the creators of the best games to demystify the process.

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For the old school console fan, 2015 is a paradise of fresh delights. Axiom Verge oozes that classic console feeling when it starts up on PlayStation 4. The grinding wub-wub-wub of the distortion field weapon and its glitchy effects warping the blocky environment seem like they were lifted right out of 1989. The same is true of The Adventures of Pip. Played on a Wii U, the hero’s transformation from single block into increasingly detailed pixel dudes is practically a greatest hits tour through the transitions in tech from Atari 2600 to NES to SNES. Odallus even has those fetching scan lines right on the screen to mimic sitting in front of a CRT television. “Wait a second,” mutters the console purist, gently setting down her Jaguar controller. “Odallus is a PC game!”

JoyMasher’s game only looks like a console game. Axiom Verve and Pip, despite being readily available on those slick little boxes with controllers that never need a keyboard and mouse to operate, also happen to be playable on PC. These games may have been made to ape the ticks and charms that made console games so distinct from their PC cousins in the past, but in 2015 there are almost no tactile differences between games built on any platform. If the specific pleasure of firing up and playing a console game is ubiquitous across all platforms, what defines console gaming now?

Understanding just how incredibly different console games were to one another in their heyday is difficult in an era when XCOM: Enemy Unknown runs as comfortably on a PC and iPad as it does on an Xbox 360. It wasn’t just that each machine had its own style of controller, either; even the noises they made were particular. Consider Sega and Nintendo’s 16-bit beasts. Genesis does indeed do what Nintendon’t but the reverse is equally true. Super Nintendo games used a custom built processor called the S-SMP to generate sound effects and music, resulting in tones with a characteristic warmth. Think about the smooth horn blats of the Super Mario World soundtrack (and the admittedly farty noise made when Mario enters a Koopa castle) for perfect examples of that machine’s audio identity. Sega’s Genesis used a stock sound processor, the Yamaha YM2612. While just as capable of making some bitchin’ tunes, the YM2612 produced a drier, almost acidic tone encapsulated by bruisers like the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack. Compare the main theme of Chrono Trigger remixed using Genesis sounds compared to the SNES original.

The specificity of the hardware, like the SNES’ custom sound chip and the fact that consoles couldn’t be gradually augmented with more memory made game development on those consoles isolated, but also focused. PlayStation developers had an easier time making 3D games because that console’s processing power wasn’t awkwardly spread out across multiple processors like the Sega Saturn. For 2D games, though, Saturn trounced the PlayStation because of the lack of video RAM in Sony’s box. The differences between those two platforms made the same game feel different depending on where it showed up. Resident Evil’s Jill Valentine is jagged on PS1 but more detailed compared to the smooth, simple character model on Saturn.

Every console had its own quirks, its own identity as well as flow in its games that culminated not just in a house style but also a genuine hominess. Recognizing the instrumentation and sound libraries cohere across multiple Super Nintendo games like Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana let the console itself grow deep roots in a regular player. For any ravenous fans of Capcom’s arcade work in the mid-’90s, the Sega Saturn’s 2D capabilities made it the only place to translate those brief experiences into something lasting at home. Even machines like the Nintendo 64 whose technical abilities seemed like drawbacks on paper could become benefits as you became attached to its specific style. Did the muddy textures and hazy resolution of N64 games make them immortal works of graphical achievement? Hell no, but for the people that love that machine in its games, that smudgy look is representative of everything great about the console. Consoles could have a style that was also a soul.

Games the cross between console and PC today are actually very capable of mimicking the particulars of classic machines like Super Nintendo, but those artful flourishes aren’t a result of using locked-in hardware specifications. Axiom Verge, whether played on a PS4 or a PC, feels like a modern successor to Nintendo’s own Super Metroid, from the chunky biological art design to Tom Happ’s eerie sci-fi music. Rather than milking a specific sound out of a custom chip, though, the soundtrack was made using an old version of SoundForge and Sonar X2. The game itself was built using software called MonoGame. The result is classic console style but what’s ultimately a device-agnostic feel; Axiom Verge was built with those tools precisely so it wouldn’t be confined to a single platform like old console games.

What marks a console game today actually has nothing to do with what’s in the games, but the ecosystem that surrounds them. Each console environment gets its shape in multiple ways. One aspect is the online community. While cross-platform play between PC and console games like the kind Capcom’s building for Street Fighter V is becoming more common, the player pools on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live do remain largely closed and specific. Multiplayer communities, achievements, trophies, and just the simple notifications that someone you know has been playing the same things you have creates a sense of shared experience that gives that specific console a new feel and form.

While the technical proficiencies of the consoles don’t necessarily define their games anymore, what the makers of those consoles choose to fund and create also internally further shapes the culture of that machine. Nintendo and its fleet of mascots are the most obvious example. Modestly powered PCs could run games like Super Mario 3D World without much difficulty – Wii U uses a PowerPC processor not dissimilar to the PC-like Xbox 360 – but that game and others published by Nintendo share. Wii U games tend to be colorful and emphasize action over story; even games made by studios outside Nintendo’s offices like Bayonetta 2 share that spirit.

Less specific than Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft nonetheless have their own content cultures. Sony, for example, has been cultivating the same persona since it got in the game back in the ‘90s. Its publishing slate tends to mix blockbuster savvy with a flair for quiet, weird experimentation. That’s how you have Uncharted coming out of the same pool as Tokyo Jungle and The Puppeteer with a heavy emphasis on individual characters and largely single-player experiences. Microsoft on the other hand has always banked first on big, blockbuster style games that emphasize multiplayer. Halo, Gears of War, and the Driveatar-ridden roadways of modern Forza all have ample space to play by yourself, but they’re sold first as things to play with other people. (It’s hard to find an Xbox One tentpole that doesn’t have four-player co-op.)

For the old school fan, longing for those aesthetic quirks that made console gaming so distinct in the 20th and early 21st century, your options are limited. There’s always the hardcore homebrew scene, where people are even still cranking ZX Spectrum games alongside new NES and even SNES games. They can satisfy, but it’s no easy task to find homemade games that feel as polished as the classics. Games like Axiom and Odallus that pay homage to an era of more specific technology scratch part of the itch, but even games as precise as those aren’t wholly the real deal. Which is fine. It simply means that old console feeling is itself an antiquity, the soul of games as they were, not as they are.

The post That Console Feeling: What defines console gaming in 2015? appeared first on Game News.

Generally speaking, cheesing is seen as completing a challenge in an underhanded way that isn’t in the spirit of the game, like leading an ultra-powerful boss off a cliff or shooting from a convenient hidey-hole where no one can reach you. In many circles these techniques are poorly regarded – cheesing is often said in the same breath as glitching or exploits, which are really just technical synonyms for cheating. But I don’t see those things falling into the same category, because cheesing doesn’t alter the basic framework of the game by prodding at frayed code. Cheesing a game comes from studying its many details and eccentricities, and using what you find to confront challenges in unexpected ways.

Take, for example, horror-romance-puzzle game Catherine. In between navigating the throes of romantic entanglement, your job is to rearrange the building blocks of a tower so you can create a path to the top. One boss in the game has the ability to change the blocks ahead of you into traps like spikes and black holes. It’s an aggravating segment that you can fail with an errant twitch, unless you realize that you have the ability to undo your last block-pulling move, which also undoes the boss’s spell. You can then hop to the next level and pull out another block before he makes a move, bypassing his cheap tactic with a cheap tactic of your own.

That gets you to the top on your own terms, and it wasn’t by abusively duplicating items or manipulating some other mix-up in the code. By paying attention to how the ‘undo’ function affects the game in less obvious ways and making creative use of what you learn, you’re able to utilize a mechanic in a way you may never have thought of otherwise. It’s not the same as trying to beat a game out of contempt or superiority (opens in new tab). It’s a battle of the minds against a game you respect and love enough to learn it inside-out.

Of course, you have to be open to the idea of the game cheesing back – I had to bite my tongue when a massive, stampeding pig killed me through the floor in Bloodborne. But in the end that means you’re interacting with the game on an even deeper level, which just makes playing it more personal and fun. So next time you snipe Sekrion from above in Destiny (opens in new tab) or goad Ceaseless Discharge into a bottomless pit in Dark Souls, banish the word ‘cheating’ from your mind. It’s just you and the game, having a Gotcha moment.

The post Why I Love: Cheesing games appeared first on Game News.

‘Excuses, excuses’ – where in the world would we be without them? Probably turning up to all of those social functions we’d drunkenly agreed to, or heaven forbid, actually out using our gym memberships. Eurgh Well, I for one don’t want to live in a world without excuses. That’s what they do in [your least favourite nation] and I’ll be damned if [your least favourite politician] is going to turn us into them! *Rapturous applause*. And how about that local sports team, huh? *standing ovation*

Well, now that I’ve whipped you all up into a frenzy of wide-eyed excitement, it’s time to bring everyone crashing back down to earth, courtesy of my very latest article. This one’s all about video gaming excuses – which ones work best and when to employ them. Oh, and if you don’t like it, I was ill, or really tired, or covered in bees when I wrote it. Whichever one sounds more plausible. Begin!

‘My pad doesnt work!’

Ah mankind, the species for whom oblivious stupidity apparently knows no bounds. Let’s face it, self-awareness isn’t exactly our strong suit. We’ll gladly chuckle at some talent show troglodyte only to wind up on that very same stage, fighting back tears as our all ukulele rendition of Purple Rain goes down like an anthrax sandwich. This unwitting idiocy, this ‘humorous hypocrisy’, if you will, is especially apparent within gaming, particularly as it pertains to the issue of ‘unresponsive game pads’.

Yes, we’ve all gotten a good old laugh out of seeing our buddies scream in disbelief, hoisting up their ‘faulty’ bit of kit to demonstrate which thumb pressed which button at what time – as if their incredulous reconstructions will somehow convince us that they’re in the right. Then of course the exact same thing happens to us and we proceed to perform that very same pantomime. Alas, it doesn’t actually matter if the game flubbed your input or not. No-one’s ever going to believe you.

Success rate – 3% – To be used in the company of overly trusting siblings and/or the elderly.

‘There’s too much lag!’

Lag, or ‘the dance of the juddery ghost men’ as its known to expert gamers, is a form of technological pestilence inflicted upon mankind by the vengeful gods of the Internet. Only by supplicating ourselves to their divine will – their great and terrible moodswings of spotty service – are we allowed to continue blasting our buds online. Praise be to the Internet that sent out its only engineer, that having turned off the router, saw it risen again from the dead after the customary 30 second waiting period. Amen.

As fun-ruining phenomena go, lag is a real killer, and unlike many of the entries on this list, definitely does exist. Still, it’s probably best not to wheel this one out after every minor defeat; we wouldn’t want you to lose all credibility, now would we? Cry wolf one too many times and the townsfolk will only be too happy to see you lining a lupine belly, so save this excuse for only the most egregious of multiplayer muck ups.

Success rate – 60% – Sadly, some folks just aren’t ready to believe anything they hear online, and who can blame them – right now you’re reading an article on how to choose the most convincing excuses, you daring, deceitful rogue, you.

‘I wasn’t ready!’

Here’s one that hardcore ‘excusers’ will recognise from the real world. A time-honoured appeal thats just as prevalent on the squash court as it is in the annals of the inner city knitting society, probably. Sadly, the superior applicability of this fib also proves to be its downfall. After all, everyone’s used it so often by now as to rob it of any kind of credibility. Not only that, but it’s also a tacit admission of your own lacking skillset, a slowness of mind and body – a proper ‘donkey braining’.

Telling your foe that you simply weren’t ready is no better defence than a milk chocolate riot shield, as the members of the Belgian SWAT discovered to their detriment. So, If you’re looking for an iron-clad excuse, something to spare your blushes following an almighty cock up, then prepare to look elsewhere.

Success rate – 10% – Stands a fair chance of convincing during local multiplayer matches, provided your opponent can see your cack-handed inanity in action, but unlikely to cut the mustard online. Either way, know that you use this one the expense of your dignity.

‘The CPU cheated!’

‘CPU’ – now there’s an acronym with a dozen credible interpretations. ‘Computer Punishes Unjustly’, ‘Coded to Play Unfairly, ‘Considers People Unworthy’, ‘Completely Pwns Us’… The list goes on. Its real meaning – long since forgotten following the great clash of Akkator, when the armies of Bill ‘The Bloodlust’ Gates ransacked Silicon Valley – is of no real significance. What does matter is how often this A.I. abomination shows up to sully our good times.

Bot-based bastardry, henceforth to be known as ‘botstardry’ is an ever-present part of gaming, and yet, we as gamers will still call foul on anyone claiming to be so cheated. What ought to be among the most welcome of gaming get-outs is instead subjected to naught but the most eye-rolling of responses. As ever, we grab the chance to knock down our fellow man rather than joining him in solidarity. Something tells me we’ll come to briefly regret that decision during the six-and-a-half seconds it takes machinekind to utterly liquefy our fleshy, cheese-encrusted species.

Success rate – 20% – Credible, though largely ignored, placing blame on the CPU is a lot like telling a jury that your evil twin did it. It may actually be true, but you’ll still have a tough old time proving it. You win again Armando…

‘I’m stuck on the crap team!’

They say there’s no ‘I’ in team, but there are several ‘I’s in “I’m terrible at this game and so are most of my friends, so why exactly did we choose to enter the competitive ranked lobby and subject some poor unfortunate to teaming up with us?”. Finding yourself marooned on the B team is never easy, but then just what are you supposed do about it? Quit and be labelled a big fat quitter, incapable of watching any-and-all Sly Stallone movies in which he makes a big emotional speech about not giving up? Never! So you slog it out instead, trying your damnedest to ‘Mighty Duck’ your entire team to glory. You lose heavily.

Now it seems your only recourse is to complain. After all, being magnanimous will only get you so far when the folks responsible for watching your back are still trying to figure out which end of the gamepad fits into the disc tray. Sadly, being borne on the winds of justice doesn’t really count for much on the Internet, so prepare to be completely ignored, reported and/or cast out like a big whinging leper. Better just to ride out the match and hope for better luck next time.

Success rate – 5% – The other team aren’t about to stick an asterisk next to their glorious win. Likewise, your own teammates won’t want to hear about how they held you back all match.

‘Nature called!’

Nothing says ‘commitment to the cause’ quite like soiling yourself in front of your Xbox. Or PlayStation – I’m an equal opportunities purveyor of poop jokes, and damn proud of it. For the non-crazy gamer, this need to relieve oneself – ideally before turning one’s undercarriage into a less colourful take on Splatoon – is simply too strong an urge to deny. When nature calls, gamers just have to answer.

Being AFK due to IBS is about as good a reason as any for mucking up online. Of course, the major limitation of this excuse is that you can’t just go around using it willy-nilly. After all, no one’s going to buy that you were busy anointing an outhouse when your avatar’s been running around chucking chaff grenades. For a more inspired lie, try telling your fellow players that you were only away for most of the match, thereby making you look like some kind of post-flush wunderkind. Empty bowels AND an 18-point killing streak. We’re simply not worthy!”

Success rate – 90% – ‘Everybody poops’, and most of them will be willing to believe that you do too.

‘The dog ate it!’

Ate what? Don’t know exactly. The console? My gamepad? The Internet connection? Yeah, that’ll do: “Sorry folks but my dog ate the Wi-Fi. Just leapt right up and took a chunk out of it. Snatched those pesky radio waves right out of the air. What do you mean ‘fundamental misunderstanding of the electromagnetic spectrum’. You’re a ‘fundamental misunderstanding of the whatever-those-last two-words-were'”. Alright fine, so maybe this isnt the most watertight of excuses.

Then again, who needs reason when you have a story about a dog, and not just any dog, but the dog – the one kids have been trotting out since the dawn of time in order to take the blame for their ‘misplaced’ homework. She’s the evil equivalent of Lassie, keeping kids ignorant, then chucking ’em down wells. “What’s that girl? You’ve rigged the chamber to begin filling with hydrochloric acid? Gee wiz”

Success rate – 100% – Everyone loves dogs, ergo everyone will want to believe this excuse, however inane it is.

‘Complete schizoid embolism!’

What’s that you ask, some sort of complete mental breakdown? Well err, sort of. This fictional affliction comes to us by way of Arnie action classic (and nasal tweezers commercial) Total Recall. And no, it won’t cause you to begin crying out in guttural Austrian vowel sounds. Instead, the ‘schizoid embolism’ results in the complete brain death of the victim – caused by their inability to determine which reality actually exists and which one boasts three-breasted women, mutant baby slings and the inimitable Michael Ironside.

What better way to paw off a loss than by telling the grinning victor that you’d simply ‘slipped into a paranoid delusional coma state, one in which the very fabric of reality was torn asunder revealing the crushing weight of nothingness’? I’d say it’s worth a shot, at least.

Success rate – 50% – Which side has it right? What is truth? What is a man, but a miserable pile of secrets? GRAUOOOWUGH! *mysterious xylophone music*.

The post The 8 biggest excuses for poor gaming performance, reviewed and rated appeared first on Game News.

Games can be a welcome escape, one where we steal cars, fly through space, or become anime lawyers. Yet so many licensed sports games force you to play football, baseball, and soccer the way the NFL, MLB, and FIFA want. Those simulations have their place, but there are too few alternatives if you want to color outside the lines of pro sports. That’s what makes the too-rare alternatives so appealing.

Without world famous brands, unlicensed sports games have to get creative to entice fans, and so they use the classic rules as more of a guideline than a blueprint. They let you kill the referee, play alongside orcs and elves, or ingest every banned substance you can. These games are truly fantasy sports, embracing the possibilities that fiction opens up. So, which titles best took advantage of that open playing field? Read on…

And if any of these games interest you, then you might be able to grab them cheap here (opens in new tab).

Sega Soccer Slam

Despite having Sega in the title, this wild three-on-three soccer game doesn’t feature any of the publisher’s famous mascots. Developed by folks whod later work on Need for Speed, Sega Soccer Slam has similar intensity and speed on display. Its also a bit like Punch Out!! on a football pitch, as friendly international stereotypes battle it out for soccer supremacy. The teams have representatives from each continent, and while their appearances border on caricature, the hard-hitting action is anything but a joke.

What makes it different? The international flavor covers as diverse a group of nations as FIFA, but World Cup commercials won’t feature the level of violence seen in Soccer Slam. Punches and kicks are allowed, while boring rules like onsides and corner kicks are left out to focus on the uncomplicated fun. Who wants to bother with penalty cards when they could see a Mexican wrestler bodyslam a British soccer hooligan?

Blitz: The League

The original NFL Blitz games feel like an anomaly now. John Madden would never approve of the late hits, excessive roughness, and showboating that are all integral to making the classic Blitz games so fun. After Midway no longer had the NFL license, Blitzs mean streak only grew without the ‘No Fun League’ overseeing every play.

What makes it different? Blitz: The League not only amps up the violence that series like Madden prefer to tone down, it also makes time for other seedier elements in the campaign. Drugs, prostitution, and graphic, career-ending injuries are all part of a story mode that’s fittingly presented by NFL bad boy, Lawrence Taylor. It isnt for the squeamish, but Blitz and its sequel offer an alternative to the buttoned down action of EA Sports. The series has since gone out to pasture, but it’ll always be remembered as perhaps the first game to ever feature a visibly ruptured testicle. Wear that honor with pride, Blitz.

Fire Pro Wrestling

For wrestling fans, its obvious when other lovers of sports entertainment worked on a game. You can see a care for detail and history that other titles don’t have, and the Fire Pro Wrestling series has that more than most. Whether on Game Boy Advance or the PS2, the isometric in-ring action is always on point, featuring a highly balanced rock-paper-scissor grappling system. Fire Pro Wrestling’s graphics might not always impress, but it makes up for it by including a deceptively dense roster and close to every wrestling move known to man.

What makes it different? Some wrestling games depend too much on the star power of groups like WWE or WCW, but Fire Pro didn’t bother limiting itself like that. Most entries’ rosters are full of folks who are one step removed from the most famous wrestlers ever. Characters fight like Steve Austin and Ric Flair, but dont look like them – unless you choose the alternate costumes that bear an uncanny resemblance to the headliners signature looks. Who knows how they got away with it at the time, but those creative inclusions make each new entry feel like a wrestling crossover thatd otherwise be impossible.

Mutant League

Whether it’s football or hockey, the Mutant League games still mean a lot to those who grew up with the humorously morbid games. These Genesis/Mega Drive classics have you play as horror show creatures like skeletons, aliens, and trolls on fields that are strewn with corpses by the end of the game. Though only two of this cheekily violent titles were released, Mutant League spawned its own Saturday morning cartoon, which no doubt helped extend the series’ legacy through constant replays in the mid-’90s.

What makes it different? Though EA, the king of official sports, may be the publisher, Mutant League gleefully breaks every rule of sportsmanship. Fighting, bribery, landmines, killing the referee – it’s all legal in Mutant League, making it a great outlet for kids sick of the NFL and NHL rules. Plus, Mutant League has the edge on scary puns. Who wants to play as Bo Jackson and Jerry Rice when you could be Bones Jackson and Scary Ice?

Blood Bowl

Based on a tabletop game of the same name, Blood Bowl repurposes gridiron gameplay for fantasy geeks who may be missing out on the fun. Made by the same folks as Warhammer, Blood Bowl features orcs and goblins engaging in turn-based combat, but the bigger focus is on running a ball from one side of the map to the other, just like in American football. The only difference is this version of the sport has more apothecaries, virtual dice, and parody teams like the Orcland Raiders.

What makes it different? Aside from the NFL lacking in magic and lizardmen (not counting Jerry Jones), Blood Bowl earns its grisly name by being a tad more violent than the mainstream. You can win by scoring the most touchdowns, or you could take the more direct route by killing all 11 players on the opposing team. Much like in XCOM, death sticks in a Blood Bowl match, so you’ve got to be careful when putting an injured player on the field. This next down could be their last.

Saturday Night Slam Masters

Also going by the more intriguing Muscle Bomber: The Body Explosion in Japan, this is an exciting recreation of pro wrestling no matter the title. The game’s characters and attacks are as raucous as anything you’d see in WWE, thanks in part to the colorful designs of manga legend Tetsuo (Fist of the North Star) Hara. His marquee style gets time time in the spotlight, be it the grapplers theatrical entrances, how they stand on the top turnbuckle, or posing for the crowd after a hard fought pinfall.

What makes it different? Back in the early ’90s, WWE was trying its best with arcade games like Royal Rumble, but it could never match titans like Capcom. Street Fighter 2s DNA is definitely within Saturday Night Slam Masters one-on-one brawls, but it adapts to the rules and legacy of wrestling. Instead of throwing fireballs, fighters routinely toss opponents ten feet in the air to catch them in a finishing maneuver, which is pretty rare in real life. The game also has its share of star power thanks to everyone’s favorite politician, Mike Haggar from Final Fight, fitting right in with the rest of the squad.

Super Baseball 2020

NEO GEO rightfully earned its reputation for fighting game excellence, but the arcade/console hybrid has more in its library beyond King of Fighters. Take Super Baseball 2020, one of SNK’s more creative approaches to sports. This sci-fi reinterpretation of America’s favorite pastime turns the diamond into a battle of man versus machine, when teams of robots take on humans for batting supremacy. I think this is how The Matrix begins.

What makes it different? Major League Baseball prefers to take place in the here and now, not the far-off future of upgradable robots (well get there someday). Unlike similar arcade sports games of the era, 2020 has a leveling and experience system similar to the RPG elements now commonplace in MLB games. Speaking of unexpected progressiveness, Super Baseball 2020 is also one of very few baseball titles to feature women playing the game. MLB is going to have to move fast to implement all this in the next five years.

Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball

Some baseball titles have light minigames for training your team in pitching, catching, and the like, but most feel like afterthoughts. Rustys Real Deal Baseball has the clever idea of never taking players to a nine inning game, instead focusing all its creativity on how to practice with every piece of baseball equipment there is. And the action gets as varied as carving your own bat from scratch, playing catch with people who have pitching machines for heads, and hitting a series of balls at UFOs.

What makes it different? While Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball may be reminiscent of childhood summers spent playing catch in the park, the game has more in common with WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven. Many of Rusty’s best minigames involve tapping buttons along to the music, ultimately teaching players more about keeping tempo than catching fly balls. Also, no MLB game has as humorous a sad sack as Rusty himself, the over-the-hill baseball great who sells you equipment while telling you all about his most recent misadventures.

Game on

Those are the most out there sports games for now, but are there any others that took organized recreation to the next level? Surely you have your own favorites you want to tell us all about in the comments.

And if you’re looking for more athletics, check out the 13 must-know happenings you missed over WrestleMania weekend and the 11 amazing sports that really need a video game.

The post 8 unlicensed sports games that didnt play by the rules appeared first on Game News.

If you’re looking for a challenge, tons of games will readily provide one. Between extreme difficulty settings, permadeath modes, and special end-of-game ranks, developers love giving masochistic gamers the tools they need to take on thumb-blisteringly arduous playthroughs. But sometimes, even the built-in options don’t offer enough of an obstacle to overcome. And when that happens, it’s time for patient, dedicated, maybe-a-little-insane players to invent their own kind of Herculean feats.

Through a combination of playfulness, ingenuity, and a dash of self-hatred, passionate gamers have come up with some truly inspired ways of testing their reflexes and cognitive thinking in their favorite titles. What follows are some of the custom rules and restrictions players put on themselves in order to up the ante to incredible heights. And while these challenges might seem completely impossible to us mere mortals, they’ve all been achieved by at least one incredibly determined human being. If you’re brave and/or crazy enough, perhaps you can follow in the footsteps of these gaming demigods, or devise something even more intense yourself.

Guide Young Link through treacherous dungeons… blindfolded

During the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon that kicked off 2015, expert player Runnerguy2489 dazzled a room full of people that are renowned for their skill at playing video games. He did this by playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time without looking at the screen, making his way through the three ‘Child Dungeons’ encountered at the start of the game all while wearing a blindfold.

Now, this isn’t the first time a runner has amazed onlookers with a live performance of blindfolded gaming – Sinister1’s blind Punch-Out!! run is a must-see (unless you’re wearing a blindfold). But that run involved a stationary character and limited plane of movement, while Ocarina of Time drops you into a massive three-dimensional world. Watching Runnerguy2489 work his way past countless obstacles with only subtle sound effects, environmental cues, and his memory to guide him, all while he’s verbally explaining what’s happening, is absolutely stunning. He’s essentially the Luke Skywalker of Zelda speedrunners.

Defeat Dark Souls with the power of rock

The Souls series has a reputation for being cruel, but that’s unfounded – it simply requires caution, pattern recognition, and sharp reflexes to succeed. So if you can beat those games with a regular 360 pad, why not a plastic rhythm game peripheral? Beating Ornstein and Smough one-handed wasn’t enough for Benjamin ‘Bearzly’ Gwin, so he decided to map the game inputs to some Rock Band instruments – first a guitar, then a drum kit.

Even with a greatly limited moveset, Bearzly’s insanely impressive runs show just how far you can get with camera controls, an attack button, a roll button, and a generous amount of skill. And by ‘far’, I mean the end credits of both Dark Souls games. Just get ready for some seriously sore forearms in the morning.

Beat Final Fantasy in a party of one

Final Fantasy games are all about teamwork, where a ragtag group of adventurers band together to overcome evil. Or, if you’re particularly sure of your skills, you can venture off on your lonesome and hog all the glory for yourself. The FF series lends itself nicely to those that want to deprive themselves of additional skills or party members, but the best starting point is the original. Simply pick your preferred class, let your other three party members hit the dirt, and get ready to grind to max level just to have a chance of survival!

Each class offers varying degrees of outrageous difficulty, from the Fighter’s more forgiving balance of defense and offense, to the White Mage’s delicate combo of physical frailty and evasion spells. But the ultimate challenge is piloting a lone Thief through the entire game – the weakest class, whose only specialty is running away from fights. Good luck.

Conquer Spelunky alone while cradling an eggplant for dear life

If you’ve ever played it, then you know that Spelunky is by no means an easy game. Careless or mistimed jumps will often get you insta-killed, and everything in its cavernous depths is out to get you. The only thing more frail than your spelunker’s life is the Eggplant, a seemingly useless item that’s impossibly tricky to find and instantly splats if anything touches it. But wouldn’t you know it – the Eggplant actually has the power to transform the final boss King Yama in the hidden Hell stage.

Simply getting that far is an impressive feat, and doing so with an Eggplant intact was only thought to be possible in co-op play. But through an astonishing display of patience, reflex, and some heart-stopping near misses, runner Bananasaurus Rex managed to finish the game solo with an Eggplant on King Yama’s noggin. This extensive breakdown of Rex’s run shows just how miraculous it is that challenge can actually be completed.

Be picky with your Pokemon team in the Nuzlocke Challenge

Here’s a popular player-made challenge that’s a bit more forgiving than most, thanks to its straightforward ruleset and emphasis on those fancy ’emergent narratives’ rather than raw skill. Here are the basics of the Nuzlocke Challenge: any Pokemon that faint are considered dead and must be released, and the only Pokemon you can even attempt to capture are the first ones you encounter in any given area.

That’s it! But what you’ll soon find is that fate is about to deal you a misfit hand of Pokemon, and it’s your battle to make the best of it. Nicknaming each of your Pokemon is highly recommend, so that you may cheer for them when they’re victorious and weep for them should they fall in battle. You might not fill your Pokedex while attempting the Nuzlocke Challenge, but you’re sure to see the Pokemon that you’d typically ignore in an entirely new, deeply personal light.

Brave the perils of Diablo 2 as a naked, unarmed Sorceress

Like many Diablo 2 players, a forum user by the name of MongoJerry liked to imagine unique backstories for his characters – all of whom had rather atypical builds – and chronicle their adventures online. And by my estimation, his crowning achievement in both storytelling and spectacle is Irene the Infirm, a Hardcore Sorceress with no armor, no weapons, no stat points assigned, and no abilities learned.

With nothing but her two fists and some help from her equally unarmed mercenary, Irene slew every monster in Act 1, including the big boss Andariel. When you’re as frail as wet tissue paper and your damage caps out at two hitpoints, downing any enemy is a feat, let alone a half-naked, poison-spewing demon. I highly suggest that you read the story of Irene the Infirm if you want to experience the glory of D2’s best role-playing builds.

Hit max level in World of Warcraft without ever choosing sides

Azeroth and its denizens are defined by conflict, with constant tension between Horde and Alliance players. But not everyone’s born to fight – and some commendably dedicated players would rather abstain from all the ‘war’ business in Warcraft and experience the world their own way. The race of Pandaren start their journey as a neutral third party, but are forced to swear allegiance to a faction when leaving the starting zone. So what did player Doubleagent do when he wanted to hit max level as a conscientious objector?

He simply stayed put on in the Wandering Isles zone, slowly but surely grinding his way to the previous level cap of 90 through professions alone. This amounted to 173 days of in-game time spent collecting herbs and mining nodes for paltry scraps of XP. That’s dedication. There’s also the similar tale of Irenic, a Tauren who hit 90 without ever killing a single creature.

Slice your way through Soulcalibur with a plastic fishing rod

Reading about this nutty accomplishment in the pages of EGM was my first exposure to the idea of using niche peripherals to play the ‘wrong’ game. Clearly no longer content with the humdrum action of Sega Bass Fishing, an intrepid Japanese gamer took it upon himself to beat the original Soulcalibur (on Ultra Hard, no less) with a Dreamcast Fishing Controller.

Watching him deftly control Cervantes’ sword swipes with flicks of the fake half-fishing rod feels like the precursor to Wiimote waggling, only five times more comical. And those moments when he reels in with the rage of a thousand suns while charging up for an attack are just too good.

Score the bare minimum amount of points in Super Mario Bros.

Most people ignore their scores when playing a Super Mario game, simply content to reach that axe behind Bowser and send him plummeting into a pit of lava. And while chasing high scores is all well and good, why not try beating the game with the lowest number of points possible? Runner NotEntirelySure found the answer to one of life’s greatest mysteries: 500 points is the absolute minimum score possible while still finishing the game (without continues, naturally).

The catch is that this can only be accomplished by never collecting a coin or killing an enemy, then jumping at the bottom of the stage-ending flagpole when the timer reaches ‘000’. Never before have you seen Mario so afraid to snag a golden coin or bop a Goomba, but he gets the princess-rescuing job done all the same.

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The post 13 hardcore challenges invented by players appeared first on Game News.

There’s nothing better than adding a new face to your ranks. Whether you’ve recruited a new knight or unlocked some special character mode, it’s a great feeling knowing there’s more to a game than the starting roster. Nothing spices up a skating game like a Sith Lord, and nothing makes a survival horror game more intense than playing as a piece of food.

Even though fighting games are famous for expanding rosters, there are new characters to uncover in platformers, adventure games, and RPGs too. Get ready to recruit new party members and fight some hidden badasses, because we’re starting with…

Reptile (Mortal Kombat)

There’s no better way to start talking about secret characters than with Reptile: he was literally the first unlockable boss character in fighting game history. All you had to do was win with a Double Flawless Victory without blocking and finish the fight with a Fatality, all when a certain object flew past the moon in the one very specific level. Pssh, easy.

The master of the Pit has appeared in all the Mortal Kombat games since, alternating between a human form in green garb and a full-on lizard man. The scaly dude has quite a legacy; David Icke would be proud.

Tofu (Resident Evil 2)

So you’re playing Resident Evil 2. You could play as Claire Redfield or Leon Kennedy and enjoy the thrill of narrowly escaping death at the hands of zombies or you could play as a floppy, larger-than-life block of tofu.

Finish all parts of the game with A rankings, and he’s yours. He was originally just meant to test the game’s collision physics, but Capcom wisely made him playable – starting with just a knife and few herbs. Sure, he can take more damage than other characters, but that doesn’t save him from being eaten by fellow operative Hunk at the end of the game. Poor, delicious friend.

Mewtwo (Super Smash Bros Melee)

Oddly enough, Mewtwo isn’t considered that good of a fighter in the Smash Bros. series. Sure, he can dodge better than most, but it’s his status of being the only playable legendary Pokemon that makes him, well, legendary.

Originally meant for Smash on the Nintendo 64, Mewtwo didn’t make the cut until Melee on the GameCube – where you had to play dozens of hours and hundreds of matches to unlock him. After fan outrage at not being included in Brawl, those same fans freaked the hell out – in a good way – (opens in new tab) when he was announced as DLC for the Wii U and 3DS versions. Yay, Pocket Monsters!

Akuma (Street Fighter II Turbo)

There are Ryu and Ken, and then there’s Akuma. While the two Street Fighter posterboys battle for good, Akuma exists only to defeat others with his dark arts. Funny, considering he’s actually Ryu’s adoptive uncle.

The coolest thing about Akuma is his conception. An April Fool’s Day joke in an old issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly hinted at unlocking Ryu and Ken’s master Shen Long in the original game. After massive disappointment from their fan base, Capcom threw the kids a bone by including the evil master Akuma. And with Street Fighter 4, they finally revealed Gouken, Ryu’s adoptive father and Akuma’s older brother. Ah, family.

Devil Jin (Tekken 5)

‘Evil’ versions of characters are nothing new, and palette swaps usually satisfy the fanboys (I’ll take purple suit Luigi for as long as I have to, Nintendo). But there’s something extra special about Devil Jin, who is Tekken’s main protagonist consumed by the evil genes inside him – just look at those wicked wings!

He showed up in Tekken 3 and 4 in cut scenes, but we finally got our hands on his horns in Tekken 5. While Jin fights with traditional karate techniques, Devil Jin pounds foes with the high-level Mishima fighting style, full of dragon punches, tsunami kicks, and 10-hit combos. Bad to the bone.

Toriyama Robo (Tobal No. 1)

If you’re a fan of manga like Dragon Ball and Sandland but haven’t played Tobal No. 1, shame on you – all the characters are designed by mangaka Akira Toriyama. This is important, as Toriyama includes a “Tori Bot” in most of his work; it’s a little robot that represents himself in funny situations. And that bot is playable in Tobal No. 1, going by the nickname Toriyama Robo.

The best part is that you won’t even know Robo exists until you finish an especially difficult 30-floor dungeon in the game’s Quest Mode. “Who’s this fool?” you’ll ask until you beat him and realize he was a secret character all along.

Donkey Kong (Punch-Out!!)

The NES version had Mike Tyson, so Nintendo knew it needed another celebrity final boss for its Wii revival. It went internal, setting up the great ape Donkey Kong as the ultimate boss. Even better, you can spot DK in the audience in multiple Punch-Out games.

You’ll have to complete the game a few times over to reach the fight, but when DK finally hops into the ring, it’s on like something, I can’t remember. Anyway, the red-tied tank can take you down with pretty much any attack, arguably making him the most difficult fight in Punch Out history. Where was that verse in the DK rap?

Luigi (Super Mario Galaxy)

Poor Luigi, always living in his brother’s shadow. In Super Mario Galaxy, he gets literally lost in space and is taken prisoner at some point. Mario has to rescue him from the Ghostly Galaxy, at which point the green brother will assist him in collecting three stars.

A total of 120 stars and a Bowser fight later, and you can actually play as the other brother. Luigi runs faster and jumps farther, and his Cosmic Form is much smarter than Mario’s. The weird part? Luigi can also rescue Luigi from the Ghostly Galaxy, though his imprisoned twin looks a little ‘off.’ At least he has his own mansion…

Darth Maul (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3)

Tony Hawk, Bam Margera, Bob Burnquist – these are real, professional skaters. Who better to join them on the halfpipe than Star Wars’ totally out-of-Lucas’-head Darth Maul? Kickflips and grinds are only made cooler with a double-ended red lightsaber in hand. What’s extra cool is that when you select Darth Maul inside the skate shop, the shopkeeper will actually be choking from the Force in the background.

So how do you unlock the Sith fiend? It’s a simple matter of completing all the game’s goals and getting every gold medal as Tony Hawk. Too much? Just use the cheat code YOHOMIES instead.

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