thoughts on gaming rumours of the past.

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made for bitsy jam #77 BITSY FEST with the theme museum.

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CREDITS:
game by npckc
engine: bitsy
special thanks to my patreon supporters!

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StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Rating
Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars
(70 total ratings)
Authornpckc
GenreInteractive Fiction
Made withbitsy
Tagsartgame, Atmospheric, Bitsy, Experimental, Minimalist, Narrative, Retro, Short, Simple, weird
Average sessionA few minutes
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Touchscreen
LinksHomepage, Patreon, Bluesky

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Development log

Comments

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If you intentionally fainted all your PokĆ©mon wile on the SS Ann it wouldn't sail away this let you come back at the end of the game and surf to the truck and use strength on it. This want meant to move it and you would find mew. 
But it did nothing it tried it as a kid very disappointed.

In fact, some people just grabbed their emulator (or some Action Replay physical adapter) to unlock Swim early and went to check the truckā€¦ nothing. French-speaking website Pokelord (launched by Mr Bibou) was pretty efficient at checking those rumours.

I heard some other rumour to name your character ā€œMewā€ or ā€œNewā€, some friend tried itā€¦ no success.

Until the much later confirmed Mew glitch was discovered (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mew_glitch).

I remember the thrill of believing in a glitch, although the strongest feeling I had was not on Pokemon but on Zelda: Linkā€™s Awakening and the Screen Warping Glitch, that would allow you to jump to the other side of the screen by pressing Select at the right time. I was so eager to try, I immediately ran my emulator and pressed Select when changing screenā€¦ which did nothing. I was upset, and even contacted the admin about not posting unverified hacks. They even apologized.

I swore I would not believe anything that was said on the net, esp. something so powerful, without having some proof or checking it myself.

Years later, after learning many more glitches on Zelda and Mario 64 contributing to speedrunning, I got curious about the Screen Warping glitch again as it didnā€™t seem that impressive anymore compared to the crazy hacks you can do in the other games. So I checked it again, this time we had videos, and indeed, it was working! I simply didnā€™t have the right timing (and I didnā€™t have TAS on my emulator to use frame-perfect input). Iā€™m sorry for the admin!

Back to Pokemon, another glitch was the Safari -> Bug City, which was easy to confirm. But I found the reproduction steps far too complicated (go back to the cabin, look at the poster, then move downā€¦). I got the intuition that only a few key steps contributed to messing up with the gameā€™s memory, so I tried to find the ā€œminimal reproductionā€ (a term I only learned much later when becoming a developer), the minimum steps required to trigger the bug. So I could explore different kinds of Bug Cities much faster. Iā€™m proud not to have just blindly followed the steps found on the Internet but actually identified the right triggers (if not what actually messed up memory in the code; at the time I didnā€™t have an emulator to inspect memory, much less a tool to disassemble ROM code). That skill is still useful to me nowadays to debug my own games!

Nowadays, weā€™d make the distinction between glitches (unintended consequences of code not tackling edge cases) and Easter eggs (cool stuff placed at places hard to reach by the designers, generally of cosmetic nature). Then Mew under the truck would be an Easter eggā€¦ if it wasnā€™t an actual Pokemon that could fight.

I remember creating my own rumours, just to see how far they'd go.

Amazing what can happen when people want to believe something.

All those rumors about hidden secrets in video games, and whatnot brought me back to my childhood where I watch tons of videos on 'hidden secrets' lol! Great game btw :)

i Love game

You get used to hearing rumors of this nature. The language of folks who value a peculiar sort of witty rhetoric.

really lovely game. thank you

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I remember a rumor that Donkey Kong appeared as a hidden boss in either Super Mario RPG, the first Paper Mario, or maybe M&L: Superstar Saga.  Also, hoaxes about Mr. Resetti's House. 


After online guides became widespread, I did end up catching a Mew in Pokemon Blue, following a guide from GameFAQs.  It's not under the truck, though.


If I play a random game I find on Itch, it's likely harder to find videos/guides where someone else already found all the secrets.  The tradeoff being that with fewer players, there are fewer entertaining rumors about obscure games.


BTW, did you know that in Tomato Clinic, it's totally possible to unlock the ability to play as a werewolf?  My Aunt who works at NPCKC said so.  Vampires don't accept blood donations from werewolves due to centuries of conflict between their species.  

In my parts they never talked about a truck. They said he has something to do with SS Ane but I don't remember the details.

That aside Mew can actually be caught in pokemon red though. You have to exploit the game a bit (though no external tools are required) but it's absolutely doable. You can get all 151 pokemon if you believe enough (and open the menu at the right time then fly to the apropriate place). :)

Yes, I was about to say this in my comment! Due to a bug causing a 1 frame lag allowing you to open the menu because a trainer spots you and challenges you, but only when the trainer is looking down.

I didnā€™t pay attention to that kind of stuff at the time, but after playing Tales of Symphonia for years and finding numerous glitches I was surprised I had never noticed that in Pokemon. That said, Iā€™m not sure if you could exploit this to actually walk past the trainer, or if you just have time to open the menu, which strongly reduces the interest of the exploit, until you understand that flying/digging out to interrupt the spotting sequence causes some bad memory state in the game (which would probably sound crazy if I hadnā€™t seen other glitches and learned game programming myself - although this is much less likely nowadays with object-oriented programming and such, as opposed to raw memory reading).

Would there have been such a rumour, we would have believed it and tried itā€¦ and quickly confirmed it was working. Thus it wouldnā€™t be a rumour anymore. Maybe the fact that a rumour, esp. of an easily reproducible action, stays a rumour after a few months is a sign that itā€™s not trueā€¦

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we lived in a simpler age

we had hotlines, tip books and rumours

we were children and video games were magical ā€“ if there are 150 or 250 monsters and 8 cities and berries and eggs and a phone ā€“ why not mew or the pokĆ©rus

I remember my friend telling me the wildest lies about Fallout 2, and I believed every one of them, because the game appeared so wide and full of possibilities to me, that anything could happen in it. I also remember completing Diablo I (I was a PC kid) over and over again, because there was a rumor that you can unlock a space marine character from Starcraft if you complete the game X times.

Thank you, your game brought back warm memories :)

I WANT TO BELIEVE

Sweet little game and a really nice take on the theme. Our old pokemon cartridges really are our personal museums now in some way.

OH NO wait I already knew this, but it's cool anyway

This really took me back! 

I love this so much! I totally agree. There was nothing like that sense of wonder and mystery when guides and let's plays weren't a few clicks away! Wonderful little game :)

aww thats so sweet

YES

I once knew somebody that traded me a Mew & I traded it back just to get all 151 on my Pokedex in my old PokƩmon Blue cart which I sadly no longer have anymore :(

filling out the pokedex on the gameboy is no easy feat, so good job!

we never got to see or participate in those rumors, but that ā€œI wish anything was possibleā€ feeling is very real

itā€™s impossible to make a game where anything is possible and almost impossible to make a game that can still feel like that after you understand it

we actually straight-up quit playing dragon age origins because we knew, without asking, that it wouldnā€™t be possible to take the actions we wanted to take, that the story had given us a situation but no GM we could lay out our plans to, and who could understand them and respond

that's interesting because i also have similar issues with games that claim to be like ttrpgs where "anything is possible" but it never is (meanwhile when in a session the gm is a human who can come up with responses on the go so it really does feel like anything is possible!)

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Ah, this brings back so many memories. ā™„

Back in 2000, my freshman year in college, I had a Game Genie *and* the code that would spawn Mews into the game, and I made a pretty penny by selling them to my classmates (and even a couple professors!) for ā‚¬10 a pop. ;)

Also, anyone remembers that goshdarned cheat that supposedly allowed you to play as the bosses in the original SNES Street Fighter II game, that then turned out to be fake? I spent so many hours in front of my SNES compulsively trying to make it work... ;_;

maybe the cheat is actually real but everyone was doing it wrong šŸ¤”

How can a tiny jam game make me happy and sad at the same time so easily <3. Awesome game

thank you for playing <3

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I think the really sad part is that we don't get the the hilariously-blatant fake kind of rumors anymore either.

i like the reply "WHO THE HECK WOULD TRY IT? A complete idiot, that's who." because i am definitely a complete idiot who would try... šŸ˜‚ you know, just in case it worked...

I mean, SmallAnt tried (and succeeded), so why not try it yourself?

wait there wasnt a mew under the truck? 

šŸ¤”

so there is right a mew right?

The rumors I remember from my childhood:
~A kid who said if you mailed your Pokemon game to a person, when it returned, you could travel to a new island that had a fat nurse joy and a Pokemon that doesn't faint other Pokemon, but kills them by devouring their souls.
~In Super Mario 64, if you got 100 coins, Mario would pick his nose. Also, in addition to Bowser, there were Bowser family members who had their own unique boss battles. In one battle, the Bowser family are doing a line dance and you have to trip them doing the crouch attack move. Also, a weird fight against a Baby Bowser where you make him cry before Mama Bowser jumps in.

i have never heard either of these but i love them!

This made so many forgotten synapses in my brain to fire at the same time... thank you! I also miss paper magazines as the primary source of game guides. That's probably why I bought the enormous hardcover Dark Souls strategy guide, even if you can find any number of people who show you how to 100% it on youtube.

oh my gosh i loved paper guides! i remember being so impressed by the pikmin one since i thought the graphics were just so pretty in that game.

I definitely prefer the old rumors spread by actual people over the false information regurgitated by SEO-optimized websites today

How to get a golden fishing rod in Animal Crossing? This guide will explain how to get a golden fishing rod in Animal Crossing. Let me tell you how you can obtain a golden fishing rod in Animal Crossing.

AUGH

I also feel this way about intentionally obscure game mechanics that aren't meant to be fully understood and just meant to be experienced. For Pokemon, it's very easy now to go online and find the exact formula for how exp gain works and all the ins and outs of manipulating your stats, right? But the game never explains that stuff. You're not really meant to know it, the way it was designed.

the code holding the game together šŸ‘€ i do love reading about that kind of stuff because i love knowing more... but i also like leaving things a mystery, so it's a hard balance!

In the very first games, NPCs tell you that "a PokƩmon that you lovingly trained will always be stronger than a PokƩmon of the same species that you just caught at the same level", and that struck me so much as a child. And it was true!!
Years later I found out about EVs... both validating and a bit sad to see that lovely sentiment broken down into numbers...

you may be glad to know itā€™s teeechnically possible to find mew under the truck, on an original cartridge, without any cheating devices

even technicallier: triforce in ocarina of time

i love that the summary has the text "To convert your save file to one containing the virus, use the following Python program." because that's exactly the kind of energy i want with weird gaming rumours šŸ˜‚ 

"nowdays,  a quick search will tell you the truth"...usually!  We all know the internet can be an unreliable source at times...:P

Playing this brought back to memory a "bogus faq" written for FF6 (FF3US) that was a tongue-in-cheek compilation of fictional secrets in that game.  I remember having a good laugh at that!

The interesting thing about this is that you CAN catch mew in pokemon gen 1; There are all sorts of obscure (and maybe not so obscure) glitches in these older games and sometimes reality has an interesting way of being just as incredulous as playground rumors.

As someone who runs A Link to the Past Randomizer for speed, some of the tricks that I pull off on a semi-regular basis really do sound like this sort of crazy thing!  "Shoot three arrows into the wall, then lay two bombs, and jump into the water, then you can swim without the flippers!"

Maybe that is something that really appeals about speedrunning and glitch hunting, it feels like you are going through these games and having the experience of actually having these "secret tricks" be real! (and not just urban legends that never seem to pan out)

i think you've explained well why i personally really love watching speedruns because it's really cool to see stuff that i wouldn't think possible!

What if Mew was under an other truck all along ? Waiting in Red's Mom's Garage.

I miss that with the last Smash Bros, thinking about maybe unlocking new characters with weird conditions like in SSBM.

Rumors might exist for less popular games, i guess, with elements game dev can make emerge weird lore for fans. An unique truck near a boat.

maybe the real mew was all the friends we made along the way? šŸ¤” 

but yeah we still do get some fun lore stuff for games that more "niche"! 

What if Mew was the Professor Oak talking to you to not use that item during combat ? šŸ¤”

Yeah, there were times when we simply believed and did not even think that something might turn out to be untrue. After all, this is all the magic, and now sometimes this magic is missing. Nice short story!

it's nice being able to believe that the untrue is true haha. thanks for reading!

As someone who was utterly enchanted by video game mysteries and rumors back in the day (and still has shades of that wonder), I loved this little nostalgia-riddled tour of thoughts by someone who feels the same way. :')

i'm happy to find other people who also miss the rumours of the past ā™„

Ohh, this made me so nostalgic... Your environments here are absolutely killer; it evokes the exact vibes of a gameboy as you make your way through pokemon red. Beautifully done!

thank you! i had a lot of trouble trying to shrink it down but keep the same energy.

So fun! I read the whole thing aloud as I played it to my husband, who is currently playing Pokemon yellow for the first time! Thank you for the great game.

pokemon yellow is so nice with pikachu following you around! hope your husband enjoys.

Did anybody find the secret glitch room?

šŸ‘€

Beautifully done. I miss that old feeling of "anything is possible" too sometimes.  Sometimes playing an indy game at launch before anyone's documented anything almost scratches that same itch for me. xD

Tbf, it was SO weird for the game to just have a truck there and nowhere else.

agreed on both 'indie game at launch' feelings & 'why was there a truck there???'!

What a cute game! Love the colour palette used, and the art is all very charming!

I also heard this rumour too, but I heard you had to go into the SS Anne, then let your party get wiped out after getting Cut, which stops the boat from leaving. Then, you go and grab Surf and Strength, swim to the island where the truck is and push it to find Mew underneath...

I also did that, but of course, it didn't work haha ;;

It's pretty interesting how this specific rumour became so widely circulated; I wonder where it originated from...

i love that you had the chance to try it (even if it didn't work)! by the time i had heard the rumour i was already way past the boat so i just had to trust my friends šŸ˜‚ 

i think we all just really wanted a way to catch mew & were happy to try anything for a chance!

forgive me, i'm extremely sorry but i Must allow the itching urge to do an Actually and correct -- no, no, you don't get Surf on the ship, you get Cut which you need to progress the game, and then the ship leaves, and you only get Surf much later. BUT! if you traded from a friend a pokƩmon that knew Cut! you could just keep going without ever letting the ship go! and come back when you could use Surf! And in the version of the rumour I knew, you needed Strength to push the truck.
and i actually did all that as a kid, and it didn't do anything :( you can't even interact with the truck.
and I still told myself that I must have messed up something, and there really was a Mew under there, I just couldn't get it.

I did meet Missingno. tho, but iirc I couldn't catch it.

Anyway, deep apologies for the fact-nitpicking, and thank you so much for provoking it, for sharing and reawakening these thoughs and feelings and knowledge I never think about :') What a sweet, yearning nostalgic moment. I miss the gaming magazines you would write to to ask for help when stuck with a level...

i appreciate the nitpicking and you are absolutely right! šŸ‘€ but this is the version of the rumour that got round to me, so this is how it is immortalised here. somebody else just told me that in their version actually it wasn't under the truck but you needed to surf from that port to an island where you can find mew šŸ˜‚ i love that there are so many versions of this rumour even when they're all baseless...

Trust me, be happy you could not catch missingno. Having a pokemon with 2 water guns and 2 sky attacks is not worth getting fully trapped in the safari zone. Child me ruined my game...

Did that really happen or is that what your uncle who works at Nintendo told you!

I assume this is a reference to the wonderful Twine horror game "The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo." Just in case you are curious about reality:

It actually happened. I don't remember how I caught MissingNo, I remember it was hard, but I found some way to do so (Maybe I used a Masterball? Maybe I used a status condition?). After I did, its icon in my party was a person, in battle, multiple pokemon had their sprites flipped, there were graphical glitches on the overworld, and when I went to the safari zone, when I tried to leave, the glitches made it impossible to leave the fenced area outside the Safari Zone in Fuschia City.

Of course, as this very game states, this all sounds just like a rumor. I understand if you don't believe me.