VIP 4 2018 - That was fun

[Piesonscreations]

Oh, i'm excited for this one. Here's hoping the good times last.
I started watching raocow with Vip 5, so it'll be pretty interesting to see this hack for the first time.

[Whimsical Calamari]

ok so
the original run was long before my time. i didn't start watching rao until a couple years after this all went down.
so i'm rewatching his first two runs, to see how things have changed in the meantime. glad that archive of rao's off-youtube videos exists for that...

The DailyMotion Debut
the beginning of a wonderful adventure - March 2, 2008
0:00 - Horse's House
1:24 - Rescue Drama?
4:40 - Take it Easy
7:04 - Para-Panic


The YouTube Challenge
a new old thing - December 30, 2008
0:00 - Horse's House
1:46 - Rescue Drama?
3:55 - Take it Easy
6:59 - Para-Panic (normal exit)

Pata Panic (secret exit) - December 31, 2008
0:00 - Para-Panic (secret)

That slope on the first level left a big impression on him, it seems. After struggling with the blind jump in the first run, he hasn't forgotten to go left there even after ten years.

And it's also fun seeing his "first-time luck" or whatever you want to call it playing out in the long-term. He gets the post-midpoint segment of the secret exit without a hitch on his first LP, but by the second one the memory's psyched him out to the point that he rushes and makes stupid mistakes. This time goes a lot closer than the original run, but with way more confidence - none of the "Oh lord" that I apparently picked up from him in my everyday speech.

Also amusing to see him make the same observation ten years apart (the secondary powerup filter wall).

And finally, shout out to the switch blocks for a couple of hilarious kills in the old LPs. Looks like they've been kinder this time. (I don't keep up with SMW tech so, is this a new modification or a ZSNES issue?)

Oyster->2018
And There Was a House -> Horse's House
And Then There Was a Play About a Rescue -> The Horse Rescue Drama?
Take it Easy -> Let's Take It Easy! ⊂(^ω^)⊃
Pata Panic -> Para-Panic

[raocow]

this comparative is so cool, I hope this is a regular feature :O

[Ditocoaf]

Woah, the first two times you LP'd VIP4 were less than a year apart? Your LP queue was much less full back then I suppose.

Today's video radiates infectious nostalgic joy.

[Zach808]

Woah, the first two times you LP'd VIP4 were less than a year apart? Your LP queue was much less full back then I suppose.

Today's video radiates infectious nostalgic joy.

Back then, raocow did refuse to LP commercial games, so that probably helped. :D

[This Eye o' Mine]

Thanks for all of the positive comments about our work! I guess I might as well put up a thing I wrote on the enemy that raocow identified in the video as "bunny Boon". I guess for the uninitiated I should mention that the majority of the sprite replacements are based on ASCII art faces and characters that are commonly posted on message boards in Japan, like the VIP board that these hacks were developed on.

Translator's note:

The Chuck replacement raocow was confused about now and back then is an ASCII character known as Yaruo.
　 　 　　　＿＿＿_
　 　　　／⌒　　⌒＼
　　　／（ ●） 　（●）＼
　 ／::::::⌒（__人__）⌒::::: ＼ 　　だからニュー速でやるお!
　 |　　　　　|r┬-|　　　　　|
　 ＼ 　　 　 `ー'´ 　 　 ／

He was born in 2006 in a thread that was posted on the NyuSoku (quick news) board.
In this thread, he made fun of the board and the people on it, by saying "I actually wanted to do this on the VIP board, but VIPpers only respond to high quality threads, so I'm doing this on the NyuSoku board instead."

The first couple responses to that thread are pretty much all ASCII art of him getting punched in or straight through the face, grabbed by the neck, or being called a 'dickhead' (ディックヘッド). The rest is more of that, as well as a bunch of snowclones of his ASCII art.

The name that stuck was also given to him in the same thread, and refers to the phrase he says at the end of two of his original three lines. The phrase I put as "do this" is "yaru o", where "yaru" means "to do", and "o" is just a common-on-2ch (Boon uses it quite often) corruption of that throw-away emphasis particle "yo" we all know so well. The "o" also serves as somewhat of a pun, since many male names in Japanese tend to end in "o" represented by any of a number of kanji (like for instance Hideo), and the "o" in Yaruo's name is usually written with one of those characters: namely "夫". It turns his catchphrase into a plausible Japanese given name.

This meme has come to be used on pretty much all the 2ch boards, not just the VIP one, and seems to be one of those memes that's often used without the people who are using it knowing where it actually comes from. His original appearance didn't exactly give him much of a character (other than being 'a dickhead', which could honestly describe quite a number of ASCII art characters), so he's been sort of an all-round character used in a bunch of different things. There's actually a gigantic trend of him being used as the main character of threads that try to explain or teach information on specialist topics. Still, he tends to be pretty insulting and annoying, befitting his original appearance.

I'm not sure why they decided to give him green eyes in the VIP 4 incarnation. I suspect it's probably just that they couldn't make his circular black voids look good with the palette they had.

[FPzero]

It's going to be interesting to go from levels made in 2018 to levels made over a decade ago. I think the Vip4 Youtube run was the first time I actively started following your videos despite having watched some of the original Super Challenge World run, so we'll see how nostalgic this all gets for me too.

[Bean]

VIPs are almost always a good time. You've definitely improved at the Marios over the years, but that doesn't mean this game will pull any punches for you. Good luck on this one!

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

It's been a while since raocow's done a VIP, and I'm excited to see him work through this one. Even from that first episode, I can tell that raocow's gotten far better at Mario games in general... and that he's been improving in general. It's also very much appreciated to read a better translation, too. Looking forward to see how many ways a stupid horse gets thrown down a pit...

[ano0maly]

Before anything else, adding a function to view a pop-up text box for translator notes is a great addition. This basically increases the usable space for text greatly, which is a step up.

The videos of the previous Vip 4 LP that were quite memorable for me were those for Thorn Thorn Labyrinth and Moving On to an Unreasonable Tomorrow (they got new names in this version of the hack), which had breakdowns of the ambitious toolless attempt, and I want to talk about them when the time comes.

[Zach808]

Yes, the autoscroller was in the Vip1 pufferfish level. That level was much more of a pain than this one.

Anyways, that last level actually gave me quite a bit of trouble even during my recent playthrough. Just goes to show how even world 1 of this hack can still throw you into the fire, although the game doesn’t get truly dickish until a certain blue stage in world 2. Also, I’m pretty sure life farming in that level was never possible. It’s disabled even in my untranslated version.

[Ryrir]

Yeah, raocow probably confused the life farming opportunity with ASMT, where it was possible to farm lives really easily in the level with the same gimmick. Farming for lives was always disabled in this level, it's definitely not something we would have added randomly to the hack for our translation.

In fact, we did not change the original game design at all, except in cases where blocks or coins would spell out Japanese characters, and to fix a tiny, tiny bug in world 3.

Getting the VIP Coins is not actually that big of a deal I don't think, at least it wouldn't be any harder than say, VIP5. Some of the harder levels actually purposefully put them all in one half of the level, so it doesn't become a bigger slog than it needs to be! Of course, there are exceptions to this as well, but I think I would only expect raocow to really struggle with them in maybe two levels,

VIP1 Dream Castle and Hot Beach.

[This Eye o' Mine]

This is gonna be the LP of "raocow mixes up the different VIPs in his head".

Translator's note:

So regarding the 'eternal pufferfish' thing, that was actually a mistake in the VIP 1 translation, as it was supposed to just refer to the Porcupuffer enemy. Its name in Japan is 'Fugu mannen' (フグ万年), which means 'pufferfish of ten thousand years'.

However, the stage name in VIP 4 actually just calls him 'fugu', or 'pufferfish', and for a while we had the translation as "Fear of the Pufferfish Returns". Most likely, they did that due to space limitations, and it is obviously supposed to be a reference to the VIP 1 level. One of the very last decisions we made before sending the patch to raocow was to just go ahead and treat the level name as intended to be an abbreviated-by-necessity direct reference to the level from VIP 1, which we were able to unabbreviate thanks to the expanded level name hack, turning the title into "Fear of the Porcupuffer Returns".

This is completely irrelevant to the source material, but you might've noticed that the first textbox in Runner's High (lightly kick the shell) forms a haiku somewhat, with a borrowed syllable between lines anyway. This was something that was already in lion's translation that we got, and I'm pretty sure he didn't notice that he wrote it like that. Still, no reason to change it to not be that way; I just thought it was funny to point out, and that it wasn't like that originally.

[Kilgamayan]

I've paid no attention to YouTube comments, so it's entirely possible they've already figured it out, but is the video naming gimmick

anime titles from 2008, the year you first played VIP4

?

[raocow]

also the year of release of the first version of vip4

[Kilgamayan]

Gotcha!

Looking at the list, man, there were some really quality shows that year. Including one I worked on as a fansubber!

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

In my efforts to play along with raocow it occurred to me that it has been a very long time since I last played Super Mario World, and I'm not used to the physics at all. I died several times while trying to get the secret exit in the Para-Panic level, though a hidden 1-up and the ability to exit the stage resulted in me actually gaining lives. At one point I was considering going for all the VIP coins, but I quickly decided against that. At this rate I'm not sure if I'll even be able to go without save states, though I'll certainly try.

Today's stages were pretty fun, even if I did have a lot of trouble thanks to my aforementioned inexperience with SMW. The level with the porcupuffer in particular gave me a good deal of trouble thanks to me having to get used to both swimming and the porcupuffer's behaviour. Though I did have my share of falling into pits in Runner's High. Fortunately the yellow switch palace was pretty easy and gave me a good chuckle.

[morsel/morceau]

raocow is one of those persons that a psychology textbook would use as an example of the fallibility of direct evidence. E.g. from Münsterberg's classic On the Witness Stand (1908):

There was, for instance, two years ago in Göttingen a meeting of a scientific association, made up of jurists, psychologists, and physicians, all, therefore, men well trained in careful observation...Suddenly, in the midst of the scholarly meeting, the doors open, a clown in highly coloured costume rushes in in mad excitement, and a negro with a [p. 52] revolver in hand follows him. In the middle of the hall first the one, then the other, shouts wild phrases; then the one falls to the ground, the other jumps on him; then a shot, and suddenly both are out of the room. The whole affair took less than twenty seconds. All were completely taken by surprise, and no one, with the exception of the President, had the slighest [sic] idea that every word and action had been rehearsed beforehand, or that photographs had been taken of the scene. It seemed most natural that the President should beg the members to write down individually an exact report, inasmuch as he felt sure that the matter would come before the courts.. .Only four persons, for instance, among forty noticed that the negro had nothing on his head; the others gave him a derby, or a high hat, and so on. In addition to this, a red suit, a brown one, a striped one, a coffee-coloured jacket, shirt sleeves, and similar costumes were invented for him. He wore in reality white trousers and a black jacket with a large red necktie.

Why raocow contending with a porcupuffer should remind me of this clown and his assailant I cannot imagine.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Why raocow contending with a porcupuffer should remind me of this clown and his assailant I cannot imagine.

I'm sure that you are one of those persons that a psychology textbook would use as an example, although for what the jury is still out

[Whimsical Calamari]

Is it just me or did that pair of falling platforms crossing over the big lava peak look like they were just one super-long platform that'd fall together?

this comparative is so cool, I hope this is a regular feature :O

I hope I can keep it up! My schedule won't allow me to make these posts in the morning, but I'll do my best not to fall behind!

Also, I noticed a major issue in my first post: I forgot to compare the Oyster level names! So that's fixed now. Now let's get today's post started.

DailyMotion Run
episode 2 - March 3, 2008
0:00 - Porcupuffer
4:20 - Yellow Switches
5:32 - Runner's High

YouTube Run
The Pufferfish's Fear Revisited & There's a Lot of Yellow Switches... - January 1, 2009
0:00 - Porcupuffer
5:30 - Yellow Switches
6:36 - Runner's High (1st attempt)

oh man! islands of PROGRESS! - January 2, 2009
0:00 - Runner's High (2nd attempt)

Commentary

I feel an odd sort of nostalgia seeing that ZSNES opening screen again.

dailymotioncow is really keeping up the pace! Through the sheer speed of panic, if Fear of the Porcupuffer Returns is anything to go by. Meanwhile, the YouTube run shows a lot more [caution? hesitation? you be the judge] than the first playthrough, both in gameplay and in the timing of posts:

I also thought about doing Runner's High but then I didn't know how long I had left (turns out I had plenty! Oh well!)

Interesting to note that, even on a Take 2, we can't see nearly the same confidence or consistency as we can today.* A lot more panicking going on there. But on the flip side, the triangles in this level only caused one death before 2018

*(ZSNES lag might be a part of it, too, like dang those inconsistent framerates are intense).

shoutout to the noteblock trap, btw. got him every time.

Oyster->2018
The Cripple's Fear Revisited -> The Pufferfish's Fear Revisited -> Fear of the Porcupuffer Returns
There's a Lot of Yellow Switches -> It's Full of Yellow Switches...
Runner's High

[This Eye o' Mine]

By decree of raocow, the rainbow shall now have four colors, and four colors only.

Well, let's explain a minute detail that most of you probably didn't even notice.
Translator's note:

Those with a keen eye might've noticed that the Rip van Fish replacement spouts out little '0's while sleeping. Originally, he would release the character 'ポ', (pronounced "po"). This doesn't seem to be any kind of established sleeping onomatopoeia in Japanese. Rather, considering that the enemy sprite is a cat, we figured that it might be a reference to another ancient 2ch meme that was established all the way back in 2002: the "nullpo" or "nurupo" meme.

The basic idea of this meme is that it references the NullPointerException in the Java programming language, which as in any null pointer related bug in any language tends to be an annoying thing to have to fix. It was first seen as the OP in a thread called "let's call the NullPointerException 'nurupo'", where the first post was ASCII art of a cat similar to the Rip van Fish replacement saying "nurupo", and the first few responses were "ga!", which is an exclamation of bewildering disappointment. These responses were accompanied by ASCII art of the cat getting whacked over the head with a hammer.

The nurupo meme is one of the oldest mainstays on 2ch. Like many other old memes, the original meaning of it tends to be lost on those who actually use it these days, though at the very least it is customary to answer with "ga!" whenever somebody posts the phrase "nurupo". Deep down though, the phrase "nurupo" represents an attempt to be annoying on the same level as a programming bug, and "ga!" represents the attempt to drive that annoyance out, similarly to how you'd fix such bugs.

All of this is to say that we changed the 'ポ' to a '0' because we thought 'null pointer == 0', and even though that doesn't explain the significance to those who aren't already in the know, it might make sense if you do have some knowledge of these memes, and it's better than anything else we could fit into an 8x8 pixel tile.

However, though we think that the ポ is a reference to nullpo, the enemy itself isn't actually a direct reference to it. They're known as "Saturday" (doyobi), and according to an article on this day of the week on the Nicopedia, they most likely represent the way how people are always planning to do exciting and fun things in the weekend, but tend to be so exhausted from work that they just sleep clean through it.

This episode also opens a segment I'd like to call "Oyster's Pearls", where we're going to be taking a look at some of the more stand-out level name translations of ages past, and take a bit of a light-hearted jab at them. There's some really good ones coming up, even though this first one might be a bit underwhelming on the Beefsteak factor.

Oyster's Pearls: What... Do You Call That?

Japanese title: その・・なんというかおれをうらむな　(その・・なんというか俺を恨むな)
It's pretty easy to see how the mistake was made, since the first half of the title is nantoiuka (なんというか), which is a mess of syllables that you could read literally as meaning "what do [you] say/what do [you] call that", but which in practice is just filler that people tend to say when they're trying to stall or find the right words. The thing that comes before the ellipsis (その), is another word that people just tend to start their sentence with when they don't know what to say quite yet, but in its 'official' sense it does mean 'that [blank]'. That's why I translated the first part as "So... like," here. It seems Oyster just dropped the entire second half of the level name.

[alleightbits]

Guess that Koopa didn’t want to have a good time. Why can’t it be more like Funky, the German Shepherd?

[Super Maks 64]

In episode 1 raocow showed that he is a better Mario player than in 2008 by beating Para-Panic's second half on his first attempt, but that was just an illusion as already in the 3rd episode he has resorted to using savestates, shamefully "beating" his record from 2009 where he only started using them halfway through the game.

[Zach808]

Was I the only one who resorted to just gliding down the hole, hitting the block, and shelljumping out in Flooded Mansion? I thought that was the solution until today.

[Blue]

All of this is to say that we changed the 'ポ' to a '0' because we thought 'null pointer == 0',

Most languages use \0 for null byte, don't they?