The Curious Quirks of Wild World

[@wishydude]

I remember I got seeded in like 2007. I asked one of my friends to help me out online and he ended up putting a seed of Gracie’s car on the spawn point right outside the door to my house. Every time I left it, my character would pass out like I got bit by a scorpion on repeat. It turns out my friend was the original assailant all along. I now have trust issues. Thanks Animal Crossing

[@wessltov]

I'm sorry to hear your friend unknowingly seeded you like that. Your trust issues are completely warranted

[@neoqwerty]

@@wessltov I wouldn't say "unknowingly". You have to know what you're doing to even end up with a seed item in your inventory. Source: I used seeds to redecorate my town, I had to learn to be careful with those, even with harmless ones like flower seeds.

[@GigaBizzy]

I guess you could say he animal crossed you

[@SquidPartyDude]

@@GigaBizzyCONGRATULATIONS! YOU JUST WON COMEDY!!!

[@nicthemasterclown1974]

womp womp

[@kylernyhagen7519]

Back in the day I made a group that also had action replay who would go around and help people delete the buildings malicious people spawned to prevent their games from bricking!

[@VoidPetsBack]

Ah, I do love stories of white-hats.

[@niicespiice]

how do you delete buildings once they're placed?

[@VoidPetsBack]

@@niicespiice dunno, but I’m pretty sure they just use a cheat to walk to where the seed is and pick it up, both so that their cartridges don’t brick and so that they won’t get stuck (or freeing them if they already are)

[@Russetfur1128]

Aww. Wholesome hackers. Not a very common occurrence.

[@Blarkehuss]

Not all heroes wear capes

[@KopperNeoman]

The seeding problem in Wild World is actually the reason why New Leaf has a button combination to delete your save data. If you have the cartridge version of the game, the official OS doesn't have any way to directly delete your data - and the reason why seeding bricked Wild World games was because they crashed upon loading the save file to serve as the backdrop for the title screen. New Leaf's developers anticipated this possibility - the button combo is intended as an emergency last resort since the game checks for it BEFORE loading the save data.

[@RockYoMomsWorld]

But how would you get to the title screen to enter the button combo if the game crashes as soon as you open it?

[@HyperMario64]

​@@RockYoMomsWorld I do not know the specifics of the implementation, but the title screen is just some arbitrary scene the application displays. The application can very well do an arbitrary amount of processing before presenting the title screen or demo. It can read inputs and decide to show a prompt to confirm deleting user data. From Nintendo's reference they decided to have that branch very early on in the application so that this anti-bricking measure is as robust as possible. In other words software is usually very flexible and can do anything the system allows it to do.

[@IzzyAuset]

​@RockYoMomsWorld you have to hold A-B-Y-X AS SOON as you open the game. Before the title screen shows.

[@cgwworldministries83]

​@@IzzyAusetyeah it wasn't hard, you'd delete your data but your game would work fine after.

[@williamdrum9899]

​@@RockYoMomsWorld Even before the title screen loads, there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

[@Khaelis]

I was a victim of getting seeded on Wild World years ago. Luckily, I had a friend online who walked me through editing my savefile via the PC method so I was able to restore the cartridge a few years ago (there's more context in comments lol)

[@wessltov]

I would consider myself fairly tech-savvy, but I have no clue how that friend managed to undo your seeding. Glad your issue could be fixed without any expensive procedure

[@nickforgie4290]

My best guess was that your friend might have been a game miner.

[@Khaelis]

@@wessltov He just walked me through editing my savefile on my pc, maybe tech-savvy was not the best choice of words

[@KopperNeoman]

@@Khaelis The largest barrier to entry is dumping your save in the first place.

[@duplicake4054]

Did you have to buy a dumping tool?

[@theengineer-dellconagher]

"permanently bricked" so true

[@tuffee]

he jus like me fr

[@elainaTG]

Thank you for your wise words engineer from tf2

[@sh1eldo7]

so real

[@Hunter-R.]

Perhaps I selected a poor combination of words… 😭

[@sh1eldo7]

@@Hunter-R. hi hunter

[@ross3695_basedhax]

Animal Crossing GC: paper airplanes that corrupt your acres Wild World: seeds that brick your entire cartridge Every game after WW: Brick someone's entire console with remote code execution

[@borby4584]

Wait did New Leaf have that??

[@ross3695_basedhax]

@@borby4584 Yep The vulnerability was first discovered in Mario Kart Wii in 2018 and was quickly fixed by MrBean35000vr, Chadderz, Wiimm and Leseratte. It was later found in other Wii games, including Animal Crossing. They blocked access for outdated versions of the patcher, and MKW got an updated payload upon connecting The fire continued to spread to 3DS, Wii U and even Nintendo Switch games, they reported the bug to Nintendo to eventually fix in their current games It was capable of taking full control of the system remotely, and was possible to brick an entire lobby of consoles

[@SeanGonzalezMDHEXT]

​@@borby4584 iirc, yes. Wii was just because of a quirk of how NWC worked. New Leaf was because of a quirk of how New Leaf itself worked.

[@charleswillhite5375]

@@SeanGonzalezMDHEXT What about New Horizons?

[@KopperNeoman]

@@SeanGonzalezMDHEXT Being able to RCE in these games and escape their sandboxes also indicates a problem with the operating system's security hypervisor. RCE is also possible in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, but you can't hack a 360 with it. (The Wii and 3DS... do not have the most solid hypervisors) If the OS was working properly, the most you would be able to do is modify the player's save file or make him start playing Tetris instead or something, assuming no ASLR. With ASLR, crashing the game is the best you can really hope for.

[@DespOIcito]

Every time I hear people talk about the seeding issue and being able to brick towns, I get so thankful I was way too young to know of WW forums when I played that game as a kid. I couldn't imagine being a child and getting your game destroyed by some asshole online

[@pokeninjafireemblem]

Amen to that, one of the only good things about not having internet at home in the mid-2000s. Granted, this also meant that I never got Nookingtons, but c'est la vie

[@Ad-im1ne]

Notice how nobody in the comments is admitting to seeding anyone else haha. How things have changed

[@NeoNovastar]

same here. I luckily only played with local friends (which honestly was such a fun and nice experience)

[@unoriginalusername1748]

Luckily I had a few friends on my block that I could connect with, so I never even knew about seeding.

[@guiclick]

Right?! I only learned about it semi-recently and I was so stunned, I had no idea something so awful could happen to anyone's game. It's such a shame that something like that must've really held Wild World's community back.

[@MrMegaManFan]

A friend who is no longer around :( used to take great pride in showing me his town full of seed hacks, but he only manipulated his own game, never mine. I just remember I'd visit his town like "BRO WTF" and he'd just cackle at how dumbfounded I was at how overloaded his town had become. Thanks for the trip down memory lane Hunter -- miss you Smeghead (that was his nickname) now and always.

[@cadenhi]

what happened to him if you don’t mind me asking

[@KopperNeoman]

A Red Dwarf fan, huh?

[@ParkBarrington360]

@@cadenhi my guess is the Man Upstairs dragged them kicking and screaming to those pearly gates

[@derpboxstudios]

@@ParkBarrington360 both of them said "he" twice, dude

[@KoKoKen]

"miss you Smeghead" was so raw, rest easy.

[@tothejazz4828]

haha i tragically did this to my own wild world town after using one of the seeds to delete all the weeds from my entire town... which translates to me having spawned like 8000 fucking post offices everywhere lmao

[@CiromBreeze]

Oh NO that's the WORST thing you could have spawned

[@xXxmlg_vacxXx]

@@CiromBreeze no it isn’t. It is the museum.

[@darthgamer9861]

I used to use a code that would transform all the weeds into 64,000 bell bags

[@CiromBreeze]

@@darthgamer9861 I always felt that the Weeds to Bells code was strange. Considering you can just spawn Bells whenever you wanted anyway, what was the point in turning all the weeds into bells? Now you just need to do inventory management when picking them up, making it take even slower than picking up weeds normally. Easier to just replace the weeds with air, and then just.. spawn in money.

[@strakhovandrri]

​@@CiromBreezeweeding your garden by picking bags of money from dirt sounds cool.

[@sunshinegamer1999]

omg i was a forum regular on animal crossing community back in the wild world, city folk, and new leaf days 😭 did NOT expect to get nostalgia punched by those memories LOL

[@raptorgator]

Me too! 😭😭🙏🏻

[@LizU]

fyi You can also erase the bricked save by using tools on a modded 3ds. That's actually how I managed to fix my copy of Wild World! For whatever reason my action replay cart just didn't connect to the laptop after a few years, so I had to wait a VERY long time just to fix it since at the time I had no idea how to mod my dsi.

[@9silenthill]

OMG THANK U SO MUCH I JUST FIXED MY WW SAVE FILE FROM WHEN I WAS LITTLE I HAD NO IDEA U COULD USE 3DS

[@neoqwerty]

You could also use an AR Code entered manually on your ARDS. The Brick Seed Removal code usually worked but there was a Delete All code, too, to enter at the black screen if it bricks after the Nintendo logo.

[@malick9549]

@@9silenthill you can also use a DSi if you happen to own one, they're much cheaper than 3ds too so they're "great" for dealing with this lmao

[@LizU]

@@neoqwerty I believe I did actually try that as a final resort, but for some reason it didn’t work. I definitely think it no longer connecting to the program on my laptop is related to why the code didn’t work somehow. Unfortunately I don’t think I have that cart anymore so I can’t investigate why nothing worked for me years ago :(

[@joemck85]

There wasn't any serious DSi modding until after 3DS modding was commonplace. Not enough people cared about it, because so much DSiWare was either shovelware or stripped down versions of DS cartridge games, so few games actually needed DSi mode, and DS games could already be run very easily with an R4 card. It should be possible to fix a WW save using a DS (original or Lite, not DSi) and an R4 card btw. You'd use nds-savegame-manager, which requires a working local wifi connection and FTP server software though. It's way easier with a 3DS though since the Checkpoint homebrew app can just backup and restore save files between cartridges and the console SD card.

[@lijnk]

Regarding seeding, I believe another reason why a lot of people weren't looking at unbricking their systems is because the communities (ACC included) had rules against talking about it in fear of spreading the issue. This meant threads asking for help in unbricking their systems also got closed, so nobody got help unless they happened to know someone or know how the tools worked. While the seeding issue sucked, there was also a scene of people customizing their town with map editors and made a lot of really cool stuff to show off to visitors who wanted to come by.

[@ngwoo]

Yeah I got banned for helping people unbrick their systems. The Animal Crossing community handled this whole thing in the worst way possible. You weren't even allowed to warn people about the possibility of it happening on some forums.

[@KopperNeoman]

"Stop talking about the problem, you Far Right Conspiracy Theorist!" ...Sounds very familiar.

[@ngwoo]

@@KopperNeoman what in god's name are you talking about

[@neoqwerty]

@@KopperNeoman Go back to 4chan you weirdo.

[@neoqwerty]

@@ngwoo I think the only places that reacted sanely to this were GameFAQs and Animal Crossing Ahead, right? GameFAQs frowned on using seeds but the Brick Seed Removal and Delete Everything codes were pretty much everywhere (and people used to encourage each other to get an AR DS to fix it).

[@GloomyFish]

I have a weird anecdote about the seeding plague. It never happened to me since i wasn't ever able to get my DS connected to my wifi. But one day my cousin, who also could never get her DS connected online, had been reading some stuff about the game online and reported it back to me. In hindsight, it's obvious that she didn't fully understand the context of what she read, so it came back like this: "did you know there's a secret character in the game called The Hacker who puts rocks outside your house so you can't play again?" Neither of us were really aware of Action Replay, or the technicalities of the game (we were like 10 and 13 respectively) so we just kind of came to the conclusion that it was Resetti who did it if we reset too much we invented our own playground rumour between us, it was like our own personal Brutus lmao

[@TimeTravelingFetus]

This must be the work of the infamous hacker known as 4chan

[@tzarg]

@@TimeTravelingFetus man I love that video, so funny.

[@RilGames.]

4:12 Reminds me of a similar brick method where in Age of Empires: Age of Kings DS, if you were to name your Empire name something under 4 letter it just bricks the game cart completely. After the bug was found out they then started bundling the game with a slip of paper telling you to not name your empire under 4 characters or you may experience "Loss of data".

[@snivehndraegonz7389]

did anyone ever explain why that crash happens?

[@ragcat3732]

@@snivehndraegonz7389 closest explanation I could find was this reddit comment: “The DS is older than people realize, they had to write games in c++. I bet they had a the saved file name write to some memory address that was also used for something else critical to the game launching. If the saved file name wasn't long enough, it wouldn't clear out the old data, which would allow it to either run some function it shouldn't, or cause a memory leak.” From ThrowAwayArchwolfg Not sure how true it is but maybe it’ll give you some kind of clue.

[@YEs69th420]

That's fascinating, do we have any idea why that happened?

[@williamdrum9899]

That's so weird. Usually these things happen when a string of text is too long, not too short

[@RadeonVega64]

​@@YEs69th420idk

[@HamiGirl1]

this really takes me back!!! i remember being excited when my mom said we were getting wifi (which she pronounced something like "wiffy" lol) because i knew animal crossing wild world could use it, and I could finally connect with other people that played. I had a lot of fun for the majority of the time, but i did have my experience getting my game seeded a few times lol. one person dropped a house seed in front of my gate - in what i assume was probably an attempt to block my gate, but there was enough space between that I could still access the gate. i just had an annoyingly large mansion house seed "teleport" in front of the gate for a long time, since entering put you in your regular house, and exiting would put me back outside my normal one. then, a different stranger i connected with actually succeeded in blocking off my gate. they came in, dropped rocks similar to what you showed at 6:12 and i CRIED because I didn't know what to do. thankfully, there was a helpful mod on one of the forums i frequented, and they were able to walk me through getting rid of the rocks with action replay (which i got my mom to get for me at gamestop to help the issue lol). i don't remember the actual process, but I was forever grateful that it worked and I could use my gate again. i think they also ended up coming to my town and getting rid of the second house. I think the second hacker was even part of some "hacker clan" or whatever on one of the forums - they had some uniform and everything lol. I think they dressed their characters in the hockey mask and the rainbow feather? that didn't stop me from connecting with strangers online lol, but I was maybe a LITTLE more cautious after that. i think.

[@FoxBlocksHere]

Kudos to your mom for getting that Action Replay for you. My parents probably would've just told me to deal with it. lol

[@jacobg8640]

I hate how trolls think it's funny to literally destroy other player's saves, cartridges, and even systems. They don't get money, they don't get to be there to taste their tears, they just know someone they don't know will suffer at one point. These are legit psychopaths

[@improvisedchaos8904]

I ran an "anti-seeding clan" called "NCF" aka, "necropolis force". We would fix the games of those who were seeded and could manage to open their gates. There were a few rival clans who seeded games (cr00ks and clouds). We would brick their games with action replays, they learnt how to do that as well. The bricking of the ds was accomplished by a player who was a member of ncf named "demonic". He and a few others (i had the privilege of being first to know) were given access to the hack. It needed to be ran on an R4- and it involved modifying the map with hacked ocean tiles. There was maybe 40-60 ds systems that were bricked: as far as I know, it didn't leak to the seeder clans. My username was Slade with a tear emote on each side.

[@WulfilaBelmont]

I vaguely remember Demonic. Did he have a partner named Goddess? One of my siblings was friends with them. I didn't play online because of the seeding issues.

[@improvisedchaos8904]

@@WulfilaBelmont maaaan. Really making me think back. Goddess sounds really familiar, I'm not 100% sure on that; but I really wanna say that it's a small world, and we have a loose connection there. The e-dating thing was pretty common lol, I almost think we might have known the same person- it was so long ago. Demonic was a smart kid. His name was not spelled with conventional English letters- but was easily recognized as "Demonic". I wish I would have kept in contact with him; I might have his old email still. I managed to keep in touch with some friends I made in game for years after we stopped playing. I think we had met through the friend code sharing forum; after the hack came out- there was a notice on the forum to no longer allow advertising "anti seeding" as well. We would just make alts and kept pushing our flag as means of communicating alliance and anti-seeding services.

[@TrialzGTAS]

Crooks is a throwback. I was on Friendcodes as a kid trying to combat and warn about them.

[@Knivesisi]

Hunter: “Surely nothing could go wrong” Wild World: “Hold my beer, and don’t call me Shirley”

[@Ad-im1ne]

I once got seeded in the weirdest way... Someone dropped an invisible 'blank' object in some random spot in my house. So I just had one or two squares I could never place anything on :/ Wish I had waited before restarting. Had a lot of memories from that town, and it could've been fixed today.

[@TeraunceFoaloke]

Someone tried to give you some Red Tulips.

[@DrWiley-fm3ik]

Yo fun fact! You can actually fix a bricked wild world cart completely vanilla by resetting the date on your DS to January 1st 2001. I don't know why this works, but it does. It allows you to get to the point where you can delete the town and make a fresh one to start playing again. Doesn't truly fix the seeded town, but your cart doesn't get ruined

[@williamdrum9899]

Which is funny because the DS wasn't for sale until 2004

[@HollowAshes747]

The fact that action replays were so easy to get 😭 I thought it was a game as a kid and asked my dad to get it for me when we were at Walmart so imagine my surprise when I found out what it actually did lol

[@nickolaswilcox425]

its not just japanese events that were lost this way, some european ones too, theres a distribution cart used in some of the later nintendo zone consoles that connected to a server for its actual distro contents, well all of thats gone now and the carts are bricks

[@thatoneperson689]

can you name some off the top of your head? i would love to read more about it

[@nickolaswilcox425]

@@thatoneperson689 unfortunately i dont know, i only know of the distro software that it was downloaded through, ive actually got japanese and european copies of it but the fact that this cart existed for europe and japan but not north america and the japanese one is missing most of its content indicates that its not just japan missing events edit: something else to note is that there are only something like seven european distro carts, vs the 20? na got and the zero japan got. so europe started with the western local storage distro system and shifted to the eastern remote storage system fairly early. the best buy and future shop carts are the closest to that we ever got and those are still basically local self contained

[@はまピラス]

Boy I remember using a letter glitch. Summoning UFO, getting infinity money...good times.

[@ChaosUnown]

I had a friend I met through AXA forums, he was actually a nice coder! He had a seed for a player house that he offered to drop onto my beach so it seemed like I had a beach home! Sadly every time I entered and exited it, I would exit through the primary home. Still it was pretty wild! Thank you for going into the details of this!

[@CiromBreeze]

Oh heck, AXA! That's a site I haven't heard about in ages!

[@ChaosUnown]

@@CiromBreeze I owe a lot to AXA for it being the source of my first online gaming interactions.

[@Luigiofthegods]

"How do I evolve Eevee into a Ghost-type?" The thumbnail:

[@kiwipomegranate]

Nah, after seeing… that post™, I'd expect it to be water-type

[@toastersimp5298]

When I was a kid I had a copy of wild world that was super prone to randomly crashing. It didn’t care if you just caught a sunfish on the long drive home from a camping trip it’s crash time I almost broke my dsi for that one. And you can bet Resetti was tired of seeing me. But I still loved that game immensely. Rest in peace to my childhood copy. You kept me on my toes in the worst way possible

[@pajammin8212]

Sorry late comment, but sadly the game is infamous for that.

[@CiromBreeze]

I was all over Wild World's multiplayer (especially on Animal Crossing Community) when I was a tween, even when seeding groups like Th3 Cr00kz were about. I even got an Action Replay device for myself to help de-seed peoples' towns, even having to convert some US codes to EU. There was a trick I did: locally replacing the seeded block on my end with air, and then burying a legitimate item (like a pitfall seed or sapling) on the same block that the seed was on host-side, so it would sync.

[@Drawsbirds]

Oh my God, th3 cr00kz. I remember that seeding group and was active on ACC and a Wetpaint wiki about helping players deal with them. Blast from the past.

[@raptorgator]

Omg. Was that what they were called? I can't remember but I was trying to. I remember the l33t speech though in their name. I remember I'm sure they tried to hack ACC or something... 😅 I often wonder what they must be doing now

[@McLeakyAlwaysWatches]

I was actually a victim of Th3 Cr00kz, one of their members who was close to the groups leader, Zodiak, had bricked my new save, after I, like a dumbass, accidentally bricked myself while playing with friends. I would sell some of the rare accessible furniture items on ACC, think like the villager moving boxes or things like that, but due to my dumbass younger self I stopped messing with seeds entirely due to paranoia of having my game bricked. In total I was targeted a total of three-four times by either the Cr00ks or rouge hackers/seeders, one destroyed my OG DS, another with 2nd, my game cart, and a third resulted in just a start over, AFTER a start over. Whats crazy is I'm pretty sure Zodiak's videos of him and their group harassing and seeding people are still on YT under the same channel. I dont remember the channel name, but I know they are still up. I would definitely like to see someone do a deep dive video onto the group and the more malicious actors who abused seeding. I often wonder if it was just other kids similar age group I was, or older teens/adults? Either way, they did cause a substantial amount of property damage to both the cartridges and devices, and considering really there was at least victims in the hundreds, they probably did a thousand or two worth of property damage. I remember one of the times I was and I asked the dude why, he said some cringe ass shit that made my mom gasp, I cant remember the full thing but I do remember it was some kind of anarchist/shock value thing about kids being easy targets.

[@dominicus9891]

Technically, a patch for a DS game isn't impossible. Although the ROM itself is read-only, there's rewritable nandflash which holds the save file. So in the same way that you could receive gifts from Nintendo's servers, you could also (in theory) receive patches - they would just be patched *on-top of* the main game, *not in-place of*. The only real limitation to this would be the size of the rewriteable portion of a DS game - it's possible that some patches wouldn't leave enough room for the save file. However, a patch like you suggested, to just check the inventory, could probably have worked. Even if, for whatever reason, it couldn't be downloaded locally - Nintendo's servers could read your inventory data and check for invalid items. Your content perfectly matches my niche of interests, by the way, keep up the good work.

[@KopperNeoman]

This is how patching of any ROM-based game works, including on the Switch. The operating system loads the patch data first, and only seeks files from the ROM if they're missing from the patch data. The problems with implementing this on the DS: 1) Logistics. You'd need a rewritable chip to save the patch to. 2) Implementation. The DS itself doesn't support this kind of patching, so it will need to be done either in cartridge hardware or game software. This will also need to be implemented ahead of time. There is an alternative that some games used - Ratchet and Clank 3 did this, in fact - Remote Code Execution. Yes. The developers, using official servers, could execute an RCE attack on their own game when you connect it to the server and use that attack to push a hotpatch. (In R&C3's case, this was done by attacking the MotD with a buffer overflow) This requires specific circumstances to work, but is also used today for unpatched versions of Mario Kart Wii for example.

[@SgvSth]

As a follow-up on that last sentence, Nintendo accidently banned all Legendary Pokémon from the GTS in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl for part of a day.

[@KopperNeoman]

@@SgvSth That's server-side. Completely different. All you need to do is return an error code to the client.

[@SgvSth]

@@KopperNeoman ? How is that completely different? The servers checked if you were trying to deposit a Legendary Pokémon, or in other words, the servers were checking the content of what was being submitted.

[@malick9549]

The 3ds supports rom hacking via layeredfs, and that's just patching the game on the go(that's how you usually randomize pokemon games for example) and that'd be the "easiest" thing I could think of but it would require homebrew, I think it would also be possible because SD->DS cartridge slot interaction is ofc already possible so maybe you could have a patch file, and "patch" the game via an homebrew app on the go, yes the 3ds is largely different than the DS but luckily the DSi does have an SD card slot and it's able to be homebrewed. But I'm no expert.

[@AraleNorimaki-b1c]

I seeded my town using Action Replay, and it would take until 2015 when I got a 3DS, that I'd be able to back up my save and remove the extra houses I had placed.

[@strawberrycollector]

It's funny you showcased the Red Tulips in a room with the Mario set, when I got them I placed them in a room with that very same set.

[@bigchungus7870]

"It could become permanently bricked if the owner was a victim of seeding" this is crazy to think that you could become permanently bricked with enough seed.

[@KopperNeoman]

Game loads save, RAM overflows, game crashes, never gets to title screen.

[@dollarsignmexican]

I'm bricked up rn all that talk of seed😊

[@Alternatevil]

oi

[@ilikevideogames4331]

​@@KopperNeoman Overflows you say?

[@stacy__fakename]

👉👈

[@comfy39]

Wild World was a life changing game. I remember using an Action Replay and ruining my first town 😢

[@wiley2592]

same

[@raptorgator]

Going mad with power 😂

[@enderbo]

he finally broke out of the gamecube

[@officalcassiopeia]

He did an AC:NL video once though.

[@radgoodcoffee]

there was a new leaf video about dream towns a few weeks ago

[@istaffa]

Another way to fix a broken save file crashing on startup is using a modded 3ds with luma + godmode9. Using godmode9 you can extract the save file to edit it or delete it from the cartridge.

[@Artoriandaraisin]

I freaking love hacking my 3ds. Ps: play pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky.

[@TheYoxiz]

i'm so happy that you talked about the letter glitch from this game! my friend uses it for speedrun and i was impressed that there was so little documentation about it, despite it being a pretty massive and cool glitch

[@aidegarespeedrun]

salut bg

[@doctorbezier6561]

I didn't believe the "hold buttons to delete save data" thing so I tried it out. It turns out it works on Smash 3DS too! I'm guessing this was put in all mainline Nintendo games that support online.

[@AlexTenThousand]

Wild World was my introduction to the series in Christmas 2006, and I've played almost every entry, save for New Horizons, due to not being able to afford a Switch. It's special seeing one of the few Animal Crossing-focused channels discussing its quirks and peculiarities.

[@jeffffff]

yessss I was doing this stuff when I was like 9 or 10 years old! I'm 28 now haha. I had an online friend from the ACC that had an action replay and he would give me hacked items. Eventually I got my own. Something that I remember was that the AR that could dump save files for map editing was different than the regular one that you showed in the video. From a quick google it was the Action Replay Max GBA/DS.

[@raptorgator]

Was it Animal Map?

[@jeremysmai]

oh this brought me back, loved hosting my town for 99,000 bell giveaways or rare items. This game was the reason I got Wifi

[@Professor_Utonium_]

You didn't have internet prior to Wild World?

[@jeremysmai]

@@Professor_Utonium_ besides a laptop at the time not many things demanded wireless. We had a hardwired only connection and it was DSL lol

[@Professor_Utonium_]

@@jeremysmai Oh, gotcha. I guess I assumed most people were on wireless connections back then. I know growing up, we got rid of the ethernet as soon as the option was available lol It's funny, because now I run cable for everything these days

[@blackhawk65589]

​@@Professor_Utonium_ You have to remember that wifi was a new thing around the DS launch. Most people had either dialup or wired DSL. My family just got DSL in '05 with a fancy antenna that stuck out the back

[@homesteadhero]

Y'all do SUCH a phenomenal job of educating us on topics and oddities I have somehow - despite being a hardcore AC fan for well over a decade now - never once heard about. This was utterly fascinating and I hope there's more to come for this and the other games in this series!

[@YoshiKecleon978]

Man, pretty nostalgic as I used to play this all the time back in the 2000s. Seeding was quite the nuisance when used maliciously! Thank you for making such informative videos about the Animal Crossing games! 😊

[@wessltov]

Aren't there laws against malicious seedings (or attempts to do it)?

[@robotortoise]

Some offhand tidbits about the Animal Crossing games I remember that haven't been covered by you yet: I remember reading an article in Nintendo Power(?) that mentioned how either Wild World or City Folk had items that were downloaded over Wi-Fi rather than being baked in the game data itself. Supposedly, this would allow for unique items that relate to items after CF had launched. I believe you mentioned this in your prior video about CF, but you didn't go much into depth about the file type, limitations, etc. I'm curious if this was preserved for future releases, too - as far as I can tell, New Horizons was just patched to add in items the software update way. Another thing I remember is that Animal Crossing New Leaf (and presumably other versions) region-exclusive events and items are all *fully translated*. For instance, if I as an American player go to a Japanese player's town during a Japanese holiday, I'll be able to view all the dialogue in my language and vice-versa. That's absolutely INSANE! Can you fathom translating and localizing so much dialogue for something people probably would never see? It must be in the tens of thousands of words. The final weird thing I remember is that you could cheat the system. Even if events like the 7-11 events were Japan exclusive, they still worked in US copies of the game. And all you had to do to get the items was rename your access point. For whatever reason, Nintendo Zones and New Leaf based the items it gave you off your wifi AP name and nothing else. Personally, i set my home wifi as a Nintendo Zone and I remember using it for months and months. Anyway, I am sure you know all of the above, but perhaps hearing them listed will remind/inspire you to make note them in a video. PS. Thanks for the empathy on my last comment, btw! I mentioned offhand how I wasn't doing so hot, and I was surprised you genuinely empathized. Personally, I am doing much better now - I got an excellent job in IT and have helped produce a short visual novel! So, thanks for your excellently-produced and fun whilst informative videos, and I hope you have a great weekend!

[@Hunter-R.]

Hello! First off, I’m super glad to hear you’ve been doing well! Trust me, while I’m mostly lighthearted and relaxed in my presentation, I am also still human and have gone through numerous periods of dark times myself. Getting through such times is no joke, so it’s awesome to hear about your job and improvement. Regarding your Animal Crossing points, I agree that all of these are super interesting and worth talking about. I already have plans to cover the City Folk DLC items, which have thankfully been preserved online. New Leaf’s regional items also had to be fully translated and functioning across all versions since the game has no region-lock on town visitors. So, if you wanted, you could visit a Japanese friend and have them drop you their regional items, which I suppose encouraged worldwide trading in a way. The Nintendo Zone hotspot validation is a funny one, and I’ve heard reports that it worked that way! I’d need to look into it further, but it is super interesting. Thanks again for the comment and for being a returning viewer! Hope you also have a great weekend. 🙂

[@robotortoise]

I gave a response to this but I think it was caught by the spam filter, as I included a link to the source!

[@LilyKittyCatto]

This game was my introduction to the series. It holds a special place in my heart. So many memories as a young kid unable to sleep and feeling lonely at night being so happy to see a villager who stayed up past midnight and id talk to them a lot, made me feel better. This game was just so amazing

[@SenpapiiChuloo]

I rarely see anyone talking about code related to Nintendo games in the way that you do, essentially not for Animal Crossing! Your videos are amazing, can't wait till the next upload!

[@dinckelman]

At least these cartridges should be easily recoverable on a regular 3DS now. Godmode is an incredible piece of software. Great video though! Very interesting

[@ross3695_basedhax]

Hunter's videos go from cute animals and gameboys to DESTROYING THE GODDAMN UNIVERSE

[@justyourbud]

I never had a regular DS nor a copy of this game. I grew up with City Folk. I only first played WW more recently after doing totally legal things to my 3DS. My only real memories of this game in my childhood were a really really niche let’s play series I found on KZbin, one of the first things I ever discovered on my own on this platform. So despite not having much from this game of my own to share, I’m still heavily nostalgic for it. Nice to see a video covering it from you!

[@llshinda9508]

I've been replaying WW recently and I noticed that it's relatively hard to find detailed (and reliable) coverage on its mechanics so I'm all for looking into it more 👍

[@kinggacha7274]

I never played WW online, but I remember reading about the seeding issues online at the time. Definitely scary enough to make me glad I didn't play online! ^^'

[@cecillewolters1995]

I miss my action replay, it extended the life of a lot of games and brought a lot of good memories

[@KopperNeoman]

Nowadays, there's software implementations of the same features, like NitroHax.

[@AlexWasTaken-]

This also happened in Animal Crossing New Leaf online when you visited a town. Although, players would use rotten rafflesias to block the exit of important buildings, leading to the player being forced to restart their town. Not to mention you could copy the others towns with Vapecord and impersonate the person. You should make a serie with that it's pretty interesting.

[@actiol]

thank you so much for making these videos. this is exactly what i wanna see :3 also this channel with its hyperfixation on on specific game and going technologically in-depth relly reminds me of mattkc with lego island

[@ack_]

Just love this style of videos, it's so unique and interesting. I'm a software engineer and I love seeing this kind of techincal details applied to games I played in my childhood :)

[@Quinta556]

First week of college classes down and I get treated with this video!? Thank you!!!

[@Fixti0n]

This was my first videogame ever. I have spend so many hours in my town and is the reason why i like videogames. This gives me so much nostalgia.

[@MrDSkinny]

Thank you for making this video! I remember asking for some WW content a while back because i knew there was barely any indepth coverage of the madness that went on in this game

[@palmtopturtle]

This makes me nostalgic for my old ACC buddies. Brenda and Avery, if you're out there I miss you guys! - Puff

[@The_D_ray]

Very interesting video. I'm not even into Animal Crossing, but I love the DS era and the charm it has, especially with it's jankiness and quircks.

[@BierBart12]

People made some really cool custom maps with these cheats. I remember playing a horror town that was genuinely creepy Don't see enough people talk about the creative, harmless ways people used hacking. Would love to see a vid about it

[@scrunkykat]

this is why i love ur channel so much. u get such a fun mixture of seeing how the community mingles in with the weird glitches of these games, and thats rly cool to see :] thanks so much as always

[@Link4750]

I'm a big fan of the idea of visiting the other games in the series. I do hold the GameCube game in a special place in my heart, but I've played all of the games for potentially 1000s of hours together, so naturally I'd love to see more!

[@brockb0tt0m]

not a coder, just a huge Animal Crossing fan, and let me tell you- your videos are my favorite Animal Crossing ones to watch! It feels like I’m learning a bunch of secrets and fun facts! It also just warms my heart that so many people care enough to still play around with the code of this game. Just wanted to say it makes me SO happy!!!

[@sven]

5:00 had this happen to my own copy of acww,becasue dumb eleven old me wanted so many buildings in his town. luckly a few years ago i could delete the savefile via homebrew

[@RandomFilipina]

i'll never forget how hard i cried as a kid when some strangers bricked my town 💀 screamed and ran to my mom just bawling my eyes out lmao

[@kimzee59]

I think this is the earliest I've ever been recommended a video from a channel I've never heard of. I'm definitely checking out other videos

[@FroggyNight]

I remember in the peak of popularity for this game I was part of a helping group. We would offer our services for bells. And then visit towns to perform the work. We did weed pulling, fruit picking, rock destroying or bell collecting, fishing, basically any grind work you didn’t want to do. We even had a few people who were great at pixel art so they’d sell patterns for clothes and wallpaper/flooring.

[@Lim_]

ACWW has a special place in my heart, thanks for making this vid!

[@smellanor]

Loving these videos!!! I appreciate the amount of research that must go into these as some of the information you're providing is scarcely documented nowadays! A core memory of mine was being absolutely terrified of the hacking groups that frequented the ACC forums back when AC:WW was the most recent entry, they had to implement a "rating"/review system of sorts to ensure that forum users were trustworthy enough to play with!

[@HowPettyful]

Not gonna lie, Animal Crossing as a game doesn't do much for me once I'm playing it. But I love learning about it through you, keep up the awesome content.

[@nathanryan12]

Wild world was such a cool and unique game. One of my top favourite DS games.

[@LinklightGaming]

i remember having an action replay and bricking my own cartridge by trying to customize my town. i made custom pathways with rocks and wanted one of each tom nook store in a shopping mall in my town. little did i know i was playing with fire LOL

[@Kentanimationnnnnnnnn]

you could say... it's a wild world

[@DJNX4995]

I used action replay a ton growing up. Had so many gulliver ships and the next day they’d all turn into a sign board

[@annemabrie2287]

I have 0 knowledge in terms of how games are programmed or how they even function, yet your videos break it down so clearly and are entertaining to watch too! Keep it up!

[@Chloemew]

I remember a lot of people back then who traded online would set up “barriers” around their entrance gates, using patterns placed on the ground, solely to try and prevent the seeding issue 😆 The idea was that if the visitor stepped outside of the designated area, then the host would stop the session. I don’t know how much it would have prevented people from just dropping the seeded items within the “barrier” in front of the gates though. I remember doing the barrier thing myself and luckily never ran into anyone malicious.

[@blackhawk65589]

I used to run a "group" to help people with seeders on the animal crossing community forums. Seeders were a huge concern back then! Great video!

[@Following1000]

This truly was an Animal Crossing: Wild World Scary stuff, between Dream Suites and Seeding it seems the AC games can't resist having some town (or in this case; game) breaking glitch attached to them.

[@360Spider]

Animal Crossing Map Editor is how I used to do it, but it required an AR Max Duo GBA/DS to extract/write the save from the EEPROM. Could get literally any item and modify your map however you wanted. Personally I never messed up anyone’s towns though… but i see what was meant now when people said they got hacked. Actually it’s easily fixable with the AR Duo and the editor program.

[@AllieStrange]

Yeah, I remember back then on trading forums and gamefaqs there were safe list for people that had traded before without issues as a way to help know you weren't gonna get seeded or have them run around cutting down tree and stuff.

[@heartthepuppetqueen3027]

I remember an incident in my New Leaf town. A hacker in my friends list placed flowers with rock properties while we were hanging out online and I wasn't too hapoy about that. So I hacked my 2DS and got rid of them myself manually.

[@Lunascaped]

Wild world video let's go!!!

[@Yes_lawl]

This video is very interesting! I love Animal Crossing Wild World and I played it ever since I was a kid. I also cried if my villagers would move away if I liked them a lot. My favourite animal is Wolfgang.

[@glitchygamergirl1826]

I hadn't ever heard about seeds, or seeding, or anything like that. And since I never was allowed to do anything online when I played, and honestly never had a reason that I could think of, I never came across this, but I feel like younger me would be absolutely terrified if my town was overwhelmed with copies of buildings. I still have my 2DS (what I used to play) and I love it, so I can't imagine losing it to bricking, same with my copy of WW. But as an adult I think coming across something like this and being able to see how it all works because it sounds cool.

[@Tomsonic41]

I was genuinely scared of the bricking/seeding issue and for a long time, did not even go online at all with Wild World. This means I couldn't get the final version of Nooks, as you need someone to come in and buy from your store to unlock it. Eventually I did start going to other people's towns, but my town was completely off-limits to everyone unless I knew them in real life!

[@DerpedCrusader]

I love the way you explain these things, I'm excited to see you cover other animal crossing stuff, or even other game series down the line!

[@ADAMXL]

Itd be super cool to see a new leaf video discussing glitches and such, especially those in Japanese 1.0 copies

[@DarkDax]

Just wanted to say that your videos have such a chill vibe and filled with so much interesting info I never knew about my favourite childhood games. Keep it up!

[@PaperYosh975]

More Animal Crossing content for me to consume, I am happy

[@novelezra]

I played this game for literal hours. Just hearing the music is enough to take me back to those exact moments sat in bed at 1am fishing. Then I gave the game to my girlfriend at the time and they played it for hours and hours. I finally got the game back but I can't bring myself to play it. It's like an abandoned museum of my life at that exact point in time. The band's I liked and God knows what else. I remember I even called my town Saddle.C which is short for Saddle Creek Records (my favourite record label at the time.)

[@artey6671]

The music adds a lot to the magic, I think.

[@MrGermanpiano]

Animal Crossing Wild World is one of my childhood games. Just looking at it makes me nostalgic. Of course it cannot compete with the modern games, but still...

[@ShadowsWrath4]

I was a benevolent hacker during the Wild World and City Folk days. I'd give away free items and other stuff that normally would be hard to find but also explain what they were and what the easily fixable repercussions were as well. Say for example I had a fossil or fish you wanted. (And I had ALL of them, all stored at the section of the map where the Museum was) I'd explain to the taker of the fossil/fish that while it's a legit item, it doesn't count for the flag registration or actually catching the fish or finding the fossil for the first time. So if they wanted to take it and register it in their museum, they'd still have to catch or obtain it normally for their save file to go back to being 100% legit. Since a lot of people were worried about cheating, I made sure to be up front with my helpful intentions and as well with the downsides. I also had a ton of Royal Crowns outside Nook's Shop which was near Town Hall. They sold for a ton of bells, making upgrading your house far easier. And all this was backed up with at least two save files that reset the town so that nothing was lost after being taken beyond the person's friend code, which could be re-entered anyways. My only worry was crashing the market. But I doubted that'd ever happen with just me at the reigns.

[@Sonickart]

after a bad guy ruined my town placing rocks around my gate and leaving, me not thinking anything of it, force saving upon leaving, i was forever locked out of online play. Im 31 now but remember that day like yesterday in 8th-9th grade summer, I must've been like 14 or 15 or something idk. i was furious and my heart was beating so fast at the thought of my town ruined and all hard work and progress gone. I remember it VIVIDLY. i had 3 people over, the dude left my town and immediately then came back and he was himself locked behind the rocks he had placed himself saying "it's not funny guys, let me in", i was like... wtf are you talking about, i walk over and almost get a heart attack. took me a bit to realize it was that same dude that had just screwed me over, i knew once i turned off my game, i was no longer going to be able to play online, when i called him out, he turned off his game, and made everyone crash and upon restarting my game, my gate had rocks around it and i was locked out of online play for what i thought was permanently, and i was devastated. as a kid i didn't have money and my parents didn't have much either and i felt guilty asking them to buy me something so unnecessary, so it took me many weeks to save up up a dollar per schoolday that my parents would give me to buy snacks at school, that instead of getting snacks, i kept and saved up until i was able to afford an action replay. I then restarted my whole game and cheated to get everything back asap. it was only later i realized I could've removed those rocks, by spawning anything else in their place that was removeable, such as a weed or tree stump just to dig it out, or flowers and just running them over, go in and out of any building, so the rock was replaced by the removeable item, remove it, then reboot. it was through a town editor program that let you create an AR code to activate any changes made you made to the town in the editor. i'd have to recreate the town in the editor, find the exact square on the map grid where the unwanted rock or building was, create a code to spawn flowers around the middle of the unwanted object on the map grid on the exact squares where the object was located, go inside a house or any building, activate the cheat, come out, find the object replaced by flowers, ran over them to kill them, reboot, and the unwanted object was gone. offline in your own town it was as simple as just replacing the unwanted object with whatever else, but the reason that method was necessary online in someone else's town was because upon activating the cheat in someone else's town, the building/object was replaced by flowers was only visible on MY screen, on their screen they'd literally just see me phasing through the unwanted building. destroying the flowers on my screen was the way my game could send a command to THEIR game that something in that spot on the map had been destroyed. in my game, a flower, in their game, a whole ass building. they just needed to walk in and out of any other building to see the change and poof, building gone. this method could've also been exploited by evil people to, instead of seed bombing a town with buildings, you could literally delete all their buildings, never bothered find out wtf would happen if you did that though and had no house to come out of upon starting the game...lol I began to help those who were victims of these malicious seeds, including dealing with unwanted rocks or being littered with extra buildings in unwanted places and removing them from other players' towns even online. I even offered services to undo those things, provided they had access to their online gate to let me in, offered also to willingly relocate buildings, completely redesign their town (such as river routing and bridge placements), and literally just give them any items they wanted and a bunch of bells. inb4 coolstorybro

[@flashypork]

I did not expect this to be such a fascinating video lmao. Extremely well done, man

[@ramhthewatermelon]

Really enjoyed this one! Can't wait to see you talk about City Folk

[@kiwikaiju]

6:49 YOOOO THAT'S MY EXACT DATE OF BIRTH

[@nxtvim2521]

stealinf ur id brb

[@DiotheDino]

I recall vivid memories of the risk you could take by inviting people to your town from forums. There was always the fear you could get seeded. Good times.

[@mrsuperheatran2794]

Back when the game was newer and lively, I remember being on a hit list for seeders... luckily I knew what was going on and I didn't save but it's scary that people were malicious about the game.

[@r2dbk]

12:41 wait, THE Japan Eat????

[@emosquiddy5388]

My reaction too, lol

[@draguladriver]

great video but "permanently bricked" is just too good of a line not to mention

[@ZimaNoMori]

I love the idea of growing buildings via seeds. Good video, btw, even IF Wild World has me bricked (and I have never owned a DS)