10 Game Discoveries Never Meant to Be Found, Part VI 

That "ARALA" thing could just be a signature of an artist who drew the skybox.

I love that Bluepoint put in a 'final secret' based on all the insane exploration fans had done for Shadow of the Colossus and people still turned around and decided there must be an even more final secret secret.

Using the hamster dance to find bugs sounds both genius and hilarious

I feel like at least some of these are intentionally left in by devs to 'reward' inquisitive data miners with nothing but more unanswered questions

I love when easter eggs can be categorized as an inside joke or a call for help

The church one may be interesting. Here's a translation of the dialogue in the Grand Ages: Medieval clip: "Hey Giovanni, you promised me when the first delivery comes the first payment is mine!" (this character cocks a gun) "The Bishop of Venice has paid the protection money for the whole month, relax, relax!" (this character with a distorted voice has an unmistakable Sicilian accent) ...after this a pigeon or a dove gets whacked ... "Have you heard yet? The new organist comes from Australia! From Australia!" ...Then with every toll of the bell you can hear a rope stretching more and more. ...After that the bell falls. So this is obviously a Mafia story. The bishop of Venice is in the pocket of the mob, but then something happens/time passes (a pigeon dies (??)) And someone has to pay. A new English speaking man comes to the church to play the organ, he says he's Australian. We hear clearly that he can't play the organ. He's probably not from Australia but rather another English speaking country - he's one of those sophisticated gangsters that come from the USA (likely a mafioso too). After his performance, a trap is set, and the bell is set to fall on the bishop's head - he likely wasn't paying his protection money anymore. ...Now here's a theory. This could be a reference to the death of John Paul I, who had been "the Bishop of Venice" before his papacy, and was allegedly killed by an English speaking man: Paul Marcinkus, who had connections with the secret services, freemasonry and mafia. Please note that in the original clip the player hasn't selected just any random church, but rather the church in Venice.

Someone has probably mentioned it already, but the cat model in Drakengard is actually an old Japanese internet meme known as Mona. It's something akin to the old rage comic characters and was commonly portrayed in ascii art form in the early days of image boards like 2channel. It's inclusion makes a bit more sense when you consider Yoko Taro's - and really Cavia's (the developer behind the first two Drakengards) - reputation for trolling the audience.

The GTA V one makes some sense. The game's engine has support for pre-determined traffic paths, and in order to keep the yacht and the cameras synced they are all a part of the same traffic path/animation. As to why they used a semitruck, it's because it's the same one that's carrying the yacht so the script doesn't need to load any more models than it already needs to.

Shadow of the Colossus is just one of those games where it always feels like there is one more mystery lurking somewhere in the game world. It's amazing how dedicated the community has stayed and the sheer amount of knowledge and details they've collected over the years. I'm glad Bluepoint rewarded those players with the remake, even if it was in such a little way. Who knows, maybe there is another secret hidden somewhere, the community sure seems to think so.

imagine finding a whole ass game in a SSB clone based on Shrek of all things

10:53 Honestly, if it is an inside joke by the devs, it would explain why goats are in several of the games they remastered. It would be funnier if Goat Simulator somehow got involved

Fun fact about the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game - it was dubbed in Poland with the Polish host of the show, Hubert Urbański. All of the lines were translated, including the outtakes you were showing, but they were actually implemented this time (though the translated versions of the outtakes didn't have any swears or even bleeps). It was released as "Milionerzy: Edycja imprezowa" (Who Wanys to be a Millionaire is shortened in Poland to just "Millionaires", i.e. "Milionerzy") Haven't played the game in a while and looking for it now, the Polish version seems to be lost to time. Maybe you can find it.

I actually think it's genius to put annoying things like Hamsterdance as your 'something has gone wrong' indicator when testing a game, to make it impossible to slip through the cracks. It's the same reason the default source engine missing texture visual is eye-burning hot pink, to make it as clear as possible when any object isn't being textured properly.

The Rage AI sound is a pretty smart one. Just go around until you here were the problem is blaring back at you. As a person who learned a bit programming, it is refreshing to see smart solutions with less possible effort. It IS the perfect embodiment of the IT people creed to laze and yet to solve at the same time.

I used to play Super Slam so much. You can say it's not memorable but it was insanely fun.

I remember recoil actually. I can explain those files, as in the demo of that game, there was a secret area with a sign that said something like 'No swimming'. If shot and destroyed, those images start to pop up in the water areas of that secret area. If that secret isn't in the full game, it's likely that it was just a demo secret with those images being leftovers.

I promise that if Nomad Colossus hasn't found something in Shadow of the Colossus, then it doesn't exist.

8:17 is most likely taken from a movie about Mafia but i don't know which one. Here is what they say in the full version: Guy: Hey Giovanni you promised me that when the delivery would arrive, the first money (?) would have been mine Giovanni: The bishop of Venice paid me the protection for the whole month, gianguello gianguella (no idea) Someone later: Have you heard, the new Organ player comes from Australia, Australia! No idea which movie is it, why they put it there or why it's distorted

I enjoy that when they added their weird goat joke into the games, they at least made them look ALMOST like something that fit into the game world. Not quite (a bit goofy), but not as immersion-breaking as it'd have been if they had put the full cartoon version in, lol.

5:23 LOL that’s great, “truck cam” taken literally. Love it when a pun is displayed visually! A truck cam is used in cinematography during scenic or action shots, so a dev probably found it funny to literally make them truck cameras.

9:00 it's Italian indeed, it says: "Ehi, Giovanni, tu mi avevi promesso: quando arriva la prima consegna, i soldi, i primi, sono i miei" "Il vescovo di Venezia mi ha pagato la protezione per tutto il mese, tranquillo, tranquillo" Which translates to: "Hey, Giovanni, you promised me that, when the first delivery will come, the money will be mine" "The bishop of Venice paid me for protection for the entire month, don't worry"

Hate to get all "uhm, actually" _but_ A. apparently Shrek Superslam is actually a Power Stone knockoff (hence the isometric view), and B. it actually has a surprisingly big competitive scene, which is seemingly still a thing.

9:27 they are talking about a delivery, and citing Venezia, i guess it's drugs. Rip Giovanni.

For the Recoil easter egg, those are used in the same as part of a nude beach easter egg

Seeing that KH disc being torn to shreds hurt my bones

7:20 that cat model might be based on this really old animation on the internet about a cat in a box singing of an unrequited love. Shii's Song - Wind's Nocturne is the name, after a lot of googling.

Hey @oddheader, that file from Recoil is visible during the first Mission of the game, (this is from memory from my childhood so sorry if it’s not exact) there’s an arena type area during the middle section of the first level, after you disable the towers in this area near the exit you can find 4 spinning red beacon type things-shoot these and you’ll hear a door opening sound effect, turn back towards the center of the map and in one of the underground areas a new path will be open leading you to a nude beach, in which that blurred naked woman appears! Thanks for triggering a core memory for me, would love to see more recoil content🤘🏼 there’s also a hippie bus with a nuke in that first level, I’ll let you find that yourself though

I'm sure the goats blending in was on purpose in case they _were_ actually left in. I'm sure they can just do the equivalent of ctrl f-ing to search for the areas the goat texture was placed, so they don't actually have to go on an easter egg hunt to find where to properly do their job at. Bluepoint do seem to care about the games they work on quite a bit, so it was likely that it was left in on purpose for humor.

Funny you say the Matrix was futuristic for Drakengard. There's a character who is involved in the whole series who is a robot girl with a suitcase whose job is to record timelines. She only shown her face in the 3rd game, but she is mentioned in NieR: Automata, and Yoko Taro said in an interview that she was involved in the first Drakengard and first NieR. Also, that church easter egg got me laughing.

Does it anyone else find it strange that the Horizon easter egg can only be found over the Horizon?

Pretty sure the Horizon one is a developer leaving the name of their partner in the game as a romantic gesture, I've seen it in many other games and the fact that it's super specific to get may mean it was intended to be seen only by that developer in front of their partner

4:39 I can understand using objects to indicate where cameras should be placed and facing, but this is just ridiculous.

It is not quite correct that the Shrek Superslam disc contains the entirety of THUG2 Remix. Only the first 885 MB of the approx. 1.3 GB game file. The only reason a full and playable build exists is because all non-affected data (music and cutscenes) are located at the end of the game files, which happen to be within the truncated ones. Since that build lies between the final US and EU builds, all those files at those locations have been compared. The fact they luckily match made it possible to append the missing sectors to the truncated file on the PS2 disc.

One thing that always confused me about shadow of the colossus is that you can swing your sword, but there is NO purpose to do this at all because anytime you use your sword it's when you are grabbing on to a colossus and stabbing it a singular time. Edit: I only played the ps2 version btw. Don't know if it's also in the remakes.

My heart actually just dropped after you shredded KH2 on the ps2 D: 00:03

7:23 that may be one of the Japanese PlayStation cat mascots, Toro Inoue/Sony Cat. doesn't look exactly the same, but it's very similar.

9:36 thanks people, now I`m resting in peace.

The whole thing with THUG2R being on Super Slam is a whole big thing in the Tony Hawk community, it's a hell of a rabbit hole about Shabba basically being a better TH dev then even Neversoft was at times.

I'm friends with one of the programmers for Shrek Superslam. It has an achievement system ingame, but some of them were really obscure to get. When I asked the programmers for unlock conditions, they couldn't remember and said it's possible some of the achievements were not fully implemented.

7:27 that cat model in Drakegard looks like the anthromorphic cat that was a meme in NicoNicoDouga. Particularly, if you look up Fukkireta by Teto with stubby arms, youll see it in the background.

RECOIL MENTIONED!!!!! HOLY I NEVER EXPECTED THAT ONE also that lady graphic is used in an easter egg in Level 1 Mission 2, if you shoot four little red spinning lights (two at the end of the tunnel at the start of the mission and two at the start of the tunnel at the end of the mission), you open a hidden passage in one of two holes in the ground that are present in that mission area. that passage is a long tunnel that takes you to a destructible door with "NUDE BEACH" written on it. shoot at it and it breaks, allowing you the access to the ladies you mentioned. also there's ammo at the bottom of the water there, you will take damage collecting it but there are also two yellow health items that replenish health fully so it's nbd.

New oddheader vid automatically makes the day better

9:05 it roughly says “when the first delivery arrives…” And Giovanni replies: “…Venice …all month long” wtf

the recoil sprite is an easter egg on one of the levels, theres a nude beach and when you destroy the sign saying it's closed that sprite pops up where the sign was and later in the water.

8:57 SOUNDS LIKE A MOMENT FROM THE GODFATHER ITS PROBABLY NOT BUT THEN AGAIN IT COULD BE 🫣😲

For the GTA trucks, I would guess those correspond to the cinematic camera angles for the mission. Either the trucks were an early implementation where they decided to reuse existing code for the first person driving cam, or perhaps they were a visual aid during development to help the devs block out the camera angles as they developed the mission. Just going off how they are positioned in relation to the chase, as well as how steady they seem to move along the route. EDIT: wow I should have watched literally the next 2 seconds of the video before commenting lmao

Iirc, Neo in Drakengard's files is something really mundane like Cavia (the devs) using the same engine Enter the Matrix was developed on. Though I'd never seen that cat one before! The body looks like an untextured soldier model, so I wonder if it was maybe a test model or just a developer joke.

7:20 That's Monā/モナー, an ascii cat from 2chan. Versions of the cat have been used in a lot of Japanese memes over the years, including the original drawn dance version of Geddan before the Nitori version as well as for many vocaloid songs

Developers really like hiding eerie stuff in their games, huh.

Always a joy to see another oddheader upload! ❤

sometimes i feel like the creators of these games were just going insane.

6:13 it's funnier because I don't know this guy so my brain just thinks of the narrator from the Stanley parable.

7:19 That's mona (モナー), a japanese meme/character made of symbols: 　 ∧＿∧　　 （　´∀｀）

The "Never Meant To Be Found" vids are always the creepiest to me.

8:00 you said "where exactly" but your subtitles said "exactly where". I love how you include your own little easter eggs and secrets in your subtitles for us to find 😀

Sometimes I wonder how much weird and obscure things exist in early versions of modern games that we might never know about because they were patched before anyone found them.

0:53 could be a Magic the Gathering reference. The word backwards says Alara, which is a plane in the MTG world that is full of beasts, kind of just like the Horizon world.

Didn't even know the black shadow sword existed in Shadow of the Colossus. Now if we can just figure out the Ring of the Chieftain in Bluepoint's Demon's Souls remake...

the dialogue in Italian in Grand Ages Medieval goes something like this: "Hey, Giovanni. I promise you, when the first delivery arrives..." "the Bishop from Venice payed my pension for the whole month."

Has anyone tried to shine the dark light sword on the goat symbols yet? I feel like they might have something to do with each other

Considering there's a bonus mission after getting one of the most infamous endings of all time, Drakengard's ending E, where you play as one of the fighter jets that shoots you down in said ending and wreak havoc on everything... I wouldn't be surprised if those models aren't just there for fun.

Your videos always are amazing, thanks for your awesome content

The cat character model is a reference to ASCII art memes on japanese imageboards.

That cat model actually reminds me a little of the cat from the game "cat mario"

“Subscribe to pay respects to Giovanni” was a nice touch. Ty for your acknowledgment of this gentleman. True hero shit

For the Horizon one, i just want to note that all the letters in "ARALA" correspond to buttons on a controller... Though as i type this out i realize it doesn't really work for a playstation controller 🤔

The Hamsterdance is a Sped up version of the song Whistlestop performed at the beginning of Disney's Robinhood. So they literally could have got in trouble with Disney for shipping with that tune in it.

Thank you for what you do! You are truly one of the best! I don’t know what it is about video game Easter eggs that I find so stimulating, but your videos are amazing!!

As an italian i can tell that the full audio in Grand Ages says: A: "Hey Giovanni, tu mi avevi promesso, quando arriva la prima consegna, i soldi i primi sono i miei (kind of a broken Italian here)" B: "Il vescovo di Venezia mi ha pagato la protezione per tutto il mese, tranquillo tranquillo" It then goes on by saying "Hai già sentito? L'organista nuovo viene dall'Australia, dall'Australia!" Translated it says: A: "Hey Giovanni, you promised me, at the arrival of the first delivery, the first (part of the) money are mine" B: "Venice's Bishops payed me protection for the whole months, don't worry" B: "Have you heard? The new organ player comes from Australia, Australia!" My interpretation for it is that A is some kind of a mafioso that is asking for his part of some delivery (drugs? who knows) or is asking for the "pizzo" (payoffs payed to mafia in exchange for protections), and B is reassuring it by saying the Church is covering for them. It appears to be set somewhere in Sicily (because of the presence of a strong sicilian accent) but then the venice's bishop line would make no sense. I have no idea if this a reference to some movie. Hope this helped!

1:01 For the Arala thing, it in Hinduism. It simply means something positive like courage and pride, but this is coming the Wikipedia.

Literally looked at your channel last night thinking hmmm must be about time for an odd video! I have a sixth sense!

I work in video games. The flying trucks are flying trucks so that the QA and Development team know that it's placeholder (it's extremely obvious and will undoubtedly by noticed instantly). If you make the placeholder stuff very obvious, there's less chance to forget to remove/turn it off. In this case they wanted to know the camera paths but made them semi trucks so that they would remember to make them invisible before release

I still have my PS2 copy of that game 😮 2:37 I have to try this out for myself

The amount of autismic joy that's brought to me when oddheader post a 10 game discoveries video, is ASTRONOMICAL.

Bro, I just binges the Whole Countdown Playlist. So pumped to catch this new upload. Keep the discoverys coming!

I always gotta drop everything when a new oddheader vid pops up - will I be 15 min late for work? yes! is it worth it? YES!

That moment when he mentions Shrek's THUG2Remix but you already knew about it for over a year. For real, I can't wait to get my PS2 Mods so I can do it.

7:10 Drakengard haven't heard that in a while. Neo isn't as strange as you'd think. I recall unlocking some special ending through getting 100% in the game and maybe some other things? I recall it being very tedious. IIRC final boss time travels to the future (modern times with skyscrapers) and you end up fighting a bizarre out of place boss fight. It feels like it doesn't belong in the game. As a kid I never ended up seeing that ending because the boss fight. You have to cancel out these black and white wave by sending out your own but matching white to black, you'd do this by pressing like X and Triangle or something. At first its easy but towards the end they just do so many, so quickly and the rings are so close together my tiny brain couldn't get it done. I might have to look through YT and get a glimpse of that final ending I never saw many years ago. edit: I saw what I missed, had a laugh and pondered about how I would've accepted that as an ending.

Shrek Super Slam was such a gem. I vividly remember renting it from Blockbuster and 100%ing it in just a week

Hamster Dance is honestly a guilty pleasure of mine.

It might just be me, but the cat at 7:20 makes me think of a human proportioned version of the character from Syobon Action (AKA Cat Mario)

2:28 smash clone? power stone clone.

Why is the first thing I see as the notification pop up is a weird looking Shrek 💀 Also rip to that shredded disk

always look forward to oddheaders videos every month, my favourite youtuber for sure.

Wow, a new Shadow of the Colossus discovery, that's pretty huge.

i thought shrek superslam was a powerstone clone, not a smash clone.

Regarding the goat drawings in SOTC, it wouldn't be about them being easy spot visually. They would place them in locations that need attention and then in the game editor program they could search for that specific entity and see if there were any in the game and where they were placed, thus bringing a map editor to the location that needed attention. It's definitely an "Allan please add details" moment

thumbnail gonna give me nightmares

I love when it goes from "game everyone and their mom has heard about" to "game so niche it's a wonder someone found something"

Calling a Power Stone clone a "Smash clone" hurts my soul.

Grand Ages Medieval seems like they used a audio clip from a movie for the church prayer music and forgot to trim it or trimmed it wrong

4:06 Okay, hear me out… I know how to save Overwatch 2.

If I ever make a video game I just wanna stick "HELLO!" in random skyboxes and out of bounds areas.

seeing shrek doing 360 flips is just too good

worth noting shrek superslam has its own competitve scene a-la melee with tech, wikis and tierliests. also worth noting, theres goats hidden in the bluepoint Demon's Souls remake they did. im guesing its just a calling card for the dev team

The goats in shadow of the colussus being rendered as part of the game world actually makes sense. While they don't stand out as much as something like a basic .PNG file which obviously shouldn't be there would, the fact that Bluepoint has used them in multiple games, and always changed the artstyle for them heavily suggests it's an inside joke at the studio to redesign the goat as something thematically appropriate each time. Look at the goats in the Demon Souls remake. they look modeled after real life satanic crests, (matching the game's gothic art direction) with the only tell that they don't belong in the world of the game being the cartoonishly big eyes. Meanwhile the goat paintings in the SOTC remake are based off of cave paintings, matching the game's old-world, ancient ruins aesthetic, but once again having big, cartoonish eyes to distinguish them from anything which actually belonged in the game. The Devs very likely just like to mess with each other by redesigning the goat to almost blend into each game just as a clever way to keep the inside joke going. Given how it still looks relatively out of place in the game, (If you've played SOTC you'd know how unlike that game it is to have them there) and the devs up and saying it was just something made for themselves during production, I don't think there should be any mystery about them.

7:18 isn't that a model based off the popular rage game Cat Mario?

"lets add a naked lady to our game what could go wrong" - every male game dev EVER

Thanks to this video, I can now only imagine the picture of singular enemies walking in place with a thousand yard stare, audibly emitting a tiny voice singing some southern diddy.

11:40 they don't have to be obvious on a graphical plane to be easily findeable in the game files, if they are searchable objects. Kind of like TODO comments, easily miss able, wenn scrolling though code, but searchable by every decent IDE.