Nerd Mentality

Off the Record, Vol. 2 - Super Smash Bros. Melee

Posted August 8th 2005 by James Ondrey.

So you think you know everything there is to know about Melee? Yeah, I did too at one point... that is until I took part in an ultra-competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament hundreds of miles away from my home.

Many of the participants were like me, cocky and confident, not fearing any competition. I figured my 150 plus hours of battling with my friends were more than enough experience to take home the huge cash prize. Boy was I stupid... what a humbling experience that was.

I began to see a whole new side to Melee and I was fascinated. Most of the participants utilized fighting techniques and game glitches that I had no idea existed. I always believed the HAL-developed brawler was the deepest fighting game of this gaming generation, but from then on, I was convinced it was the deepest fighting game ever.

I was equally awestruck that hardly any of what I found so fascinating had been documented, with the exception of small excerpts buried deep inside unknown message boards. I had to share at least some of the coolest secrets and glitches of Melee with the general public, not just a small, segmented population.

But we at N-Philes didn't want to just stop there. We wanted to discover everything there is to know about Melee. Everything. But how could we possibly do it? What if we tinkered with the game's programming code a bit... what discoveries could we unearth? More characters to fight with? More stages to battle in? Nintendo's very own debug menu? Believe it or not — yes, yes and yes.

Feast your eyes on Off the Record - Volume II: Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Debug what?

Chances are every major video game released in the past decade and a half has one, and without it games would take an extraordinary long time to produce. It's called a debug menu — a small program that can easily manipulate game conditions to test and weed-out errors in game code. Without it, developers, game testers and producers would be painstakingly eliminating bugs in the code all the time.

Normally, the menu is specifically designed for only the game's developers to see and utilize. Melee is no exception... but that didn't stop hackers from attempting to find it. Behold, Super Smash Bros. Melee's debug menu!

By precisely manipulating Melee's programming code, users can see this screen pop up upon entering what would be the character select screen. But what does the debug menu allow hackers to access that isn't normally accessible? The answer may perhaps make it one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the console-hacking world... well, for Nintendo fans at least.

Test, modify, regulate

First, take note of the date logged on the top of the debug menu — October 31, 2001. This is most likely the exact date in which the developers made their final changes to the game before it was shipped for release in Japan on November 21 and the United States on December 2 of that same year.

Beneath that lies the main menu itself, which contains a list of options that, when entered, lead to sub-menus. Virtually every variable and scenario created in Melee can be tested and/or modified from the debug menu.

Everything from eliminating the announcer's voice, to testing the "results screen," to adjusting the home-run distance for Yoshi in the Home-Run Contest. That's right, there's a "Global Data Edit" function that allows you to directly manipulate the values corresponding to every single memory address in the game. With a simple switch of a few numbers, the entire trophy collection is yours.

But adjusting the numerical values doesn't do much of anything to those who've unlocked all of the game's bonuses. Actually, other than the ability to show off astronomical statistics in order to leave your friends in absolute bewilderment, it does nothing at all.

We dug deeper.

Continued on page 2 

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