The rarest promotion is my childhood animal crossing town opening ceremony that i showed off to my friends and gave them sun chips as a promotional item.
@@Hunter-R. Out of options and desperate for some sort of resolution, Hunter knew what he needed to do. So he booked a plane ticket and got on a flight to Tokyo in search of answers.
You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those special ice climber memory cards is just in a thrift store somewhere in Japan much like how the Mario 64 disk drive prototype was. There is a higher chance too. I do hope however that the data on the card is built to be unable to be deleted or something because if you could just use it as a regular memory card imagine how many of the cards accidentally had the data deleted.
If it’s anything like a normal Controller Pak, then you could hold start when booting up a supported game and delete the files on the Pak… The menu to do so is a bit out of the way, so if one is ever found, I hope the data would still be intact. 🙏
@@Hunter-R. I could have sworn most games that support the save paks like perfect dark and such give you a direct menu through the game menus in order to edit save data or whatever. I could Be wrong but idk.
Yea, every game that supports the Controller Pak (Doubutsu no Mori included) was required to have a memory manager screen that could be accessed by holding start on boot up. You could access this menu elsewhere if the developers wanted, but I believe Nintendo explicitly required the “hold start” option.
I'm not sure different memory types were even supported, and I can't imagine them going to the effort of making a ROM Controller Pak just for this tiny distribution.
@@Hunter-R. I think DnM can bring it up if you try to save a letter to the controller pak with not enough room left as well. (This *used* to be detailed on the TCRF page (because someone thought it had to do with Famicom ROMs specifically) but was removed in May of this year because it's... well... used (and unrelated to ROMs specifically).)
I was one of the people who won the AC pioneer contest. We had to write a strictly 50-word blurb on why we deserved a beta copy and I remember using every word. It came with two copies of the game and an Animal Crossing calendar, I gave a copy to my friend who lived across the street from me. I ended up throwing away the calendar and I sold my copy for 20$ on ebay about a decade ago after concluding it was worthless. I couldn't even find info online confirming that the pioneer program ever existed. Only in recent years did info about it start popping up again and people are like "I want one!". Still kicking myself for selling it
I thought the point of the Pioneer contest was to spread the word about the contest & game via the internet? But you couldn’t find any information about it online? I guess the Pioneer program failed hard in that respect
@@thiefrules This was like 10+ years after the game came out. I was looking for info for it online to see if the copy I had was worth any money. I wasn't able to find any info, and I thought that the copy was basically worth as much as any other AC copy. So I sold it for $20. I'm still friends with the person I gave the second copy to, and I keep telling her it's worth a lot of money, and her response is always "yeah it's probably around somewhere". Might convince her to find it some day
Do you ever fear that the amount of ACGC content to cover will shrink to zero? I know you are covering other games, but this is the one you know the most about, and presumably are the most comfortable talking about given your knowledge on it. Many people and I really want you to stay around in the long run, because your content is just the best.
It’s a legitimate concern, but I have enough topics left to last a good while. I typically find some other interesting things while researching other topics, so the list of video ideas grows over time. I’ll try to stick around as long as possible. 🙇♂️
I think with games of this era being shrouded in more mystery due to so much Japanese exclusive content, it would take quite awhile to go through all of the interesting content from AC. Look at a series like Kingdom Hearts. I've been a fan since the very beginning, and I still learn new things about it from the era when Japan was the only one with the final mix version. Additionally, if you know Japanese, old forums and articles are a gold mine of interesting topics that people in the west know little about. I'm sure Hunter can find things that very few people, if anyone, knows about. I'm always excited for new videos because I can never guess what's next!
Honestly, it makes my heart ache, the memories of that bygone era. Modern gaming doesn't have things like this, at least not commonly. The original game is a great example of the Japan Galapagos phenomenon...and the further that time has marched on, the more the game has stopped reflecting that.
Interesting to know that those "No for Resale" AC:GC discs came from a Nintendo contest, I always thought that was just the promotional discs that you saw in kiosks or stores like the demo discs. Well learnt something new today!.
'Not for resale' describes basically any copy of the game outside of normal retail distribution. Named so because they're meant to be returned or destroyed after their intended use, not sold. The term is also used outside of video games, but it's uncommon.
Hello. I'm writing all of you to let you know that I did have the controller pack back in 2008. I sold it to some guy in norway. I sold it for like $220 a long time ago and I don't know the username. I tried to look it up to see who the user was and it doesn't show me the history of my eBay sales. I'm sorry but I have to let you know that this happened around November 2008. I needed the money really badly to get a pre-order the special edition of wrath of the Lich King for World of Warcraft on my PC at the time. I have no idea why or how this channel was recommended to me but I just wanted to let you all know that there is a guy in Norway that has this because I obtained it from somebody back in 2004 when I was playing Phantasy Star Online and collecting Japanese stuff in general. Godspeed..
If you still have your emails from back then, it's possible a reference to the buyer could be in one of those. eBay doesn't like to display old data anymore for some reason.
Wait hold the phone, you are saying that you got the ice climber pak back in the mid 2000s??? Do show some pictures of the ice climber pak if you have any!
Every time you upload a video I immediately recite the craziest information to my friend group as a sort of running gag "Today I learned that animal crossing has a glitch that creates an infinitely self replicating paper airplane that crashes your game" "today i learned that animal crossing wild world players could brick your ds by remotely hacking dozens of museums everywhere" now, I need to decide if I'm saying "today i learned that animal crossing players will spend $3,500 dollars and write fine poetry for a disc with a sticker on it" or "today i learned that animal crossing developed an entire game pak emulation system run natively in a controller and it was only ever used for 30 promotional copies of Ice Climber which no one is known to even own"
Before you tell your friends about the special fancy disc with a sticker on it, make sure you mention it looks to have a slightly different color compared to the normal disc. Very important.
I feel bad for anyone that picked the golden shovel for the Wild World promotion, instead of any tool that requires actual time and effort to obtain normally.
I wonder about the memory cards distributed for the sweepstakes for Super Mario Bros. in Doubutsu no Mori+, which also only had 30 copies. It probably came with a special letter…
True! We may never know what that letter said… but at least the Super Mario Bros. item itself can be obtained with a Nook Code and the data actually exists in the game, unlike DnM’s Ice Climber.
Hunter R videos are the kind of videos that i play in the background with the sound off to give them an early view, but then i save them up to actually watch them when i have a really good meal to go with them
Hearing hunter read off the names of his supporters goes to show that he is truly thankful for all of the donations, and the fact he thanks us individually is so heartwarming and I smile when I hear mine.
I got mine complete with a not for resale cover art. Later on, I ended up finding the calendar and original cover art for the game and graded it and gave it to my friend since he's a bigger fan of og AC 😊
This video makes me kinda sad because nintendo used to do such cute events like sending in a letter, for a chance to win an extremely specific item. I don't see them doing anything like this nowadays unfortunately :( Granted those events seemed to be a rarity in itself but still. Today it seems extra unlikely that they'll do something like this again.
I didn't know (or at least remember) about the pioneer program for AC. Though, speaking of early copies, one of my favorite Animal Crossing memories is that for whatever reason, the Blockbuster near my cousin's house had a copy to rent a month early. Never really found out if that was a promotional thing or just them messing up. Anyway, I was sleeping over his house and his mom took us to Blockbuster. I had been keeping up with the game since Nintendo Power was pushing it pretty hard, so when I saw it, I had to get it. So i got to play it for a couple of days a month early (i took the copy home for the rest of the rental period), and I was having so much fun that i bought it when it released proper. I don't have my original town though. That was saved to my cousin's memory card, so when I went home, I started another town. That one still survives.
1.2 thousand dollars extra for a Calender from over 20 years ago and a letter not adressed to you. i wanted to joke about this being a waste of money, but i realize as im typing, that that sounds cool as hell.
I’ve never seen anyone else mention this but prior to the release of Wild World in the UK, I remember my brother entering some sort of program or contest with Nintendo themselves where he was given a DS console and a US copy of WW before it released over here. Unfortunately i’m fuzzy on the details as I was quite young at the time, but considering it was my introduction to the series I’ll always remember and be grateful for that! Curious if anyone else has any more info about it. ETA: I asked him about it and it was actually through a program called Dubit / Dubbit?
Man I sure hope we dump that Ice Climbers controller pack one day. If we fig out how the ROM was prepared, we could inject games into dobutsu no mori like how we can in the GameCube version! ...Assuming it is exactly the same as the GameCube version.
Wouldn't doubt it existing at all on GC is due to the code already being there, so they probably ported the code over and never did anything with it beyond testing.
This might be a widely known fact, but here in America, Nintendo set up those distribution hotspots using a standard Nintendo ds, and a special distribution cartridge. This is how event pokemon were distributed, and it wouldn't surprise me if the animal crossing items were distributed in the same way. So in theory, if we could track down a distribution cart, and dump it, we could see the other three letters.
This is only true for North American and European distributions. Japanese download stations were handled via PCs, making them much more difficult to preserve.
I haven't touched animal crossing in years. Never bothered to pick up new horizons when it got released, but I do like the character customization very much. If you can't think of anything interesting to make a video on, maybe you can do one on items that were added and removed in subsequent games.(Can't remember if you did one like that already idk) I think my favorite one of these is the clavecin/harpsichord. In real life, its my favorite sounding instrument and the physical traditonal iconography on one is as much a piece of art as the sounds its makes They added them in new leaf, only to forget them in New horizons. Don't really matter, as its litteral pixels on a game ive never touched, but still, when i still played the GCN and new leaf, i was always appreciative of a classical, almost courtly interior. I would have one room with all sorts of antiques, and the upstairs would be my "office" where i would put desks, suit jackets, and if i had room, expensive items for HRA. Pretending i was some sort of important individual who just happened to be blending in with animals for some reason. Thats also why i thought the character had horns. I thought humans were banned in town or something so to fool the animals you would wear goats horns or something lol
this is some real obscure stuff! also wouldnt there be text in data of Wild World for that promotional stuff or was this real deal "we made some proprietary data that works with the game, but isnt IN the game"?
The "letter in a bottle" mechanic is already in the game, but the text within the letter is handled externally and transmitted into the game. So the text strings related to the movie promotion are not within the ROM data itself.
"I deserved to play it first because I am Furry 😺" ... But Nintendo didn't sent the disc...only their Ninjas... And no one heard about that guy again... 😿
Yep, Cuyler and I looked into it recently and he just updated his AC NES Creator program to support writing a N64 Controller Pak file. I’d stay tuned for some more on this in the future… 😉
@@kimjrYT Should be ready for a public release sometime this year, hopefully sooner rather than later! You may be disappointed by support for Doubutsu no Mori due to the meager 32KB of space the controller pak gives. Even compressing the roms using the best SZP compressor currently available, most games are unable to fit within the space. Only the most basic games can fit. Regardless it's really cool to see it and it's also likely possible to achieve ACE and inject small mods using it similar to how the GC one is able to be exploited.
As far as I’m aware, while you can replace the battery within Controller Paks, the original data associated with them would be lost if the battery dies.
I wonder if you could feasibly make your own N64 controller pak with a rom in it, label and all, and have it load ingame. That'd be like the weirdest possible NES/FC game collection.
