VIP 4 2018 - That was fun

[Zach808]

I despise disco hopping almost as much as Fishing Fish Guy, but this level was actually okay. The cape single-handedly makes disco hopping bearable. Like with Fishing Fish Guy, the designers of this hack have somehow found a way to make levels with these obstacles that aren't automatically shit. :D

[raocow]

I'm wondering which level the quote from the title refers to... the turtle level I'm guessing!

[Ashan]

I remember this upcoming castle being kind of a nightmare puzzle level. But I don't want to overhype difficulty, we saw the egg you can get in your face with that already.

[This Eye o' Mine]

I'm wondering which level the quote from the title refers to... the turtle level I'm guessing!

It actually refers to the castle level. There's quite a few things in that level that might come across as unintended behavior after all!

Translator's note: Wait... This Castle's Too Easy

I think someone in the YT comments already pointed this out, but the arrangement of coins that you have to fly to see in the castle level is actually m9(^Д^), which is supposed to be ASCII art of somebody pointing their finger at you and laughing at your misfortune or stupidity. In this case it's probably supposed to be mocking you for flying all the way out to a dead end.

Also, something people might not have caught on to (as we only figured it out not too long ago) is that the level naming-wise is actually a reference to a world 1 level in VIP3, which had the exact same name except without the "castle". I think the translation called it "This Seems Too Simple...". Not like the two levels actually have anything in common content-wise though.

[Whimsical Calamari]

ow thorns
ow life

DailyMotion
kinda embarassing there... (continued) - March 16, 2008
8:56 - forest

thorn thorn thorn thorn thorn thorn - March 17, 2008

YouTube
Goblin's Forest - January 18, 2009

Thorn Thorn Labyrinth
Part 1 - Part 2 - January 19, 2009

And so the no-savestate promise was broken. A very good run from oldcow on YouTube, to be sure, but he ended up being no match for the dreaded barrels of jank.

There were a couple things in this thread that can be laid to rest with the addition of the DailyMotion run. Which only makes me wish even more that I'd gotten to this video on time.

...

So let's do that now!

You kept tapping the A button when shooting out of the cannons didn't you?

oddly enough, ten and a half years ago he didn't need the sign at all to figure it out

To be fair however, I think Oyster's translation is fine, and I think it's actually better than Stickerbrush Spikery, because I believe the author's intent was to have the word twice to match Super Mario 64 course names.

I'm thinking that this may have been raocow's thought during the YouTube run. Because he actually shortened Oyster's translation there.

In the DailyMotion run, the level is labeled as "Thorn Thorn Thorn Labyrinth" - note something that was also mentioned in the commentary: that "thorn" is in there "three times". Which lines up with:

'togetoge toge meiro', from the DKC original 'togetoge taru meiro', with 'toge' meaning 'spike' originally

So, uh, if that still counted as a mystery, we can call that one solved. Oyster did a direct translation (without omitting a "thorn"), and rao later omitted the third "Thorn" (quite possibly because "Thorn Thorn Labyrinth" totally sounds like a Mario level).

[raocow]

this is why I appreciate your services

[oobitydoo]

To be fair however, I think Oyster's translation is fine, and I think it's actually better than Stickerbrush Spikery, because I believe the author's intent was to have the word twice to match Super Mario 64 course names.

I'm thinking that this may have been raocow's thought during the YouTube run. Because he actually shortened Oyster's translation there.

In the DailyMotion run, the level is labeled as "Thorn Thorn Thorn Labyrinth" - note something that was also mentioned in the commentary: that "thorn" is in there "three times". Which lines up with:

'togetoge toge meiro', from the DKC original 'togetoge taru meiro', with 'toge' meaning 'spike' originally

So, uh, if that still counted as a mystery, we can call that one solved. Oyster did a direct translation (without omitting a "thorn"), and rao later omitted the third "Thorn" (quite possibly because "Thorn Thorn Labyrinth" totally sounds like a Mario level).

Isn't "とげとげ (togetoge)" also an onomatopoeia? It looks and feels like a lot of other Japanese onomatopoeia where they take two syllables and repeat them for the sound effect (e.g. どきどき dokidoki for a fast-beating heart, にこにこ niconico for smiling, ぱくぱく pakupaku for pacman...i mean for eating with your mouth smacking). A quick googling finds me "とげとげ A mean attitude, expression, or tone of voice" from https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-onomatopoeia/, though I was expecting something more like "the sound of something pointy/thorny sticking you unexpectedly." Also, google translate (which we all know is the be-all and end-all of translation) seems to say that とげとげする = "to sharpen", which makes more sense for the pun: https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/% ... 9%E3%82%8B

[Ryrir]

Here's how I solved the puzzle without using any glitches (Eye might be able to post a more official solution using the VIP wiki a bit later).

The first thing is that you can actually get your green Yoshi all the way to the beginning area of the level. You get the green Yoshi, go through the area with the mazes and the yellow bars that filter your powerups, and reset to the beginning, only this time with a Yoshi.

This allows you to get the cape from the "other side":



With this cape, you can now fly in the room where you get the green yoshi (remember that suspicious "up" arrow? That's exactly the spot). There's a pipe up there that leads to this little room right here:



This baby yoshi is the key to how you're actually supposed to get the fireflower in the room with the mazes, since you can climb the vine while holding him at the same time.



Using Yoshi flight, you are now able to access the switch room, and here's the second thing that raocow appeared to have missed the significance of: There's actually a second fireflower here!



With this fireflower in your reserve item box, the rest of the puzzle becomes a breeze: You just go through the entire loop again, get the green Yoshi and return to the open area with the boss door. Here you release the fireflower from your item box, clear out the ice blocks, get the disco shell, use Yoshi to bop the block which holds a P-Switch and enter the boss door. Easy!

... the funny part is that raocow actually almost got it at minute 21:15 in his video. Had he gone through the pipe, he would have made it without any problems, but of course he went through the reset door instead. This meant that he lost the fireflower in his reserve box.

[This Eye o' Mine]

Yup. Translation of the 'official' solution in the spoiler tag:

Steps for the proper (?) solution:

There are many ways to tackle this level, but below is the way to do it while using all the tools at your disposal.
1. In the room with the Rexes, hit the P-switch, and go to where the green Yoshi is.
2. Ride the Yoshi, and go into the central door
3. When you exit the pipe, eat the feather with Yoshi and go into the pipe in the part above.
4. Go fly with the cape to go get the baby red Yoshi, and enter the pipe.
5. While carrying the baby red Yoshi, go into the pipe on the middle floor and climb the vine.
6. Let the baby eat the mushroom that's just sitting there to make him grow up, make a disco shell on the left, and have him put it in his mouth.
7. Fly with Yoshi to the part with the spinning things (maces), enter the hidden passage located above the unnatural-looking arrows, get the fire at the other end of it, and enter the pipe there.
8. Break the wall with fire, get the feather with Yoshi, and fly to the top-right from the bottom-right while still riding Yoshi, then enter the pipe there.
9. Break the wall with fire, hit the ON-OFF switch, and leave the room.
10. Take the green shell to the bottom-right, make a disco shell, and have Yoshi put it in his mouth.
11. Do a dust stomp with Yoshi next to the red shell to get the P-switch, then go to the boss room.

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

When I was checking the levels that raocow played today I saw his comment in the description about the puzzle level; considering that I've seen raocow have trouble on puzzles that I've figured out very quickly I wasn't sure whether to be worried or not. It turns out this was actually a rather difficult puzzle, but I'll talk more about that later. That wasn't the only level raocow played today, and I'm here to give comments on all the levels, so here are my comments on today's levels.

Foot of the Frozen Mountain: It's a nice little ice level, with a nice vertical section for the secret exit. There are some tricky jumps at the end of the vertical section, but if you take out all the enemies there's not much danger unless you mess up so much you run out of time. I don't have much else to say here; this is just a pretty good, albeit basic, level.

Labyrinth Castle ~ vs. Morton: As I mentioned before, this is a rather difficult puzzle level. I figured out that a space of five blocks was enough to get up to flight speed, which allowed me to break the puzzle a bit. In the spoiler below is the solution that I used.

1. Get Yoshi.
2. Get the cape.
3. Fly to the switch room to spawn a second cape.
4. Go to the brown room and Yoshi jump into the fake ceiling to get a fire flower.
5. Fly to the switch room and hit the switch.
6. Go to the brown room, switch to the cape in order to keep the fire flower, and head to Yoshi's room.
7. Get Yoshi again.
8. Get another cape (not necessary, but I wanted to be able to switch to it so I wouldn't accidentally melt the koopa or the shell).
9. Use the fire flower to melt the ice blocks.
10. Grab the green shell and give it to the yellow koopa to create a disco shell.
11. Lick up the disco shell with Yoshi and use his new stomping powers to knock the red shell up and hit the block with the P-switch.
12. Use the P-switch to get to the boss door and beat the level.

I also tried cloning the P-switch at one point, but I did it by bringing the baby red Yoshi (that you get by flying up in the room with regular Yoshi) up the vine and feeding him the mushroom up there. Unfortunately there's no way to get to the baby Yoshi while the switch is off, and having the P-switch isn't very useful while the switch is on, so that didn't really help me. Another thing I found out is that while it seems like you're not supposed to be able to get the cape from the right without Yoshi, if you run at the wall fast enough you can manage to get it anyway. That never came up during my successful run but I did make use of it while I was trying other things.

[xfix]

Meanwhile, what I did to solve the puzzle.

I entered the boss door with Yoshi, avoiding the need to get a P-Switch and spinjumped.

[Zach808]

Super Spinner Boon is a favorite of mine. The gimmick is simple, but the execution makes a really fun level that doesn’t feel cheap. Even the thwimp jumping has a nice flow to it.

World 6 as a whole isn’t too bad, aside from the 2 levels in the upper middle. Those levels are just... Kill me.

[Arctangent]

What exactly is the nature of the old BlockTool corner glitch? Like, in terms of the technical ASM side of stuff, why does that happen?

[Super Maks 64]

What exactly is the nature of the old BlockTool corner glitch? Like, in terms of the technical ASM side of stuff, why does that happen?

Old Blocktool didn't run the block's custom code when you touched the top left and right pixels of its collision, so instead of boosting upward, Boon would just stand on it like it was a normal cement block. (HeadInside and BodyInside also didn't run custom code, but they're less common)

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

So now we're at world 6. Things are starting to become more difficult but so far it hasn't been too bad. That's not to say I didn't have any trouble at all here. here are my comments for today's levels.

The Sleepy Sea: This is an interesting level. I don't see very many water levels that just give you some fire flowers and tell you to fry anything that gets in your way. Of course there's a lot of enemies here, and if you lose your fire flowers things can get pretty difficult rather quickly. One annoying thing is that if you're close to a slope on the ceiling your fireballs tend to go into the ceiling, but overall I had fun with this level.

Super Spinner Boon: This is a level that I didn't have quite as much fun with. The first half is pretty alright, but then in the second half you start having to spin jump on thwimps, which I don't know how raocow managed to never get hit while bouncing off them. For a while you can at least avoid bouncing on them while they're jumping, but once you get to the part where with several of them in a row there's no way around it. Then just as you get to the end of that part the bullet generator kicks in, and if you're unlucky like me you might find yourself in a situation where taking a hit is basically unavoidable. After that I still had some trouble with the rest of the level until I realized that you could just jump over the rest of the thwimps. After that it was actually kind of fun. Though if I could change one thing I'd put the bullet generator a bit later so you wouldn't be potentially forced to take a hit. Then there's the secret exit, which is also pretty alright. I just wish you didn't have to play through the entire level again to get to it.

[Ashan]

I definitely remember Super Spinner Boon, for some reason the name stuck with me (I can hear Moltov saying it in his old screeching LP) and also it's just a fun concept. Probably would like it more if you didn't have to worry about the blocktool glitch

[Ditocoaf]

raocow's brief riff on lethal jokes (9:38-10:30) made me think of the Monty Python bit:

[Arctangent]

What exactly is the nature of the old BlockTool corner glitch? Like, in terms of the technical ASM side of stuff, why does that happen?

Old Blocktool didn't run the block's custom code when you touched the top left and right pixels of its collision, so instead of boosting upward, Boon would just stand on it like it was a normal cement block. (HeadInside and BodyInside also didn't run custom code, but they're less common)

I'm guessing it's a case of like, using your >s and <s when you should be using >=s and <=s.

[BobisOnlyBob]

What exactly is the nature of the old BlockTool corner glitch? Like, in terms of the technical ASM side of stuff, why does that happen?

Old Blocktool didn't run the block's custom code when you touched the top left and right pixels of its collision, so instead of boosting upward, Boon would just stand on it like it was a normal cement block. (HeadInside and BodyInside also didn't run custom code, but they're less common)

I'm guessing it's a case of like, using your >s and <s when you should be using >=s and <=s.

Literally an edge case. Or more accurately, a fencepost error.

[This Eye o' Mine]

In regard to raocow and people in the comments on Youtube wondering about the lack of ascension glitch, I'd like to reiterate that we did not patch or change anything ASM-wise that wasn't directly causing problems on real SNES hardware due to assumptions about emulation accuracy. The sole exceptions to this were the bug inherent in VIP 4's design specifically (which people in the Japanese community identified as an unintended bug) that caused a message box with a story spoiler to show up in world 3, and one VIP Coin that was placed on a horizontal screen boundary, which was also called out in the Japanese community and in all likelihood was not intentional, since the level doesn't draw attention to it, and the rest of it contained more VIP coins to collect.

The glitch is still very much there. In my experience, this stage actually tends to line the Thwimps up quite well, so you're unlikely to get hit by the glitch as long as you keep a certain flow to your progression, and don't hesitate before jumping on them.

[xfix]

In regard to raocow and people in the comments on Youtube wondering about the lack of ascension glitch, I'd like to reiterate that we did not patch or change anything ASM-wise that wasn't directly causing problems on real SNES hardware due to assumptions about emulation accuracy. The sole exceptions to this were the bug inherent in VIP 4's design specifically (which people in the Japanese community identified as an unintended bug) that caused a message box with a story spoiler to show up in world 3, and one VIP Coin that was placed on a horizontal screen boundary, which was also called out in the Japanese community and in all likelihood was not intentional, since the level doesn't draw attention to it, and the rest of it contained more VIP coins to collect.

The glitch is still very much there. In my experience, this stage actually tends to line the Thwimps up quite well, so you're unlikely to get hit by the glitch as long as you keep a certain flow to your progression, and don't hesitate before jumping on them.

Actually, the ascending glitch is "fixed", but likely unintentionally.

You see, if you kill an enemy while spinjumping, you cannot be affected by ascending glitch. For some weird reason, code responsible for ascending glitch is only ran if you didn't kill anything while spinjumping.

Super Mario World is weird, okay?

[Whimsical Calamari]

finally i get to see what's up with the VIP lava wall

DailyMotion
Pedro? - March 18, 2008
0:00 - tree
4:36 - camera
SKIP

because seriously - March 19, 2008
3:01 - ghostsnstuff

YouTube
the two levels displayed here are about a tree and a cameraman - January 20, 2009
0:00 - tree
6:37 - camera
SKIP

postproduction in the forest - January 22, 2009
3:50 - ghosts

Some thoroughly graceful gameplay from the 2009 run of the tree stage. Top tier. Absolutely masterful.
Shoutout to PPR, by the way! Before it was mentioned in this year's run, I didn't realize PPR first came in so late (the 35th LP, according to raolists!).

I've mentioned before how dailymotioncow seems to be able to rush through levels at incredible speeds that moderncow just doesn't match. Part of that is the (slightly) more cautious playstyle that raocow has developed compared to his "Panic And Go Very Fast Freakin God" approach back in 08. That's part of what's going on in the tree level, but another part is how much of a game changer VIP coins are in a level like this. Without the VIP coins, it's just a vertical romp affair with janky vine climbing. When the VIP coins combine with the moving layer, though, it makes the whole thing much more deliberate: watch for coins to appear on the side at the end of the scroll, work out an awkward jump with uncertain landing point, make sure you're in the right column of turn blocks before you spinjump. It completely shifts the level's dynamic in a really neat way (though it's hard to tell if that effect was intentional).

Also, regarding "Cameraman's Castle":

He also for some reason just completely dropped the word しごと (shigoto), which means 'work' or 'job'.

I wonder if that's related to the raocow.com description of the DailyMotion video of this level?

I slightly edited the second world's name there since I don't want to go and get banned (from SA) or something!

If the above was serious: is there a chance Oyster translated しごと as something a bit more unsavory than "work/job"? (Given what I know about SA, though, it seems to me you'd have to go pretty far to warrant a ban there, so it's probably just a coincidence.)

[Arctangent]

Actually, the ascending glitch is "fixed", but likely unintentionally.

You see, if you kill an enemy while spinjumping, you cannot be affected by ascending glitch. For some weird reason, code responsible for ascending glitch is only ran if you didn't kill anything while spinjumping.

Super Mario World is weird, okay?

Doesn't seem all that weird if you stop to think about what it means. There's few ways to ascend after a jump besides stomping on an enemy, so chances are Mario has a bit to keep track of that to tell the game "oh, I'm going upwards now, let's use less persnickety collision code so I can stomp more stuff while ascending." It's all fine and dandy and works well enough in the context of the vanilla game, but once you get around to stuff relying a lot more on the spin jump, it's revealed that this theoretical bit isn't set after stomping on something with a spin jump but not killing it, resulting in the more lenient collision code never being used.

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

These levels weren't exactly spectacular. They did give me some difficulty but it was more of the annoying kind of difficulty than the fun kind of difficulty. Anyway, here are my comments for today's levels.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Another level that's swimming with rip van fish, except this time the level doesn't give you free fire flowers. If you don't have a powerup to get rid of them they can be a real nuisance, and you don't exactly have that much time to lure them around to safe areas. Despite the lack of time I found that the best strategy was to lure the big group of five on top of the question blocks to the left so you can bop them, then get to the second powerup box without getting hit so you can get a fire flower.

The First Step: Something about this level made me wonder at times if it was based on an existing SMW level. The only thing I found noteworthy here was that the one tile jumps at the start could be a bit tricky (at least for someone like me who isn't used to making one tile jumps in SMW), which is a bit fitting for the level name, but it doesn't exactly make for the most interesting level.

A is for Amy, Who Fell Down the Stairs: I found this level rather annoying, mostly because I spent a lot of time waiting for the piranha plants to get out of the way. Sure you could just hover over most of them with a cape, but I didn't want to just blindly jump somewhere that could be dangerous. One somewhat amusing thing is that I ended up finding all the VIP coins mostly by accident. I got hit while climbing up the invisible blocks right after the midpoint, and my reserve cape ended up falling out of reach inside the wall. I figured I'd jump down the pit so I could start back at the midpoint and quickly get back my two capes, but I ended up finding all the VIP coins that were down there.

[This Eye o' Mine]

People have said world 6 is either 'eh' or 'holy geez', but I think it has some pretty good stages as well, like Super Spinner Boon for instance. Even the 20.000 leagues level is kind of clever in its use of the time limit, in a way that a certain level in VIP 1 probably should have been. It's just that the 'eh' and 'geez' factors really overpower the world as a whole.

Isn't "とげとげ (togetoge)" also an onomatopoeia? It looks and feels like a lot of other Japanese onomatopoeia where they take two syllables and repeat them for the sound effect (e.g. どきどき dokidoki for a fast-beating heart, にこにこ niconico for smiling, ぱくぱく pakupaku for pacman...i mean for eating with your mouth smacking). A quick googling finds me "とげとげ A mean attitude, expression, or tone of voice" from https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-onomatopoeia/, though I was expecting something more like "the sound of something pointy/thorny sticking you unexpectedly." Also, google translate (which we all know is the be-all and end-all of translation) seems to say that とげとげする = "to sharpen", which makes more sense for the pun: https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/% ... 9%E3%82%8B

I'm a bit late answering this, but yes, it is one of those onomatopoeia (although I personally hesitate to call word-doublings like that onomatopoeia, since a lot of them aren't even meant to describe a sound as such). I think it is typically used in its figurative sense of "a sharp/harsh/biting tone of voice", though of course native speakers are aware of the root word referring to spikes or thorns. The translator of DKC 2 probably thought it was kind of a neat play on words, because in the context of a difficult bramble stage it could be interpreted both ways, as either the figurative "harsh barrel labyrinth" or the literal "spiky barrel labyrinth". The main idea that the VIP 4 level creator probably had was to take that level name as a reference to DKC 2, then emphasize the spikes/spikiness even more by replacing the word 'barrel' with the word 'thorn', to the point that it starts to sound kind of ridiculous with how you're saying 'thorn' three times in a row.

I slightly edited the second world's name there since I don't want to go and get banned (from SA) or something!

If the above was serious: is there a chance Oyster translated しごと as something a bit more unsavory than "work/job"? (Given what I know about SA, though, it seems to me you'd have to go pretty far to warrant a ban there, so it's probably just a coincidence.)

Huh, I didn't know censorcow might have been an element in some of these old level names, since I referenced the 2009 LP for these. I frankly have no solid idea how you could turn that word into anything that's ban-worthy anywhere, especially on SA of all places. If I really force myself to misread it, I could see it as しりと ('shiri to' instead of 'shigoto'), which would turn the title into something like "Cameraman's Butt and Castle". I think you can imagine for yourself some synonyms that might appear instead. This is just some really far-fetched guessing though, and I'm now insanely curious what his original take on it could have been.

Anyway, still not much else translation wise to really point out for this episode, since these stages with their 'there'-ness don't exactly present any complex text to solve, and the references in this episode are largely to stuff that's easy for European/American viewers to catch on to or look up themselves. If you're into the technical side of things, I guess this might interest you:

Translator's note: A is for Amy, Who Fell Down the Stairs

This level name presented a problem, as the level name hack we were using only allows for two lines with 19 characters per line. We wanted the title to exactly mimic the original line in Gorey's book, but the top line ended up being 21 characters, which is obviously too long. We ended up taking the same approach as the original translators of SMW, and which many SMW hackers might be familiar with as 'ILLUSIYELLOW', since this line of characters shows up in the character set that's visible in Lunar Magic. Basically, back when SMW was first released in English, 'FOREST OF ILLUSION x" and "YELLOW SWITCH PALACE" both exceeded the 19 character limit by one character, so they got around this by rewriting one of the words from each, squashing them down to fit 6 letters into a 5 letter space. In our case we were maybe a bit less elegant about it, basically rewriting almost the entire top line in the character set in order to compensate for the extra two characters without it coming out looking all lop-sided.

Oyster's Pearls: The First Stage

You can probably figure out how this one happened on your own. At the risk of stealing somebody else's job in this thread (I'm sorry), I just felt like referring to it because of the reaction this kind-of-funny-to-see-in-world-6 level name got from oldcow:

"This is the first stage, I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean. Is it because it's a 1-1 edit? That's always awesome. God knows hacks don't have enough 1-1 edits as it is." - raocow 2009