I Recreated Nintendo's Rarest Item

Since nobody can seem to find Nintendo’s rarest Controller Pak item… how about we just recreate one ourselves?

Music credits:
Prologue (Phase 7) - New Horizons:
Never Slow Me Down - Everet Almond:
Nook’s Cranny - New Horizons:
Visitor - Happy Home Paradise:
Facility Preview - Happy Home Paradise:
2 P.M. - New Horizons:
Title Screen - Doubutsu no Mori e+:
Icicle Mountain - Super Smash Bros. Melee:

0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:25 Prerequisite Questions
0:02:42 The Controller Pak Filesystem
0:06:21 Formatting the ROM
0:09:25 Initial Testing
0:10:55 Writing to a Physical Pak
0:12:15 Testing on Console
0:13:15 Other Games?
0:14:18 Conclusions

#animalcrossing #hunterr #technical

[boubayaga_]

I was hoping for Arbitrary Code Execution in Ocarina of Time to write Ice Climbers to the controller pack

[nicocchi]

it's hard to realize how constrained game storage is for old games. Like, over at the F-Zero discord I dropped the comparison that the entirety of the original F-ZERO for the Super Nintendo, all of its tracks, music, vehicles, racing physics and all of that, are smaller in data than this random picture of Captain Falcon's ass from Smash Bros. Ultimate

[ack_]

Software engineer here. This is one of the most complete, detailed and approachable videos I've ever seen. Obviously it's the only resource on the specific subject of bodging together ice climber for animal crossing, but it's such a well thought out and produced video, from start to finish. Even a non-tech person would follow that easily. I'd have watched one hour of you debugging and hacking this thing together, it was really enjoyable, you're getting really good! :)

[jogloran]

Wasn’t expecting Hunter R. to drop an f bomb today haha

[Cuyler]

Theoretically >256K (>32KB) paks are possible. The way the controller pak is set up, banks of 32KB would be required. The I-node table only has space for 128 blocks which is exactly 32KB in size. Each bank of 32KB would require its own I-node table. I believe that multi-bank controller paks are supported by the official N64 SDK which all games use for interfacing with controller paks. Maybe some day someone will create one so we can play more complex Famicom games on the N64!

[JesiccaJulian]

Props to Hunter R for not making one of these packs and posting it on eBay without telling anyone. :)

[RyneMcKinney]

What a video. First, I got April Fooled early into thinking you were actually going to Japan to seek this elusive peripheral, and then got bombarded with technical know-how which somehow still failed in the end because of one precious byte. Even after that, the first emulator still couldn't run the NES roms. And then, it somehow worked perfectly on the second emulator. And then there was a scare with writing the rom to the actual official controller pak, but in the end it just needed a good clean. And after all that, Ice Climber successfully loaded, proving that this extremely elusive Nintendo collector's item does exist.

*How do you not have more subs dude*

[explodingbearz]

This the kind of video that proves this is the right channel to be a member of

[dusk]

Man all this amazing work to play FUCKING ICE CLIMBER

[thewanderers]

This reminds me of the guy who painstakingly recreated the source code of the Apollo 10 guidance computer based upon the public releases of a beta version of the Apollo 10 source code and the complete Apollo 11 source code, because the only place the completed Apollo 10 lunar module guidance computer source code was ever stored was onboard, which makes it pretty difficult to retrieve since "Snoopy" (the Apollo 10 Lunar Module) is now in orbit around the sun

[MrCheeze]

"Ice Climber is one of a few NES games that is small enough to actually fit within this constraint." Maybe that's why they barely used this feature...
(Oh wait, you basically said as much later in the video.)

[davidmcgill]

So clearly we should mod the game to search for another controller pak in the second controller that extends the rom found in the first controller pak.

[liv_ap]

your commitment to this bit is incredible. i hope if there’s ever a real ice climber pack out there that gets found it ends up in your hands. would be very deserved.

[AcdraStation]

The Nick Robinson flip made me chuckle

[Toonrick]

I was always curious why very few N64 games used the controller pak. After learning it was only 32k in size, now I understand why save data for N64 games are stored on the cartridge itself.

For comparison, a standard PS1 Memory Card has 128k.

[gferrol]

"Fine. I'll do it myself" - -Thanos- Hunter R

[jroweboy]

As a mario 1 rom hacking enthusiast, I can't help but wonder how close it was to fitting? If its within a few hundred bytes, it may be possible that we could repack the original game to remove unused code and data to make it fit. I know of one project called smb bug fix that's removed a fair amount of unused code and they said they saved upwards of a few hundred bytes from the rom.

[TimRomero]

Another possibility instead of the USB adapter: writing an N64 homebrew whose only job is to write the controller pak, then running that rom on a flash cart. Still adds a specialized hardware dependency (the flash cart) but it might be one that people are more likely to have.

[Funboringness]

I mean, the everdrive and all N64 flashcards can write to controller packs, it's just that you can't do it directly from the PC

[ThatOnecat-mq]

dude ive been here since your first vid, your content is what ive been craving for years