Animal Crossing's Hidden Debug Menus

[@Hunter-R.]

It seems captions were originally broken on the first hour of this video's publication, so I had to rush to re-time all of them again! This has now been corrected, so hopefully it wasn't a huge deal for people who require/prefer closed captions. Thank you all again for your continued support, and I'll have some cool updates to announce soon regarding future projects and this community!

[@h25c1]

2likes lol

[@Saturnman262]

Thank you for providing captions! Makes the video much easier to enjoy for me.

[@brunomarslover420]

i have an audio processing disorder so the captions are really helpful to me! thank you for making your videos accessible :]

[@ben12355]

sadly, i had to watch it with auto-generated captions, because i was here on the first hour and watched it on the first hour.

[@championglitchy6821]

It’s so nice to see creators provide captions, my audio processing disorder thanks you for putting effort into them!

[@Jase00]

I have never played animal crossing, I don't even know much about animal crossing, I've only seen my partner play animal crossing on the switch and yet I still haven't played it... But boy do you scratch that "hidden content" itch with very well presented video. Thank you!!

[@Jobroski47]

As a game enthusiast that likes seeing deeper analysis on games and glitches seeing channels like yours that specialize in a certain game is amazing, your content reminds me of golden owl but for animal crossing :)

[@spiciestchilliofall]

This is incredible. Thank you so much for documenting this, there's a good chance that the wider community would NEVER have known this without you and the people you collaborate with!

[@feenie5567]

Seeing Mr. Resetti floating above you during a K.K. Slider concert is hilarious yet scary

[@monkeyman767]

Your vids recently popped up in my feed and from the first one I watched I was sure you'd been doing this kind of stuff for a while, so to find out you've only these vids so far? Great work, seriously, hope your viewers continues to grow!

[@joelniino8666]

Keep going man. Your channel is rich in details!

[@Zappr]

Your videos are so interesting and I’m personally not even into animal crossing. I also expected you to have a lot more subs. You deserve it! Please keep up the amazing work!

[@AverageJoeThoughts]

had to give a thumbs up in the first 5 seconds from laughing at that joke 💀

[@RobocatZWasTaken]

your my new fav youtuber. the videos you make are awesome!

[@amy53241]

greatest cold open in cinematic history...

[@drakethedragon457]

I've played a few games [Some even on the NDS!] That include a sorta-full debug menu/mode, sometimes it can be enabled in the game's setting. [Not related to games but ALL Android Operating systems have a hidden way to enable developer options]

[@creativfoxdev]

Oh my god the quality of these videos. On a game I've never played. And I'm still interested?? How!?

[@alyssamcdevitt1778]

i've started watching this channel since the resetti video, and this one was great, love your content and subscribed!

[@EthanObi]

Man, combined with the bit-flip video you made a while ago, my only thought is you found a way to force a bit-flip to access the 2nd debug mode here!

[@Ramzi_es_mi_nombre]

Great vid m8 keep it up and gl in ur project, u got it, wanna see it done!

[@lonron5018]

Great video!

[@fartbag6953]

the rate at which u are pumping out these top notch videos is just crazy man, keep up the good work, ur gonna be huge soon

[@jn567]

Does the new project perhaps involve that empty nes item? Or maybe a memory card and a PC?

[@minirop]

Unlike cemmy410, I did play new leaf and new horizon, but like them, I'm a software dev and I really enjoy technical videos. (there aren't enough :P ) good job, can't wait to see what's cooking!

[@Castcoder]

Secret second debug menu on vanilla hardware? Yeah ok, I'll take the bait and hit subscribe.

[@milo9845]

your account + video quality is that of a channel with 50-100k subs. subbing bc you deserve it + i can see you hitting that in no time :)

[@Cliffordlonghead]

Awesome video 😊

[@Zippy_Zolton]

who made the HD texture pack you're using? it looks beautiful and hand-made

[@Hunter-R.]

A large community of people contributed to it, and it is all hand made by them! Check the description for more info on this pack.

[@Zippy_Zolton]

@@Hunter-R. that's lovely! I'm so tired of seeing subpar upscale jobs over masterful work like this

[@Marcus3205]

So you're telling me that Animal Crossing was made on the same engine as the highest rated game of all time?

[@scaleonkhan183]

3:50 WHAT that's so cool

[@travj1]

Love these vids! Very well made , especially for gc animal crossing, keep up work good!!

[@pika62221]

There are a few who left them just because of time constraints.

[@SidShakal]

"animal crossing is built with the same engine [as ocarina of time]" wow. engine must mean something different than i thought.

[@Mitzi-chan224]

Does Animal Crossing New Horizons have a debug menu? I'm very curious. 😊

[@TheGreyShaman]

This is amazing, after all this time

[@verica4b]

But why is Zelda_malloc called Zelda_malloc... why not n_malloc or so 😅 very weirdly specific 😅

[@Hunter-R.]

Nintendo was likely working on several different games at the time, and Ocarina of Time was one of their earlier 3D games. They likely named the function "zelda_malloc" since the way that function allocates memory was, at the time, specific to Zelda and wouldn't work in other contexts. But, they ended up making a few more games on a heavily modified version of Zelda's engine, so the original function name remains. Note there are also several different memory allocation functions, such as "graph_malloc" and "debug_malloc," so they probably just named it "zelda_malloc" since it was the easiest way to differentiate it at the time.🤔

[@suchdoggo64]

Your literally the stryder7x of animal crossing

[@ben12355]

8 minutes and also 5th comment? really cool. also YAY!

[@ongakuwotabeta]

I was right!

[@geodebreaker]

Wow

[@trinitysummers6268]

i can't tell if this channels profile picture is ai??

[@rumekfuria6037]

Inverse Konami code, nice

[@xavvvvxd]

ace in animal crossing????

[@Luis-be2eq]

7:20 Ok so fun fact: Ocarina of Time originally ran on the same engine as Super Mario 64 but was so heavily modified that Miyamoto considers the final products different engines. so the animal crossing engine is a modified version of a modified version of Super Mario 64's game engine

[@UnixTMDev]

literally titanfall 2

[@SoulcatcherLucario]

they were????? holy shit

[@superasax3245]

basically the tf2>hl2>source>goldsource>quake

[@fuzzydude64]

in retrospect, that explains a lot about the feel of ocarina's physics and movement, doesn't it

[@ThereAreErrors]

My video actually started glitching when you said “make a black box appear” and my entire video went dark and I thought it was just a joke how was it time perfectly😭😭😭

[@radiowlet]

I can already tell you're gonna become a legend in the AC community with all the stuff you've been doing

[@rhyptm7777]

Your videos are such High Quality for such a small channel one of my favorites.

[@LendriMujina]

I wish allowing players to unlock the debug menu was a more common thing in games, be it either as an easter egg like in AC, or maybe as a reward for 100% completion in more linear games.

[@Mogswamp]

Your teasing is working on me. I really hope you can get it working

[@lugio281]

How does this not have any replies?

[@Gamer-ct6hb]

@@lugio281 Because it has 3 likes. And he's not popular in this category.

[@Donyas5]

7 months ago, 19 likes, 2 replies

[@ZimaNoMori]

​@@Donyas5nuh uh

[@kajiilitz]

I'm not this big of an Animal Crossing player, but your work shows quality and passion! You manage to make every video super interesting to watch. Subbed!

[@ChainPenguin]

Agree, I have never played Animal Crossing, but the videos are dam good.

[@tallic967]

​@@ChainPenguinI've only played the more modern games (New Leaf, New Horizons)

[@user-si2cf6gy3b]

At least in Animal Crossing+ on the Japanese GameCube, certain games (Jikkyou World Soccer 2002, SSX TRICKY) allow you to launch Debug Mode 2 on unmodified hardware.

[@TheYoxiz]

I recently found your channel and was wondering if you were going to cover a glitch in Animal Crossing: Wild World where you can do what seems to be memory editing by sending a letter in the japanese version of the game? My friend is using it for speedrunning and he's told me there's not a lot of info or documentation out there about this glitch, at least not in English. I'd love to see a video from you covering this topic! EDIT: the glitch / speedrun category seems to be called LHG (Letter Header Glitch) if that's of any help.

[@matthall7359]

Top notch editing, writing and narration. Your videos are so comfy and interesting. Feels like a channel that has 100k+ subscribers. Keep going man. You’ve definitely got the sauce.

[@cemmy410]

I've never even played an animal crossing game before, but as a software dev myself I really enjoy these looks into how the game works. I subbed immediately after watching one of your vids for the first time (the paying off your debt one) and was really surprised that it was from a new channel with only 6 videos. You've done a lot of great work so far and I can't wait to see what you're working on with the second debug menu! (are we gonna see some ACE? 😳)

[@Kabosu_Doge]

You should play it, the GC roms are everywhere

[@Zinkolo]

YES MORE ANIMAL CROSSING CRACK

[@B.anan.a]

Finally, my fix

[@VideoSysL]

Hey, thank you for mentioning (and linking!) sources. A number of people would just regurgitate them with no credit.

[@Rubbly]

Never knew about debug mode being relatively available on this! Thanks for shining a light on this game and community to others like myself!

[@HUYI1]

i've played animal crossing GC for 100s of hours, was my 1st game in the series and i still didn't know this

[@celestemangonya]

Whenever i develop any program larger than a very basic one i include some sort of debug output or menu (partially out of necessity for actual debugging, and partially cause dev/debug menus are cool), so it's always been really cool to see how large game dev companies like Nintendo implement their far more complex ones

[@kj3997]

Great video! I was dying to see based on the teaser what the topic was lol

[@raphy963]

Honestly, you give me massive Stryder7x vibes but with Animal Crossing instead of Paper Mario. I don't play Animal Crossing but I love this kind of content, subbed and hoping you keep going!

[@wizardkitty]

That animal crossing debug code is very similar to the konami code.

[@pyro4817]

eating a burger with no honey mustard

[@Seruran_blue]

IIRC, it is possible to open 2nd debug mode without hacking in NTSC-J (doubutsu no mori+) 0.You need International Superstar Soccer 2 save in slot A and doubutsu no mori+ save in slot B. 1. Boot International Superstar Soccer 2(NTSC-J) 2. eject the game and swap to doubutsu no mori+ 3. reset the game

[@scott4494]

Great video! I vaguely remember the discovery of loading NES games from a memory card having a flaw leading to ACE (and from there, debug mode 2). Do you plan on doing this without externally modifying save files? (Is that even possible?)

[@frasermips]

The 2nd Level Debug menu works great on a Soft Modded Wii running Nintendont. I've used it a bunch, it does have some risk, so I have a dedicated village for this and just create whatever items I want and then travel by train (2 GC Memory slots in most Wii's) to pick up my items, including 30,000 bell bags which are a 2nd Level Debug feature. My kids travelled to my village and asked about my 1st floor and basement floor being covered in money bags they couldn't pick up LOL. The Second Controller being plugged in is the way to enable it, once the other parts are in place, so I unplug the second controller when my kids play.

[@evaku_socks]

I'm absolutely loving these videos especially while I'm not feeling the best, wonderful work :) I hope to see more in the future

[@imanalligator9694]

I am not addicted to animal crossing videos by hunter R I am not addicted to animal crossing videos by hunter R I am not addicted to animal crossing videos by hunter R

[@Nightcaat]

This is really cool!! I can’t believe I didn’t know about this…

[@onaradiantday]

Just binged all of your videos right before this one came out. Keep up the great work, they’re so cool!!

[@novelezra]

Damn, having only discovered your channel yesterday, I can say the algorithm is now boosting your channel pretty hard since this has already past 10k views. It's wonderful, more people need to be exposed to the pre AC:NH games and this is a lovely way to both educate on the older AC's and also on how coding and game development works. I'm serious, your video explaining bytes was the only time I actually understand how a byte works.

[@ohhadivist]

Man I'm loving this channel. I've been a fan of Animal Crossing on the GC since I was a toddler and I always come back to play it and watch videos on it now and then, but I've already learned so much I never knew about the game from these videos alone.

[@maverickhuntersyd]

So glad you made this one! I saw a video about accessing debug mode when it was first discovered and heard little about it since. Always wondered what became of it since then.

[@robinnVA]

i don't even like animal crossing *that much* but i can't stop watching your videos. good stuff man, keep it up

[@MRP0E]

KZbin algorithm doing some good for once, loved all your videos

[@nuthinnew]

Congrats on the channel growth. Thought i'd give an fyi on how the algorithm is working. I've never played Animal crossing nor ever searched for videos of it however I am subscribed to channels like NES hacker and enjoy seeing how games are programmed etc, so thats probably why this showed in my recommendations.

[@rianmcsmolbean6858]

It's crazy how far animal crossing has come from having a full debug menu available in the original game, to now having your island and save file locked to your specific console unless you call Nintendo support 💀

[@ARitzCracker]

I feel like you're starting to be recommended to the "Retro Gaming Mechanics Explained" audience. Either way, happy the algorithm is starting to group you properly. So far I'm enjoying your deep-dives!

[@daveslamjam]

mr. resetti showing up in the kk slider performance while in debug mode is simultaneously hilarious, clever, and terrifying.

[@Most-sane-deltarune-fan]

Maybe he's just pissed off at you for doing what he considers a form of cheating/accessing things you shouldn't.

[@shanechapman3713]

Brilliant stuff. I’m grateful to be here so early in your inevitable growth. Keep going, you’re doing fantastic 😊

[@HUYI1]

whoa! sonic superstars has a debug menu? this is a throwback to sonic 2 no doubt i didn't know this and of course didn't know animal crossing GC had one either 😯😯 both US and EU versions of this game are very different code wise, does the debug menu still exists in both regions? there is a lot of variations across both versions of the game but seriously how did you find this debug menu?

[@jayrony69]

This channel is underrated

[@raaymonf]

AF: omg why do they have a forest ACCF: omg why do they have a city ACNL: omg why do they give items wrapped in a leaf ACNH: omg why do they have a horizon ACWW: omg thats enough

[@jwbstuhr]

I'm picking up a copy of Animal Crossing on GameCube for nostalgia purposes thanks to these videos.

[@Bidziilla]

Sweet! Also, the map selection screen actually is just a Room ID selection menu! One of the maps warps you to your town because that's the ID for it! The rooms you can warp to are actually the actual rooms you'd access from your town! With that, there's unused ones too. Iirc new leaf had some unused room IDs but crash the game upon entry. It also has 3 test maps with primitive textures in the Welcome Amiibo files. No room ids associated with them but I've accessed them before via model swapping. Also, fun fact! AC:NH has a hidden debug menu. With code (I assume) to be a camera hack, there's also code to displaying debug information on screen! The code for the debug menu though is broken, as parts are missing and the game doesn't allocate memory for them anymore. New Horizons also has like 4+ unused character actions. One is called developermode, but the for it was stubbed out. Calling the function for it makes nothing happen because it calls a nullsub within it! Another one is code which implies eating an item which would cause a small cutscene to pop up. This also no longer does anything as its code was mostly removed. There's a video of the debug camera display on my page, and one showing some unused menus and one with the unused bush picking restored! :)

[@zeromontalvan1514]

You definitely made me actually interest in animal crossing, the work behind this videos is amazing, I definitely will be there for future projects and I think the god debug mode will change Speedruns pretty much as they did with oot, at the end I learned in this same video that they even reused the engine from oot so it may be possible

[@erwinwaterman9699]

Just tried it and it worked! Been playing and sharing a village with my gf and her brother, tons of fun! Got to show that off and I looked awesome 😎

[@Jiquor]

Hi Hunter. Great video, love all the attention GCN AC has been getting lately. However, there is a mystery that I’ve been wondering (my brother too) for many years that involves something called a “bluefish”. Legend says it’s a beta item that can really screw with your town, and it looks like a fish on a hook. Nobody has ever talked about it other than a post I found ages ago, so I am hoping that you could cover it at some point. Feel free to contact with more info if you wish.

[@gigaslave]

Most Sonic games have Stage Select and a basic Debug mode left in for players to mess with.

[@LVL58Designs]

Hold up... so animal crossing is built with the same engine as OOT? So we could conceivably mod in legitimate OOT items into animal crossing given enough persistence?

[@iiiCorrosiveiii]

gotta love coming across a new banger channel. i grew up with animal crossing so it's interesting learning more about it. props to you for the great videos

[@PortalHub]

WAKE UP BABE NEW HUNTER R. VIDEO

[@PortalHub]

yooo just finished, is wherever you'll be cooking public? do you plan to open a git repository or discuss about it on a discord or the likes? would be curious about the process; since we're only looking at modifying a single flag hex value, I feel like a specific memory manipulation trick could be used and I fully expect to see you succeed at it :) good luck

[@Hunter-R.]

Trust me, if the project I hinted at comes to fruition, there will be a substantial video on the topic. Like many developers, I’m a big advocate of free, open source information and tools. So anything I code or create will always be public and free for all to access. I debated whether or not to hint at this project in this video, but I decided to be a bit optimistic and I think hinting at it now will help push me to actually complete it. Thank you for the comments and support!

[@daveboy2000]

single bitflip to get the second debug mode? Gimme an hour and a chunk of spicy uranium

[@fletchqc9900]

and i thought i couldnt learn anymore new stuff about acgc... this game never ceases to amaze me.

[@mistybreeze205]

never played an animal crossing game in my entire life but the game development and coding part is very interesting. you got a new fan.

[@LazyEggo]

Wouldnt this work with swiss? It might be able to. Ill keep yall updated if i make it work

[@BierBart12]

I love it when the debug menu is accessible and insanely powerful. I don't remember which games I saw this in rn, but in some you could do things like spawning in a cutscene trash can exactly where you want and listen to every single sound effect I think GTA IV and V's cheat menus work by using this, so you can "build" a driveable bathtub that constantly plays cartoon music. The source engine console might be even more powerful.

[@cammac6243]

Wait I stg you had a thousand subscribers last week. Congrats 🎉

[@OverTonesOfLevi]

I'm so happy you're keeping this game alive with these awesome videos! The fact we're getting so close to the last years that Animal Crossing will count as a new year until it repeats the same year over and over makes me sad.

[@The_Metal_Mechanic]

I am so happy to have found your videos a few days ago. Please keep up the awesome work. The first Animal Crossing has fascinated me since the first time I saw that commercial parodying The Real World as a kid, and discovering how much crazy crap I could do with Action Replay was just the icing on that cake. I remember accidentally generating an item in my older brother's village that was a fish you could drop but not pick back up, and if I'm remembering correctly after a while you couldn't even walk into the acre it was placed in without the game crashing. I also pissed off my best friend's older brother by using a code to complete his catalog, which he was trying to do legitimately. I'm pretty sure a little part of him still holds that against me to this day. I was a very annoying 11 year old apparently.

[@coffeeandproofs]

I’m very curious: given the overlap of code structure of this game with Zelda (notably comments around 7:10), is there a similar debug menu there that can be activated by the techniques you’re looking into? Also, could understanding memory manipulation here through this advanced debug menu then lead to a better understanding of how it can be warped in the Zelda community? (I’m neither a Zelda or AC player, just curious.)

[@Hunter-R.]

Yes, all of your assumptions are correct! But, rather than using Animal Crossing's memory manipulation to understand Zelda, it is actually the other way around. Ocarina of Time released before Animal Crossing and is technically way more documented and well-understood. There is a near identical debug menu and button combination present in Ocarina of Time to achieve various debugging functionalities, and discoveries within Zelda have opened up a lot of possibilities for Animal Crossing. If you're curious, I suggest researching Ocarina of Time since it has already been extremely broken beyond your wildest imagination. Thank you for your comment!

[@shapedfox1568]

3:16 that got me XD

[@fatguy1112]

I don't even like animal crossing that much but I really like your videos

[@lorgamerpizza7952]

it's incredible how an old game is so complex

[@lilnoobito]

Yessssssss another video to consume like a hungry fiend