How I Accidentally Broke Luigi's Casino Using Toad 

I spent way too long on this experimenting, testing, and trying to crack the code. And somehow... I did. All with the help of Toad. Please like the video, it helps me out a lot.

Why is Dr.Mario allowed in smash, but not degenerate gambler Luigi?

"verifiably true that luigi is worth less than mario in the lore" nonsense, its luigis casino, he's just humble and loves his bro!

Took hours for Alex to learn the lesson the Courier learned in a second: the game was rigged from the start

I can't believe Toad's been trying to help us cheat-out the smug Luigi for ten whole years

Btw the reason toad changes which card you get after a rotation is (probably) because he does an rng call each time he starts a new rotation to choose which one to do. Remember that rng is usualy the same for most stuff so any object that calls rng will change the rng everything else that calls it afterwards.

As soon as you mentioned toad, I realized something. The way the DS works is like the GBA before it, where it loads up a list of random numbers based on a seed when a game is loaded, and then uses the number at the front of the list for anything that uses rng and then deletes it, moving on to the next one. So, when toad comes out onto the floor, he randomly decides what path to take to the other side, burning a number from the list, which is why your hand changes the way it does every toadtation.

Luigi once hit me with 5 of a kind with luigi cards... you got to respect the luigi

the luigi casino minigames stole hours and hours away from my childhood, thanks for the video alax!

I played this game so much as a kid, I legit started to get a feel for how Luigi played. It got to the point where I could consistently clean house. After years of shelving the game though, I lost my feel for it, but I'll never forget how Luigi taught me to become a poker master.

Childhood memories with New Super Mario Bros. As a kid, I was admittedly addicted to playing these once I hit the maximum amount of coins.

If you actually figured this stuff out on your own, you are a secret jimmy neutron level genius.

ok but in all of this: why is Luigi (supposedly owner of Luigi's casino) the croupier at the tables, a job probably tiring and difficult? shouldn't a owner be in charge of the personnel and administration? as you said, Wario is the most probable owner of a casino, so what if Wario is the real owner, and is using Luigi's handsome looks, and kind nature as a face, while relegating the man himself to the soulles job of dealing cards and ripping off costumers? in this essay I will

Thanks Luigi for enabling my gambling addiction! I probably spent more time playing his casino games than the main game itself (looking at you New Soup DS)

I've actually been recently messing with Picture Poker, and while I haven't done anything like a decompilation with it (yet), I do have some insights into it that might be helpful. Your intuition that it uses a 30-card deck is correct (though with some implementation weirdness I'll get to). I had originally read that online, and was able to confirm that using memory watch. I also read, but didn't independently confirm, that Luigi's strategy is always to keep any matched cards and replace any unmatched ones, which sounds like the most likely strategy from what I've seen. I also did find the memory locations to look at Luigi's hand, as well as the status of the deck, and could probably figure it out again if you wanted to use that yourself. I didn't spend much time analyzing the RNG algorithm, but your observations do make sense based on what I did look at. My guess about the toadtation thing is that Toad has a handful of paths he can take around the casino, and every rotation, he calls the RNG function to choose which one to use. This has the effect of incrementing the RNG state, which causes the shift in the output cards you're seeing. As for the Schrodinger's Luigi, I think I know what's happening there. You see, the game doesn't really treat the deck as a single shuffled entity. Instead, the game essentially keeps six stacks of cards, one for each face value, and randomly chooses which stack to draw from whenever it needs another card. This explains the toadtation system as well, as the value of the card isn't decided until the card is actually drawn. The Schrodinger's card almost certainly happens when the game randomly chooses a stack that's already been depleted. I noticed that all of the examples you provided of the phenomenon were cards turning into the value of the card that "fell off the front." I don't remember exactly how the game handled the situation, so I'm not sure why sometimes it rounds up and other times rounds down, but I can look into that. Lastly, I just want to give a quick warning: Luigi's initial five cards are chosen at the same time as your five initial cards are, so some hands simply won't be possible even when manipulating toadtations if Luigi drew a card you need. Also, discarded cards aren't "shuffled" back into the deck until after the end of the entire round, so neither you nor Luigi can draw a discarded card as a replacement card.

I always find it interesting when a madman spends their free time deciphering something that they love with a passion, like those Zelda RU-vidrs who have been going feral for 5 YEARS about the Zonai. By madman, I mean that what they do is insane and I respect them for pulling it off.

“Keep being stupid. It will work eventually” is the perfect motto to live life by

How dare you rig my casino.

I like the fear quirk only happens with the unknown and generally scary things but if he knows whats going on he can just chill harder then anyone, enjoying gambling to take the stress off but he's the dealer so he gets the excitement for free forever, probably secretly rooting for you but if you lose that's just the game.

6:47 me aggressively trying to convince my friends that Mario's third brother Ravingu has always been available in every mainline Mario game with a very specific button code

Be careful Alax. Luigi doesn't like it when you poke holes in his operation, and we all know how ruthless the green man can be.

Can’t wait for Alax to get a gambling addiction

The Luigi mini games in 64 DS only took up a few minutes of my childhood because I didn’t know where to unlock Luigi for the longest time, but once I found him (and Wario by extension), it was over

"Poker: The Among Us Of Rich People" is such a cursed sentence I can't

Hearing Alax call Poker “Among Us” for rich people is the real life equivalent of gaining Insight in Bloodborne for me.

honestly this was a pretty fun video, luigi's casino is something of our childhoods but it's not ever really talked about to this degree, the Toadtations is a really huge discovery though so i think with a breakthrough like this it could lead some more discoveries further down the road, who knows maybe for other games like the roulette wheel toad acts as a sort of hint for that

Luigi has the suave energy for dealing poker. Wario would just watch people throw their money into his slot machines.

Where do you go for eight dollar eggs stop going there

i died psychologically when you just casually put dimes in the gba slot like it's nothing

Mathmaticians after 100s of years of staring at spirals to find another number than can't be divided cleanly.

I loved this minigame as a kid, just being able to play with a videogame character and seeing them in front of you was so charming

Wake up babe new Alax video❤

12 minutes to master everything my childhood was about

Please nintendo, bring back luigi's casino, better than las vegas or monaco

This will sound strange but I have been waiting for ANYONE to make such an extensive video about this specific minigame. I'm glad it finally happened. I knew it was just a matter of time. Both me and my dad were obsessed with playing this

calling the nsmb series just new soup will never get old

To answer that, we need to talk about parallel flushes

the system where each player is dealt 5 cards, and then allowed to exchange them, is in a really popular poker variant (usually played outside of casinos i think) called 5 card draw

The minigames in New Soup and 64 DS were honestly the best part of those games. I'm glad to still see some love for them, especially Luigi's gambling for kids.

This was oddly satisfying to learn the Ai of Lugi's Casino of all things

I absolutely love this video! It’s so unapologetically RelaxAlax and I’m all here for it!!! 👏👏👏 I hope someone decompiles this soon so we can get part 2 🤞🤞

Always knew Toad was up to something but could never quite figure it out

Toad was never delivering drinks. He was sneaking in the cards you could use to win. You are just awful at signaling for him

I am a huge fan of this. I can tell you had a blast making it, and I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to seeing more videos like this. It’s just fun seeing old games from my childhood trying to be cracked, especially ones as simple as this one.

Can't say I was expecting this sort of video from you, but speaking as someone that played the hell out of this minigame as a kid (and made some pretty serious in-game bank with it iirc), this was quite the treat.

I really enjoyed this one! It was interesting to hear your process, and it was entertaining to watch, as always!

You fly higher than your guardian angel. Into the fire, dancing with danger. You place your bet with no regrets in this game of... LUIGI CASINO!!!

I just wanted to say that the spade with the power-up eyes looked really good and like an actual asset to a Mario game. that is all

I don't recall the last time I saw the floating Ganondorf Amiibo, but seeing him again made me smile, he was my favourite character when I began watching you! This video was fuckin hilarious though, I loved it sm.

Luigi is the guy who wishes he could be his heroic brother saving princesses, but he has a super padded bank account cuz he has like, 4 money making side hustles Money cant buy happiness but it aint bad for second place

honestly that's pretty fascinating and I have a good feeling it'll spur someone who knows how to properly rip apart the code and find out more detail regardless it's pretty brilliant of you to figure out it's tied to Toad's rotations on the top screen, meaningless flavor for most players but a handy dev tool for cycling the RNG like that.

Your videos always put a huge smile in my face. Your humor is so perfect I wish a lot of others RU-vidrs had it too! Keep it up, man! Absolutely loved the video! It was worth all your effort, for sure. :D

Amazing video, this is...insane. The fact that these discoveries were even made just goes to show the nuances of the programming in this one tiny minigame.

What an amazing video! I hope somebody takes advantage of this to make a speedrun of some kind

First video I’ve seen from your channel - subscribed! Love the style and humor :)

I'm so happy you're back to making videos! Missed ya, keep up the great work!!

I love this style of video! Would definitely enjoy seeing more of this type of thing. Figuring out rng and how to manipulate it in games is super interesting.

Looking Cool, Alax

Prob my favorite video since your return. I spent so many hours in Luigi's casino. If only I knew of Toad's secret sooner

the man never misses, love to see the content as usual

I remember sitting there for like10 hours straight one day playing luigi poker when I was 7 or 8. totaly relatable

Always love your videos alax!!!!!! Can't wait for more to watch

Loved that awkward "...whelp." look at the ending. This video was awesome!

0:22 don't call me out like that

this video was really really cool i love techy stuff like this and alan does a great job explaining this :]

I laughed hysterically multiple times throughout this video. Well done, ★★★★★.

Very entertaining ❤ Great job!

Cool video!! Definetly played too much Luigi casino as a kid than i should have

I can't imagine spending all that time working on this poker game. You truely are, a mad man.

I loved it. Great video Alax

That intro with "stay with me" playing in the background was Noice 🎉

I feel like the experimenting paid off, great video!

Hell yeah new video very entertaining I loved the mini games in mario 64 ds and new super Mario bros. The vibe in Luigis casino is still unmatched I’m glad nintendo made these little games I spent a good bit of time on them as a kid

I appreciated the video (in the comments.) It was good, do more like this. I like the "random idea i probably got at 3am" type of video.

I've been subscribed since the Smash 4 days of this channel and these are are the kinds of videos I'm here for.

I would love more investigative videos in the future!

This is some insane learning and check of the code behind a simple minigame from a 2006 ds game Also the rng is in my eyes 1 in a 100 unless you crack the code by betting or waiting out the rotation of the background in real time while the game is on and likely the game is checking and deciding which card to put out and the sheets are like a bingo board but with one card different from the line so yeah crazy for something so simple

Luigi: "how did you break my casino?" Player: *looks at toad* Toad: "huh?"

excellent video. we must find out all we can about luigi and his shady dealings.

Awesome video. What a journey into madness

I love how you made up terminology when it comes to how the mechanics work!

Dealer Luigi for Smash!

I don't understand why your not more popular. Your videos consistently have good humor and great outlooks. Your music is also always fantastic. Keep up the great work Alax. 💖

I need to keep it a buck fifty with you chief, i have never been more engaged in a video about gambling in my life

Luigi Gambling is easily the best kind of gambling

You’ve done the work we didn’t deserve but desperately needed. I’ve always wondered how this game worked!

I was playing Luigi poker yesterday for nostalgia. I feel spied on.

I’ve been wondering this for a while now. Thanks for doing this, now I know.

Floating ganondorf amibo Nice Also great video very enjoyable for watching whilst washing dishes

Oh, boy! Finally! a new New Soup episode!

Such a cool video topic idea, I loved it

This was recommended to me and I love it 😂

love the stay with me soundfont remix at the beginning of the video, it really seems like something i would make

Very good video, 10/10 you are a cool RU-vidr, new sub man 😊

Eggs being $8 is messed up

Relatable moment the first 10 seconds

Programmer here. So the way randomness works is you don't really have true randomness. PCs and consoles could try to use some unreliable inputs, like small variants in voltages to the hardware components, but that is just going to be different for each user, and there's no guarantee you'll get randomness out of it. It may be consistent for different users in different ways, and you have bi way of knowing how that impacts randomness. So randomness needs to come from the deterministic, consistent, reliable mechanisms inside the CPU. The solution is a mathematical formula that spits out series of numbers one after the other which look sufficiently random and don't have an obvious pattern to them (at least you have to go through an insane amount of numbers to find the point where they start repeating). So anything that needs randomness just pulls the next number from this formula. It's likely the cards are being dealt entirely with RNG this way and no deck is being simulated. Since there are only 10 cards and you may assume the deck is shuffled between each hand this isn't something you'd notice in normal play. My guess is Toad himself is pulling a single value from the RNG every "toadation" he does. Could be used to randomize how long he waits before walking again, could be used to randomize his next action, who knows. I haven't played the game in a while. So when toad does a "toadation" that is one number the RNG won't provide for a card since it is used by Toad instead, so everything shifts over by one. As for the changing cards... it could be like you said where the game cheats to modify your hand. Or maybe some other random factor outside of the RNG is used to modify the hand occasionally. There are other sources of randomness and early consoles specifically tended to get creative since there was no built-in randomness function so they needed to invent their own. For example the time or exact position a user interacts with a touchscreen can be a good source of pseudorandomness. By the way the time you power the console or the time you spend idle on the title screen or something is probably used to "seed" the RNG so it will generate a DIFFERENT sequence of numbers each time you power on the game.

Good to know this mini game 1. Doesn't use a predetermined deck 2. Doesn't passively advance RNG unless Toad moves I wonder what algorithm it uses?

if it's based on an RNG seed (most likely) then i'd imagine the full card sequence is 65,536. or in the ballpark... it can be complex. and that's also assuming it's an unsigned 32-bit integer, which is most likely but not certain. so it'd be a nightmare, basically. maybe someone could do it, like how people who do speedrun attempts of Peach's Target Test can advance RNG one number at a time on the character select screen, then find exactly where in the sequence they currently are, then advance to a specific place to manipulate RNG for Bob-Ombs and stuff. But in Melee, narrowing down the exact position in the RNG sequence usually requires being able to see the past 15-25 characters selected by the RNG on the CSS. For this game, it may take a lot more data than that to narrow it down. Maybe not impossible though edit: the more immediately practical application would be being able to know what Luigi's hand is. i don't actually know the rules of Poker but i'd imagine just beating him would require a decent amount less manipulation than, say, being dealt 5 of a kind every hand.

5:07 I didn't know who you were until the cat spoke. THE CAT HAS SPOKEN!