The GoldenEye Graffiti Mandela Effect
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- Was 𝓜*𝓬𝓴𝓮𝔂 𝓜𝓸𝓾𝓼𝓮 secretly hidden in GoldenEye 007? While this may sound absolutely ridiculous, at least one internet user remembered 𝓜*𝓬𝓴𝓮𝔂 being in the game. And believe it or not, he may actually have been correct! In this video, we will examine the unusual Mandela Effect theory that 𝓜*𝓬𝓴𝓮𝔂 may have been incorporated into GoldenEye 007 in some way, shape or form, and examine evidence that this may be true. Enjoy this nostalgic look a strange Nintendo 64 mystery, and take in the nostalgia inducing fun from one of my favourite rabbit holes in all of GoldenEye 007...
00:00 Intro
00:58 The Original Post
04:39 Crazy... or is it?
07:38 The ROMHack Supporting Thesis
09:45 an Unexpected Twist
13:25 Three Theories
19:05 Do You Believe?
Original reddit thread: / goldeneye_007_n64_depo...
GoldenEye Blogspot post: goldeneyedecoded.blogspot.com...
The Cutting Room Floor GoldenEye page: tcrf.net/GoldenEye_007_(Ninte...
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Mickey's texture is not loaded into Depot, and it's in 2 parts, so not really possible a random bit hit would cause this.
Also, if you do XBLA, and set to the "retro graphics", what appears in that spot? I'm not clear exactly what spot you're at there to compare to original, but would be interesting to compare to retail. My guess is they just did things like that as a work in progress sort of fun, but never intended it to stay.
I think the story got mixed up with the "Rare logo" appearing on Depot, versus an unused depot decal texture that was listed on TCRF. And there is that random decal showing up in Aztec that is not well known, hidden up high that Ben Colclough noticed recently (probably others have seen just not well known).
In this video, I was toggling the retro graphics and the Mickey graffito is there. That being said, you are right that it's in two parts, making a bit flip unlikely.
@@GamerFolkloreah Ok that's good. I can't tell where it is. But in original N64 version what graffiti is there?
@@subdrag I just checked, and there is actually *no* graffiti in the spot where Mickey appears in the XBLA version! It's a blue crate near the starting area.
Hey goose, in regards to the Brit having a save file in a sealed game, he is. It alone anymore. It happened to me with goldeneye as well as a few other games over the years. I'd have to rack my brain to remember them all but I do te!ember it being that way for me on goldeneye for N64 and ridge racer for PS1. Not super common but I don't understand why the Brit has ent heard similar stories. I would bet money that it has happened to all of us at some point. Just probably didn't notice... Also, I'm chris. Melissa's husband. Been watching you for a couple years now. Good stuff bud. Keep on keepin on. Cheers from alabama.
@@GamerFolklore yeah could be that the OP got hold of a preview reviewers copy or something, but I would imagine if such a thing existed someone would've found it by now but I guess its possible that if the build was very very near the final build they mightve stuck it in a mock up final build case to allow the publisher to get their own photos of the cart, so its possible that copy is currently sitting in someone collection right now, just sitting in the bottom of that box of loose carts you picked up unceremoniously holding Mickey hostage
one added note that makes this theory more plausible is that the XBLA build also had the Mickey texture present, which would imply they had Mickey in the game right up until the end of development and it was one of the last things to be cut, probably with the advice of their lawyers or Nintendo's lawyers, and when the XBLA copy was being developed they had lost that last minute pre-gold patch from the archived source code and ended up using the 0.99 build from before Mickey was cut
the only issue I have is that the OP posted his story after the XBLA leak, so its possible he is just making up the story because it would be plausible, if he had posted this story before the XBLA leak I would've 100% said this was the most likely scenario but after, it becomes just as plausible he made it up as it would be believable
Interestingly, one of the least known pieces of graffiti in Depot is there in plain sight: the Rare logo spray painted on a wall near the train at the end. People run right by it thousands of times while speedrunning and never notice it.
I literally only discovered this the other night while getting some footage for this video. And I was stunned!!
Although not as 100% certain as OP is, I vaguely remember seeing the Mickey Mouse as well. I had a 1997 launch copy of the game and Nintendo was no stranger to change content and patching games for subsequent batches of cartridges. I believe it's legit.
That would be a reasonable avenue of investigation: nab rom dumps of the earliest release version in various regions and see if the graphic appears there. With Disney being Disney, I could see an initial release with the graphic, then Disney stepping in and going "no" and then all versions after having the graphic removed.
@@emilymarriott5927 I've seen these release version changes before. My launch Wii Sports doesn't match other people's copies. So I know it's possible to have multiple versions. My launch Smash Bros Melee also feels different for the same reason to the point where I couldn't play a later revision.
I feel like I remember it too, like a shitty bug eyed version of mickey as a rat
@emilymarriott5927 Ocarina of Time is a living proof of it. I also got the golden relase cartridge in which the mirror shield has the same symbol as the Turkey flag and temple of fire has some religious chanting. Both things were famously changed on later cartridges.
6:14 Like other commenters, my first reaction was also that there's definitely Mickey Mouse graffiti on those shipping containers. And then when you showed this clip, and I'm pretty sure that's what I was registering and remembering as Mickey Mouse. To me that's easy to call Mickey Mouse at a glance. That looks like Fantasia Mickey Mouse without the hat and maybe with the ears in a slightly off position. And I'd be hard pressed to say that's definitely not Mickey Mouse.
I don't think it looks much like Mickey Mouse when you can thoroughly inspect it in high resolution, but glancing at it on an old CRT would very easily make it come across as Mickey.
@@dekufiremage7808 I was gonna say, through a typical CRT TV that could be easily mistaken as the same texture.
Yeah it totally does look like Micky, I’d bet my house on that being what the OP saw…but if it’s NOT Micky, then that’d be one hell of a coincidence that an unused Micky graphic actually was in the game also lol… I personally think the used graphic that looks like Micky, was an edit of the actual unused Micky graphic, which allowed them to use it.
This is the correct answer
Looks like Mickey to me, what is it if it's not mickey. What's the actual graphic?
Every copy of Goldeneye is Personalized.
But in all seriousness, I think either OP misremembered the other red and white graffiti, then seeing the unused Mickey Mouse graphic online, his brain auto-filled it onto the other texture in his mind, or possibly it got brought back by someone using a gameshark on the cartridge without OP knowing.
Yes, when I saw that other red and white graffiti, I said "that's it. That's what OP is remembering"
You combine that with the blog and boom
@@uchusky08 he did say that he remembered specifically that it was weird having the mickey mouse franchise in a 007 game but this could easily be a memory to fill in the gaps as it had been years since he had read the blog post and our memory isn't the most reliable
it actually looks so similar to a mickey mouse@@uchusky08
It may lend credence to one or more theories to know whether the graffiti appears on the same set of crates OP remembers. If yes, he may have legitimately seen the texture in game, and if no, it points to mismatched memory
This is the crucial inquiry and I suspect it is not on the same set of crates or it would have been mentioned.
the crate location was mentioned early on 2:25...how you guys get mandela'd in less than 20 minutes?
@@freedustin That's what I was referring to. What I meant was whether the texture, when re-enabled, showed up on the same set of crates that was mentioned here. I haven't played the game so I don't have any knowledge of the map to know for sure.
@@TheHappyWhale there is no such thing a re-enable a texture. they are placed individually and manually onto objects...once that's deleted there is no way to know which crate it was intended for.
But he did say, it was a specific group in the back. But that ROM hack proves there is no way to just restore it to its pre-release intentions.
If it was legitimately seen in game and it was an issue with the cartridge then it would more likely have been a replacement of another texture in a different spot. An accidental bit flip could reference the wrong texture from the game data since that texture is still there, their game just loads the wrong one... or you're right and the reference is still there in the same spot in the n64 release but the developers just reference something like texture 9 which is transparent to hide it while texture 8 was the mickey mouse one.
I want to share something similar that could possibly explain it
When I was a kid I owned Final Fantasy 3 American Version (AKA FF6 in Japan)
One day I load up the game and the screen went white, I quickly shut it off removed the cart, put it back and it started up fine.
However when I checked my characters I now had 999 Excaliburs, Gem Boxes, Economizers, Offerings, and various other things like graphics got warped or changed.
No, this wasn't the sketch bug, because it happened when I booted the game, nor was a game genie ever used
As a young kid I remember calling the Nintendo hotline asking if my game had a "virus"
The point I'm getting at here is both games have the ability to save and write data, by some miracle some random save code changed how my cart worked, could the same happen here even without the use of a game genie
That is a very interesting story! Thanks for sharing. I wonder how many of these "one off" or near-one-off stories many of us experienced back in the day. Especially knowing now how computer memory can be altered by external factors. Maybe there are thousands of similar stories, and we'll never truly be able to get to the bottom of them all!
Oh yeah, that's an option I hadn't considered... cartridge games were very prone to data and code corruption if the cartridge was removed or "tilted" while playing.
Some people deliberately did that to achieve some specific effect, but most of the time the results of those kind of scenarios always seemed very wild and unpredictable.
Maybe something like that happened? Either that or it was simply a damaged cartridge, but in both cases I suppose the same principle of unpredictable alteration applies.
also to add, that save file was stupidly overpowered
every warrior type could attack 8 times Offering+ genji glove
every spell caster could double cast Ultima each turn for 2 mana
and Shadow was throwing Excaliburs at trash tier enemies just for fun
I had a similar event once whilst playing Theme Park on the mega drive. I remember the cart getting knocked whilst playing and the game crashed so I hit reset. When the game loaded up again I basically had infinite money. I saved the game and rebooted and yup, infinite money. I tried to replicate it on a different cart but couldn't so who knows 🤷♂️
Textures and items are two separate kind of data so yes its possible to get a glitch who give us stuff, but it can't activate unused textures. What happened to your textures is way more simple: like you said they been changed and warped, in other words they have been altered in the data. Textures are like everything else in a game: corruptable, thats what your glitch did. It corrupted your cartridge data. But its absolutly not possible for any data corruption to had an unused texture, as it only alter the textures themself and not change which or callee by the game to be shown on screen.
Another point to the Mismemory theory: the Philadelphia track in Mickey's Speedway USA has some similarities to Depot and could reinforce the association between Mickey and Depot in OP's mind. Actually that game's tracks may contain many assets from previous Rareware games.
I remember it & never played mickeys speedway
OP here, never played that game even in emulation, much less owned it. No confusion there.
It's important to note that N64 cartridges (games) have different software revisions. For example, bugs were fixed, and newer cartridges replaced old ones in stores. If you download ROMs off the internet, or even just look at the copyright screens (during the intros) for Goldeneye, or Perfect Dark, you'll see version numbers. So it could be that they removed this in a later revision to avoid legal issues from Disney.
Obviously, we didn't know about this back in the day because patches on consoles were not a thing.
Edit: I feel this could be true because the code was commented out, as you said. It's common to comment out code rather than deleting it, because you never know what sort of domino effect you can have on the rest of the game. RARE even slipped a ZXSpectrum emulator WITH GAMES [that they developed] into Goldeneye, which can be re-enabled with a ROM edit. They just commented it out, AFAIK.
Sure, games had revisions but the thing is, I don't think GE ever had revisions that changed a whole lot. From the top of my head, in the JP version, they added a couple of BAs and improved auto-aim. Otherwise, like Goose explored in older videos, the game is very solid code-wise. In fact, there are only 2 OoB known (pulling that from memory): in Silo and Train. Neither help speedrunning and hard to execute.
the biggest change ge had was in the pal version they removed spectrum emu and most of the rest of the leftover debug code, about 4% of the codebase.
@@kholdfuzion4538 Even then, this revision only removed the code that didn't do anything and something the user didn't even see. So, my point still stand in a way.
Peope should look at the other versions and see
I don’t know if this means much but I got my copy on release day and I played the shit out of it. I specifically went looking for Easter eggs, never saw the mouse.
Could be similar to old the wrong warp/item swap/fairy jar technique. Some parameter is fulfilled which shunts the texture memory along a few digits, causing the game to display the mouse. It makes sense as those codes would be stored next to/near each other in the RAM. Sounds plausible.
If the textures *are* on the original cartridge, but there is some flag to not render them, it is very much possible that OPs cartridge was somehow "damaged", where the flag was set incorrectly - meaning the asset was rendered when it wasn't meant to.
Yes, it is very unlikely, but also not impossibly so.
I wonder if it's just a single bit flag to tells them not to display. If so, it's very likely that bit could be flipped by a cosmic ray.
@@PlutonianPenguin Some other comment mentioned that the texture isn't even loaded in that level and that it consists of two parts. That means that a single bit flip (or even a dozen) is not enough.
I've had weird stuff like this happen to me in games in the past.
The N64 is pretty infamous for having weird things happen if the cartridge isn't inserted properly, and since it's still in the games code, something could have triggered its reappearance, especially if it was a launch console/copy of the game etc.
It could also be a certain batch of copies that went out with the code active, either by mistake or faulty copying.
I had something weird happen in Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Xbox where one of the nerds that I was making Jimmy pick on in the dormitory just straight up “female doggo” slapped Jimmy in the midst of the fight and I actually stopped playing in complete shock before laughing my behind off since I had never seen the nerd in question (I think it was Algie or the one nerd who plays tabletop RPGs in the library) do that before or since. Knowing that game’s hectic development, I’m not surprised I discovered something purely by chance that I haven’t seen anybody discussing online so far.
Hello you
It would be interesting to have Goldeneye developers' take on this
Yup, honestly they are the ones that can answer this easily
I mean it's been over 25 years at this point they might not remember doing any of the graffiti art much less the Mickey Mouse one they were told to remove
I believe the third theory. After all, the 'spyder' is listed in the manual of some golderneye versions as a weapon so this could be the same thing.
20+ years ago my friend told me once he had found a weird gun he had never seen before in Archives, ive spent hours trying to find it never found it
@@uobilo I was told back then you could open Ourumovs briefcase in silo under certain conditions. The 90s were a wild time for rumors.
As soon as you mentioned the Mickey Mouse graffiti, my first reaction was "yeah, of course, it's on the Depot level." To get to the end of the video and discover it's not in the N64 game? I'm truly spooked. What can I say, I'm with OP here.
Do you still have your game cartridge ?
I did the same thing.
I have an n64 and og goldeneye cart (though not the same one I had back in the late 90's), almost want to dig them out and see
@@AngryChineseWoman Alas, I sold my PAL game collection long ago. The mystery continues..
@@lh8vd69same
This story kind of reminds me of my weird broken version of Call of Duty Black ops 1 that had all the levels unlocked from the start when I got it, which allowed me to get the achievement from doing the campaign on Veteran by just doing the last mission before I even got some of the mandatory achievements for doing other story missions. Only thing I have to prove this is that my Xbox profile has the achievements unlocked in a non sensical order (With the dates they were earned) which doesn't make sense if I would have played the levels in the correct order and unlocked them normally.
How would that work on disc. I could believe that for cartridges, but how would that work with discs?
The fourth and most plausible theory is that OP had a build that was accidentally shipped (probably close to release) that still had the Mickey Mouse grafitti in it. Small changes like these are often last minute changes in game development. It's very possible not all the carts that were being produced were updated or checked over because of how inconsequential it was.
I'll corroborate that it's possible to have obtained a cart containing a not-for-retail build and not realized. I still own a copy of Jet Force Gemini with a "NOT FOR RESALE" label on it (which I didn't notice as a 14-year-old kid...). You can get as far as the second level, where one of the panels to free the last hostage isn't there, so it softlocks. I believe it was meant for demo only. Wouldn't be too surprised if this story were true.
@@himethisismethat was probably for store demos and manufactured for that purpose. The idea that an early build leaked into the retail manufacturing is much less likely
@@toddjenkins2561 Maybe. It doesn't seem super unrealistic that an early build might have wound up in circulation somehow, either from a round of QA or from a store demo copy shipped before the release date. I know the dev cycle wasn't nearly as tight in the 90s as it is now, but it was still possible that the build was altered in the weeks before release.
@@himethisisme agree, not impossible, just saying that an intended created cart is different and known. I know Ocarina had multiple versions released so maybe the first 100 in a certain factory had mickey still in or something. Def possible. Maybe it was a last second removal for copyright concerns
@@toddjenkins2561 I completely agree. Definitely plausible but not confirmed by any stretch.
I thought this was going to be some clickbait nonsense, but there's a lot of substance to this. I subbed, keep up the good job bro! ❤🎮🕹
A thought, since this wasn't made clear in the video. Since we know of one location the graffiti exists in the xbla version, has anyone gone back to the different n64 rom versions that exist and check if that location still has an extra texture in that location?
It's possible that when noticed, the developer could have simply removed the pointer for the correct texture, resulting in a transparent texture that still exists in the code. This could help confirm if the texture was ever in that location on any released rom.
My friends, it just keeps happening... or does it?!
If the graffiti did exist in a pre-release version of the game, it's possible that there was a leak and there were people out there who made "fake" Goldeneye cartridges using this old build of the game.
I'm basing this on a story about people who did a similar thing in the 90s by buying cheaper Gameboy games, deleting the data, and uploading Pokemon Red to them for resale.
I was thinking the same thing, sometimes bootlegers will even find unused code in the game and re add it and try to use that as a selling point for the boot leg, like this version has features that the real one doesn't have.
17:50 That happened to me too, I'm also from the UK. The first time I emulated Goldeneye I was confused when there weren't four 007 files by default, I wrote it off as a difference between the NTSC and PAL versions
Me too! I'm Canadian though...but my uncle got it for me for Christmas and it was still in the original packaging. I had no idea this wasn't normal! I just assumed the developers gave us a file labeled "007" with all cheats unlocked as a bit of a joke - like 007 had played this game himself and beaten everything with ease
@@pukipwner Dude, same here honestly and I'm from Australia
Another fascinating video, Goose. I'm always eager to see this kind of content of video game mysteries.
Thank you Ludosus! The N64 Iceberg will be coming soon!
Talking about rare phenomenon in the game reminded me of the time one of those weird things happened in one of my old N64 cartridges, albeigh not with GE but with Diddy Kong Racing. I clearly remember one day I went to play just a couple races in Track Mode and I saw all the races from the final world, the Space Stage (idk the correct name) were unlocked. It was a huge shock because I was never able to beat Wizpig and therefore never was able to unlock those tracks as you were supposed to. I played all those stages for hours, since that was something I had always wanted to unlock, and was very sad when I realized they would probably be gone the next time I had to turn off the console. And I was correct, once I turned it off they were never unlocked again. I tried replicating that glitch but it never occurred again.
I can totally envision this happening, it's like the "opposite" of when the game deletes your save files, but they come back after a reset. I wonder what causes it? It's so strange. Thank you for sharing!!
@@GamerFolklore Cosmic rays.
Great vid, would love to see more of these. I agree with your 1st theory, guy saw that image and simply got his wires crossed when seeing the Mickey image, causing his original memory to be Mickey. Doesn't explain the location difference though...
I am reminded of the Tick Tock Clock "upwarp" phenomenon on SM64. The working theory is that a cosmic ray flipped a single bit of data which caused Mario to warp up the way he did. If this specific graffiti asset was toggled on and off using a binary flag, then could it be a working theory also that a cosmic ray caused Mickey Mouse to appear?
Damn, I've just envisioned a future where speerunners spend a million hours playing a level omitting an objective, praying for the cosmos to literally align and flip the specific bit relating to said objective. "Calle W Jr gets a 0:52 completion on Dam SA after 20,000 hours invested".
The problem with this is that the art is actually stored as two separate textures, so a bit flip would have to occur twice in an incredibly specific way
@@dekufiremage7808 Ah, I see, so not a working idea then. Thanks for clearing that up. What about the notion that a limited supply of beta cartridges were released (possibly by mistake) which contained a few non-final level designs? Unlikely, but possible nonetheless, although these cartridges would probably have had unique "NUS" serial IDs
@dynagamerproductions8249 It's either that, simple mismemory from seeing that other red and black texture combined with the mickey mouse blog posts, or thirdly just an outright lie from someone wanting to craft a Mandela Effect story
The version of GoldenEye 007 that was released was technically a ROM hack of the version submitted to Nintendo for final certification. While the game was undergoing said last-minute testing, an issue was discovered with the game's memory that caused glitches in the textures featured in the Frigate level. To combat this, programmer Mark Edmonds wrote a tool to extract the game's code and data from the ROM, adjusted the hex values in the game's memory to improve the performance in the level, recompressed it, and directly added it back into the ROM image without recompiling. This version was sent back to Nintendo and certified for release as the final version of the game... someone should have asked OP what country he was from. If from the UK or Japan, much higher likelihood of development chain of custody shenanigans. I am curious if there are ROM region differences with the textures.
That's super fascinating.
OP here, Cart was purchased winter of 1997 around Christmas time on a local toys R-Us in south Texas, NTSC along with the n64. Nothing special about it except they were out of stock everywhere and got lucky at the last minute. The cart came in a normal box nothing out of the ordinary. I truly believe this is a Mandela effect, otherwise someone would of uploaded a rom version online already.
here is the most likely explanation... he had a bootleg cart that used a beta version of Goldeneye which is the same version used as the basis for the XBLA remaster.
at a fleamarket I used to go to as a kid every Saturday, there was a guy who on occasion sold games ahead of launch, and they were almost always bootleg repros with beta versions on them. he sold Pokemon Gold/Silver weeks before eu launch and the versions he sold were super buggy alpha versions, where your PC boxes would completely glitch out any Pokémon you stored in your boxes. so you'd store a hoothoot lvl 10 and sometimes it turned into a level 99 Lugia n shit.
so yeah, I know first hand that leaked beta/alpha repros of Nintendo published games existed in the early 2000s... so it is 100% plausible that the guy got a repro of a beta version. and the XBLA version having the texture enabled almost confirms it imo, since it shows at one point the texture was enabled by Rare.
That's interesting about the gold/silver bootlegs...I swear that I rented (yes, you could rent portable games at fucking Blockbuster back about 24 years ago) a version of Pokemon Silver that had a skateboard, as well, and you could clearly see the character scooting himself around, 1 foot on the skateboard. Later, I see that there was an unused skateboard back when the beta of Gold and Silver was leaked, and my brain immediately jumped to that strange memory I had. It may be unrelated, but yeah.
@@DonnyKirkMusic the one I and my friends had was easy to identify as a bootleg, the cart was black and pretty cheap plastic. it didn't have a skateboard tho, it was just a very buggy version of Gold and Silver 😭
It would be interesting if Goose could ask OP if he remembered the cart coming in a retail box, or any other information about it's origin.
Is it possible that it does appear in the vanilla game, but theres something(s) you have to do to get it to appear and no one noticed? Ive seen a similar thing in fnaf 2 where a certain puppet render gets labeled as "unused" but in reality it just flashes by so fast that people dont see it
You'd think the the pre-cheated-in-the-box cartridge would be an example of factory testing. Every (say) 10000 carts, they'd pluck a cart off the assembly line and see if it works. Such a task could possibly get boring for the guy who had to do it, and maybe they just happened to mess around with a gameshark that time. Once the cart is verified, it's put back in the line to be packaged and sold.
They'd never need to manually play a cart to test it, they'd just scan its contents to make sure it was byte-for-byte identical with the master copy.
Such a verification step is standard with any EEPROM burn I've ever done, so I would be shocked if it weren't part of the game cartridge manufacturing process and applied to literally every single ROM chip they made.
Using things like a gameshark doesn't modify the ROM (read-only memory), so it would have to do with save data, which I find very unlikely that there's a flag to make that graffito appear.
He's talking about the files not mickey mouse pretty sure & I agree with him. Sure something can scan out fine but testing a game every hour or so as they print or even more frequently makes a heck of a lot of sense & they just forgot to delete the save.
I wonder if a cart-tilt glitch could cause the textures to appear? I know that, though rare, people have been able to get access to the Arwing ship in OoT with tilting the cartridge in the console while it's running.
I can't say I ever saw that while playing. Strangest thing I do remember is getting enemies to pull out DD44's by wounding them. Thanks for the lore as always bud.
Scientists do that.
even stranger- very rarely they even pulled a grenade lol
Your logo/pfp is awesome. I haven't seen a more stylish one on CZcams, and I'm including most top brands as well not just random CZcamsrs.
Great theories! I imagine it was released intentionally as an Easter egg. You would be the coolest kid on the block with that cartridge. I am eagerly awaiting the next video!!
6:15 proves the guy right.
"bu... bu... but it only looks similar!"
Yes, let's assume it's not the Mickey texture, show me the other texture that could be mistaken for Mickey then... There isn't one.
So, the guy was right, you all missed it and he did not, that texture is indeed Mickey.
Look at the footage (in this video) of the XBLA Mickey and look at him switching back and forth between old and new textures, focus on Mickey's thumb... See how higher rez it looks in the old build?!
Now imagine the Mickey texture on 64, seen on a composite CRT... That would have looked like Mickey
Would be pretty funny if the devs somehow got the publishers to print a few cartridges with Mickey just for shits and giggles.
Or like it's triggered in a weird way
that's like those memes where someone has a ridiculous encounter with a famous person and they say "try and tell people, they'll never believe you."
Correct me if I am wrong, but in the days when game carts used Mask ROMS, wouldn't it have been really hard (prohibitively uneconomical) to have just a couple of the ROMS be different? Since you need a new mask to create a different version of the ROM, you would certainly make an entire production run of that ROM version from any given mask, not just a few one-offs.
Good stuff Goose, enjoyed this one a lot.
If the XBLA had Mickey it implies that he was in it late into development as they would have likely been working with as close to release code as they could get. So if a pre-release build got stolen and pirated it might have had Mickey in it. Back in the day piracy was harder to do but it did happen and the pirated versions were often sold as normal versions by smaller retail stores.
The fact that the textures are actually in the game files makes me wonder if this some kind of undiscovered easter egg, where a specific set of conditions would cause it to load into the level.
Thats what I was thinking. Like the extremely unlikely event with the rabbit on toilet in grunty industries in banjo tooie
see the pinned comment, seems like that would be impossible since it isn't coded to load into the level at all.
I believe it was a glitch, I had a friend that had it. When I later bought the game from him he deleted all his saves and I never saw it on my play throughs.
@@tsiefhtes I beleive it. Stranger things have happened. People are still discovering new things from 20+ year old games to this day. The textures are there, so its hard to just pass this off as a mandella effect.
When I read the title of this video I thought, "oh yeah, I forgot there was a Mickey mouse in the Depot level" and I was fairly sure I had seen it. I think what actually happened is I read somewhere that there was a Mickey mouse graffiti and I saw the image of it online. Then I went and looked through the level but never found it. I didn't know it wasn't really there, pretty sure I just got bored of looking. It's easy to invent memories and then go on believing that they're real.
It doesn't seem too far fetched that somehow a few copies of an early version of the game slipped through the cracks. I wonder if there were any other inconsistencies on that game cartridge.
This video has opened my eyes. My brother, cousin and I would all play an N64 that my parents got us second hand. It came in the original box but you could tell someone had been in it. I thought nothing of it until this post.
Some of the videos Goose has done has happened to me. The mickey mouse one happened to us. Among other things. We didn't have anything to mess with the code personally. Our cart could access the other bond characters in multiplayer (with a few inputs, ) giving us access to Connery etc.
This N64 was given away a few years later. I bought another one myself a years after that. I have never been able to find or replicate any of the strange things since. Conclusion: it was either the cart and the console that was unique or altered in some way. I can only apologise that I don't have the original hardware I once had to check for sure.
6:15 I think one could perceive this very much for a mickey mouse, especially if you look for it. His ears are to the right, the face s white looking to the left. Looks like he's yawning or sticking his fist into his mouth. It's just way too close to the searched graphic to not confuse them them if you've seen it before.
This does seem to be odd cuz I think I remember the Mickey mouse in the original N64. I was big into graffiti when I was a teenager so I would look around in games at the graffiti. I haven't played the N64 version in over a decade but I can replay it and see if it's in there I still have my original cartridge.
Please do.
I remember a Mickey Mouse graffiti on this level. Didnt know this was a thing. I still have the same cartridge game. Will definitely check this out next time i travel back to visit my parents.
Please update us!!
@@seanissomething will do but I won't be flying to parents until at least Christmas. I'm hoping this is not a mismemory 🤞
commenting to see what happens
Pretty cool Christmas will be here soon
Following for updates
My brother to this day still recalls the time he was playing frigate and Xenia and the helicopter pilot appeared,I remember him constantly replaying that level trying to get it to trigger again.
For years, I searched for a room in Jurassic Park for SNES... it had 2 generators in it. I had seen it many times when I was a kid but could only ever find the room with a single generator as an adult. It drove me nuts for years and I played several physical and emulated copies trying to find it. I began questioning my sanity/memory but then one day I found it: A screenshot on the back of the box, presumably from an earlier build before release. It isn't in the game but I had seen that box so many times, it had burned into my mind as a kid.
I remember the KF7 Soviet looking more like a real AK on the back of the actual box art of goldeneye. I always thought that version looked better.
~ M Y F R I E N D S ~
It just.... Keeps.... happening...
I'm gonna believe whichever is the most fun to believe, if I'm honest. Life is too short to pick the most likely, realistic scenario for why someone remembers a texture in a video being there when it isn't. More fun to believe some unfinished build got out with Mickey Mouse intact and that someone at the factory 100%ed Goldeneye and then put it back in its box to be sold as brand new. Really interesting video as always!
there HAVE been instances of employees at stores taking games, playing them, and then repackaging them with shrink wrap.
I strongly remember being at my neighbors house when I we were 7 years old and my friend Nick saying, "psh.. mickey mouse? that's gey!" and blasting it while I was asking him for the controller.
So I think I have a simple explanation. OP saw this 6:20 for years, and between playing the game back in the days and posting on reddit about mickey Mouse - he also stumbled upon the article on Cutting Room Floor and simply mixed 6:20 with the image on CRF page. I mean, they ARE similar. Goose says the image at 6:20 does not resemble Mickey Mouse in the slightest, but I disagree. It looks very much like that MM image only flipped horizontally and without the hat, and some details about the hands position are different, but... it DOES look like some cartoon character, and is mostly white and red. I know I would sure mix up these two images in my mind and convince myself that I saw that Mickey Mouse graffiti from CRF page in my game back in '97.
EDIT: Oh. So yeah, basically, what Goose says at 13:50 :D
EDIT 2: This might be my second favorite video on the channel from now on. The first will always be about the Perfect Dark ghost. Was it ever seen after the video went live? Is the Chicago Ghost Case solved?
Two conclusions of mine: 1. I'd say the developers put the true Fantasia Mickey graffiti in the game but it got removed in development due to copyright issues, so they replaced it with the 6:21 lookalike graffiti as a joke (it looks like Mickey sticking his tongue out). The original graffiti lived on in code, which is why it ended up in the XBLA version. 2. OP saw it through a gameshark in the 90s. I know he said he didn't own a gameshark, but possibly he did and has forgotten, or his brother got the gameshark and OP didn't know.
Thanks again Ryan for the infinite wisdom.
I believe I seen it I’ll ask my brothers all 5 of us played this a lot , maybe it was early copies
It's funny, the instant I saw the image on your video I knew exactly which crate to at.
I used an Action Replay Pro back then.
I'm the guy who originally made the code to unlock all the multi-player characters to spare you the long push button code sequence.
I'm gonna have to get the N64 out of storage and look into this.
It's possible that something that the OP did during his playthrough of the level somehow caused the image to be loaded. Perhaps it was assumed by the devs to be completely disabled but there may have been one or two ways the image could still be enabled, such as loading the level textures and geometry from a certain place on the map that might have been unusual for most players.
I had a similar to Mandela effect type situation happen to me a few year ago.
Basically when i was a kid around 1987 or so i played Rush'N Attack in the arcades. I fell in love with the game and one day a friend of mine told me he had Rush'N Attack on the NES. I didn't belive him, but sure enough he had it and lent it to me and naturally loved it as well.
Then one day another friend of mine lent me a Nintendo strategy guide. While going through it, i found there was a small section for Rush'N Attack which indicated a secret underground passageway on a particular level, after blowing up some mines, it even had some screenshots.
I was amazed as i never saw that in the game and immediately fired up my NES and went in search of that passageway.
After reaching the location in the screenshot, to my dissapointment i was unable to reveal the ladder to the secret underground level. Didn't know if i was doing something wrong or if it was at a different place. I kept going back to the game again and again to see if i could somehow have missed something? but it was pretty straightforward. Reach a specific set of mines on what appeared to be level 4, blow them up and the ladder should be there.
So after a while i returned the strategy guide to my friend. And while i did eventually purchase my own copy of Rush'N Attack, i was never able to find those levels.
As time went by I gave up on looking for those levels and then forgot about it.
Then around the early 2000's when information about Nintendo games and strategy's were starting to show up on the internet. I remembred the Rush'N Attack secret and thought maybe someone has the definiteve tip on this and maybe it was done differently than what the guide indicated? So i started searching and searching but couldn't find anything referencing that particular secret.
I even started asking my friends about it but nobody recalled ever seeing that secret ladder and the underground passageway.
I wanted to get my hands on that guide again but by then I couldn't remember the name of it that eventually started thinking maybe i imagined it all?
After searching the internet for weeks i came up on a particular strategy guide that seemed very very familiar. It was called "The Official Nintendo Players guide". I thought to myself this was it! This was the guide that will prove if i was right or if my imagination played tricks on me!
So i immediately went throught the process of purchasing and could't wait to verify if this was in fact that book.
A few days went by and my package arrived, i carefully went through it as to not miss anything, but it was becoming more and more familair with each page i turned confirming this was the correct guide.
I finally reached the Rush'N Attack... and sure enough the infamous secret passageway was there!
I read thoroughly, but again there was no special method just straightforward. Blow the mines up on what seemed level 4 in a specific area and reveal the ladder.
By that time there were emulators so i started searching for different versions online with no luck.
I even started purchasing different revisions of it for the NES, i believe there are 3 one was A the other B and one third one i can't remember but i do have them all. But have never been able to find any differences with them.
Researching for days i was finally able to solve the mystery!
After emulating different games for the famicom. I was not able to find Rush N attack for it BUT i did notice that the famicom disk system version of games had differences in them, so after searching a bit more i came upon Green Beret which was the actual name of the game in Japan.
Downloaded, played, reached the section, blew up the mines and sure enough the ladder and the underground passegaway was there!
After many many years i was able to get to the bottom of this! i wasn't crazy after all!
Turns out the guide never mentions this particular detail and when it was made they obviously played the famicom disk version of the game and probably did not know that for the NES that particular area would be removed. Don't know the exact reason but i assume to save memory.
Anyways if you want to verify for yourself, below is the link to the guide and it is on page 93.
archive.org/details/The_Official_Nintendo_Players_Guide_1987/mode/2up
As for the N64 Mickey sprite in this video i would say, what if OP had a very particular version of that game? as one key detail is that he remembers it vividly. Had he used GS or something else he would probably remember that as well. So i would say maybe attempt to track that cartridge down even if he sold it and then verify as it could be a one of a kind cartridge.
Holy smokes! That was a great story. I'm glad you managed to "solve" the mystery in the end. Your hypothesis sounds right, they played the JP version and didn't know the secret wouldn't cross over. Very intriguing, thank you for sharing!!
@@GamerFolklore Thank you! I did have a friend have a genuine Mandela Effect with the game Simon's Quest which in itself was very cryptic and mysterious but that's probably a story for another day. 😄
The most plausible explanation is that the op's memory is bad like most humans and they were a dumb kid when they 'experienced' this
Just past 17:10, you mention youre not sure if the code would still be active after the gameshark was removed, like the n64 cart could be permanently changed by the gs or not. I had a gameshark for both n64 and gameboy color back in the day, me and my brother would mess around with both all the time. Never had it happen on the n64 that i remember, but for sure remember that our copy of pokemon yellow on gameboy got completely corrupted from using the gameshark. The gameshark permanently altered the gameboy cart so that pikachu who follows u everywhere in that game, would only loosely follow u, and randomly would dash across across the screen very fast lol. So id totally believe a gameshark could f with the memory on an n64 cart permanently, i saw it happen on a gameboy cart, why not. Great video as usual thanks
Thanks for sharing! I agree that a Gameshark could have permanent effects, but I wasn't sure. Always cool to hear additional stories supporting this thesis.
I personally believe the 3rd explanation where OP had some weird early build cartridge... This reminds me of your vid about the PD Chicago ghost
I'm of the same opinion
Who knows, maybe Rare had to put an early build on the first batch of carts bc the game wasnt 100% totally done (all bugs worked out and such) by launch date. Or maybe some lawyer got wind of such cross contamination and the code of all subsequent cartridges produced (the majority of production) didnt have mickey
I've posted two sets of comments: a general comment and a response (one set was via my mobile account, but nothing was there after selecting 'newest first'). The second set was posted after refreshing the page, but they vanished once I edited them with weblinks. I'll just put that the character at 6:16 is by a graffiti artist called Mode2, printed in the book 'Spray Can Art'.
Well I see this one! So thank you 🙂
I wonder if there could have perhaps been an extremely small batch that may have used a rom that had mickey mouse, but then they used the correct rom on all subsequent batches. If that is the case, there could be some extremely rare and collectable 007 carts sitting in peoples attacks and the only way to know is to boot it up and look for this sprite.
Have you considered the Not for Resale version of Goldeneye? Perhaps that cartridge has the same (or similar) build as the XBOX leak and OP unknowingly had it.
EDIT:
I've read that there are no differences between most NFRs and their released versions, but it would be super interesting to have an expert like yourself get an ISO of the NFR and compare it to V1.0.0 of the game.
GE007 NFR has been verified to be US retail build sadly :(
Odd manufacturing mistakes do sometimes happen. I've not really heard of it effecting date on cartridges, but who knows? I once bought a commercial VHS tape (one of the Neon Genesis: Evangelion series) that had no 'tape' inside, just the clear lead going from one reel straight to another.
That’s like when I had a gold bar in school and it’s supposed to be caramac gold surrounded by biscuit but this one day it turned out to be solid golden chocolate. I was elated.
6:17
I'm assuming OP saw that and agreed it's not what he's remembering? Cuz if I saw that anf made a mental note of it in elementary school and then just thought about it as an adult I'd def call it and remember it as mickey.
Are we certain there wasn't an early (but publicly released) version that had it? Maybe one of the devs snuck it in, but it was caught soon after launch and taken out? Just a thought/theory.
Roms often come with checksums. These are long numbers that are calculated based on the exact byte sequence of the ROM, and serve as a kind of fingerprint to the ROM. They are used to verify that the ROM you're getting is exactly byte-for-byte what you think you're getting and not a forgery or a corrupted file. Even a single bit or byte difference in the ROM file will produce a completely different checksum. So if there are different versions of the ROM floating around, they would have different checksums. If anyone ever ripped a cart with the graffiti visible, the checksum for that cart's ROM would be completely different than other carts.
The GameShark theory is very much possible. I use to hack N64 games with my GameShark. The main games I hacked were No Mercy, Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark is hell to hack with a GameShark btw. Anyways, there are certain codes that can permanently change the state of game after the GameShark was removed. No Mercy, there is a way to permanently delete main roster wrestlers with a GameShark. I used it to delete wrestlers I had no intention of ever using. This is fact! So theoretically the same can be done with Goldeneye. Whoever has my n64 copy of No Mercy must have wondered why half the roster wasn't there. Lol
I got a brand new copy of ocarina of time when I was a kid and it had a fully completed save file. All items, hearts, and skulltulas. It’s been breaking my brain for over 20 years as to how or why that was. It was brand new from the local video game store in maybe the year 2000. I remember getting ocarina of time, perfect dark, and 007 the world is not enough the same day and when I tried ocarina of time, it had a completed save file. I still have the cartridge and it does still work but obviously that save file was deleted over the years.
You fail to mention some possibilities. They would fit in with the rare phenomena. Glitch and EasterEgg.
Glitch would be that, somehow his RAM got corrupt and changed some values... leading to one of those containers showing that image instead of the normal one.
EasterEgg would be that, there is some obscure sequence of events that can be performed in the game that activate showing that image as an easter egg.
I know the game is partly decomped right now. And a lot of looking has gone into finding glitches in the game. So it may seem like "if there was such a glitch or easyer egg we would know about it". Maybe thats true, but at the very least it would be worth mentioning in this video.
Beyond that... I guess theres another option not mentioned. He didn't have a GameShark... but that doesnt mean someone he knew didn't. Maybe he played it at his friends house, they had a GS, and he forgot.
Could be like the Mario 64 upboost that happened during that one speedrun. Neutrinos from the sun flipped the coding in real time to make the graffiti visible.
This is honestly my theory as well (maybe a gamma ray burst instead of neutrinos but regardless, something shot out from the sun)
It's definitely a good theory.
Yeah neutrinos pass through the game's memory every second of every day and the enormously-vast majority do absolutely nothing.
Though from what I understand, this explanation, while technically possible, is more often used as a sort of short-hand for "the cartridge got tilted by accident and they didn't notice".
But there's a problem. If OP says that he encountered the texture many times and not just once, glitches (and I mean the original meaning of the word: a short-lived, usually externally-caused random error) would be extra-ordinarily unlikely as an explanation. It's plausible for a jerked crooked cartridge to create noise on the data lines and corrupt memory such that the texture would appear.
It's not nearly as plausible for the same chip glitching to bug the game in such a way that it *always* displays the texture even after power-cycling, since the required changes to memory would be a lot more complex.
@@kargaroc386 So of course I'm just speculating but I think of it this way: the cartridge got tilted/glitched/neutrino-whatever once and it happened to be that OP noticed the Mickey Mouse graffiti that day. He took a moment to sort of marvel at it, let's say, and then moved along.
Now, maybe it never appeared again but he just always assumed it was there? And now, years later, his memory of the one time he saw it FEELS like he saw it many times. I hope I'm making sense.
Neutrinos don’t interact with matter on a level high enough to do that. You are thinking high energy space particles, such as gamma rays.
It is indeed possible in the case of a cartridge, that a realtime memory editor could permanently change a value on the cartridge itself due to the somewhat unique way cartridge based consoles work with regards to RAM and cartridge ROM. Keeping in mind that the great majority of codes were made by people who were aware of this and so they worked fine with no ill effects, but some times less experienced users would get ahold of the proper PC hardware and start poking around, find some addresses, and post codes on forums and whatnot that would absolutely and permanently alter, bork, or outright brick cartridges. Plenty (probably the majority) of Gameshark users who used Interact-made codes probably remember the GS working fine without ever borking a cart.
The QD reason - the way Nintendo cart systems work is to have amount of RAM in the system, and then add a portion (or sometimes all) of the cartridge to the RAM allocation when the console is started with a cart in. So like, the N64 has 4MB of RDRAM physically present, and then you pop in GE which is a 96Mbit rom, so 12MB. The system then thinks it has 16MB, and boots whatever is at the start of the "RAM" above 4GB. Of course it only ever reads data from that area, as the programmers know that the area above 4GB is actually cart ROM, and thus wont program anything to write to that area. Except it also means that the memory is visible to the scanners used with Gameshark type devices, so you CAN find the addresses for things. You can then overwrite the values, but what actually happens at this point varies widely. I'm sure there is some that determines how it is handled, but I never got far enough into the N64 to figure out what that was. The practical results could be any of:
it works, like GS works for CD systems, and the values are not saved, and everything is happy and continues working until some other user-initiated stupidity kills it, or maybe natural causes.
It doesnt work, but nothing is changed or damaged.
It doesnt work, but the cart is borked thereafter.
It "works" for the duration of the first play session it was used in, and it borks the cartridge after that.
It "works" for the duration of the play session, and then it is always that value. MANY users who encountered this thought "well ok Ill just gameshark it back to the default" but this instead resulted in a cartridge shaped paperweight as well. The reason for this is also unknown to me.
I never messed with GE, so I have no idea how it treated this type of access, nor if the addresses that could make the grafitti change are on the cart or in actual RAM, but the possibility at least exists. Generally, the actual RAM was used specifically for things that needed to change (natch) so it is in fact likely that references to art assets would stay in the CART ROM. Also I have no idea what portion(s) of the GE cart are allocated as RAM, using the full 12MB as example was just for illustrative purposes.
possibly a counterfeit cart, modified copy protection accidentally re enabling the texture
TIER 5: THE DEPTHS - EVERY COPY OF GOLDENEYE 64 IS PERSONALIZED
G14 classified, thats a good rush hour reference
I had a similar experience happen to me in the late 90's after beating Oot for the first time with my two older brothers, no they don't remember the events I'm about to recount as i do sadly.
How I remember things playing out when we reset the game after the credits is us eagerly jumping back into our save and checking the status screen to see if the Triforce was lit up sort of like a confirmation for beating the game, and it was. I can't express enough how satisfying it was seeing the Triforce pulsing golden light emanating a blue glow from it's center. It was such a perfect way to cap off an amazing game. It wasn't until booting the game a few years later and checking out our old save file that I noticed the Triforce wasn't lit, at that time when asking my brothers about it they were unsure if it ever was. That day when I didn't see the Triforce lite has been an upsetting moment in the back of my head, thinking about it even now it's weird that most Zelda games to my knowledge have had some confirmation for beat the game but Oot does not. Where things get interesting though is assets for an early version of Oot were found on an F-Zero X development cartridge, among them were assets for early status screen elements one of which being that of the Triforce. I can die happy having found something that's been missing most of my life was actually in the game a some point. It gives me an early feeling seeing it, like that of a cold case finally being solved after 20 years.
Call it false memory it very well is. but a fun way I like to think about it is if quantum immortality is real and we can't truly die then maybe our lives infinitely repeat over and over but with subtle differences each time we come around. I want to believe that in a past life I did see the Triforce and it was such a profound moment that it overwrote the disappointment of not seeing it in this one. Our brains tend to remember the highlights of amusement park like being on rides not the waiting in line for hours.
I was with you until the "quantum immortality" stuff
The Triforce in the menu screen really SHOULD have been lit up at some point in the game;
it looks weird and underwhelming how it is always greyed out, and it would have looked awesome if it actually were filled in with the Triforce.
I actually kinda agree with quantum immortality. At least, I've experienced things that make me think about it. Anyways, great story, and thanks for sharing it!!
Another Great video Goose :) the fruit of the loom logo did have a cornucopia.... But with this claimed mandela effect I gotta say I doubt it honestly I think the cart was tilted.
Indeed bring us more videos of this nature and I hope all is good in real life if it isnt I hope it gets better.
BTW south park about to go ham disney tomorrow night lol
Memories can be very deceptive. I randomly saw a YT video about the shop keeper from Clash At Demonhead and was flooded with nostalgia. It looked familiar but not quite right. I swore ANOTHER game had the only shopkeeper in the game hidden in a waterfall with the same layout and UI. I made some posts on Reddit, watched more videos, found nothing and still swore it was a different game. Eventually I saw the box art for the game and it clicked. I played the game at my mom's friends house on her sons NES while he was at school. I was still too young to go to school so of course the memories was hazy.... All this to say I would've bet anything the memory I had that made little sense was absolutely more real then the proof i had on front of my face.
Another possibility, how complex of a room hack is needed? Could a random manufacturing defect or bit flip change a cartridge enough?
As far as why it’s there in the XBLA version, when they chose a code branch as foundation for the project, they wouldn’t have chosen the retail release with all debug code removed as well as any inside dev jokes cleaned up for release like Mickey Mouse. You touched on this in the video, but this confirms that the Mickey Mouse would’ve been there until just before they prepped for retail release.
As for OPs memory, it’s either him misremembering that other graffiti you pointed out in the video, GameShark, or he saw the Mickey Mouse more recently but his memory is telling him he saw it long ago. I’ve experienced something like that before.
Another idea is you’ve checked all the retail carts you could, but what about when you start activating cheats in the cheat menu if one or a combo of them triggers the Mickey Mouse either as a side effect bug or intentionally. It would be a lot of work to check that but another possibility.
So one thing I remember about the gameshark is that there were codes to unlock the hidden bond picture assets on the character screen and after the gameshark was removed they remained. Maybe this is a save flag?
Theory 3 is definitely more believable than a change in space-time making Mickey disappear from Goldeneye, but knowing how the brain can get memories so very wrong I still think Theory 1 is probably the most likely. The brain is very open to suggestion especially when trying to call up an old memory, it will fill in any gaps the best it can
I have never played Goldeneye, but could it be possible that the graffiti appears by a (currently) unknown easter egg?
There was a similar thing with "Mario's Early Years: Fun With Numbers" on the SNES where an easter egg went undiscovered for over 25 years, to the point people thought it was some weird cut content, which involved clicking a very specific pixel, to activate the easter egg of the developers' heads singing. Don't think it's entirely out of the question OP did something that triggered it that he has no idea of.
Could also be a slightly earlier cartridge release too, especially if it OP got theirs on release.
I remember buying used games in the days of cartridge memory could be interesting to say the least.
My goldeneye had every cheat unlocked, and my pokemon was broken because the previous owner captured missingno, causing all sorts of crazy glitches.
Perhaps its possible that the memory was modified with a game shark?
Does your Red also have a bunch of pokemon with regular names but their picture is Mew? And a Gyarados with Fly?
One of my biggest regrets for a long time was getting rid of my lime gbc. Pretty sure you could fix that cart but might have needed a gameshark to do so.
Another Rare-developed game series, Banjo Kazooie, had the idea of using cartridge swapping to keep data in the console's memory and apply to a different game cart. This is, as I understand it, possible because if you swap cartridges without turning the console off, some data remains in the console's memory and can interfere with the new cartridge inserted afterward. It is a possibility that OP did this at some point, with the right/wrong data in console memory causing the mickey texture to be loaded instead of another.
Hotswapping like this is used in speedruns of Paper Mario on the N64 where an Ocarina of Time cart is used to execute arbitrary code so we know the effects can be both powerful and weird. OP doing this on a smaller scale by accident is more than possible.
It may be worth exploring the various different retail versions of the cartridge game, as all it takes is one revision to have enabled this texture or not. Doesn't necessarily need to be the "launch version", but there's the possibility of a dev could have unintentionally enabled the texture when bug fixing or patching later revisions of the game... This is a common occurrence in coding where when you attempt to fix a bug or correct some coding, you may inadvertently without your knowledge cause new bugs or unintended effects to sprout up elsewhere in the code.. So for example, a dev could have been trying to fix some misaligned or bad texture somewhere in the game but in doing so caused a hidden/moved texture to appear elsewhere.
An alternative avenue is early emulation of the N64.. dunno about you, but most friends I knew who owned a game console and gamed on PC back in the late 90s, also were into downloading roms and emulators. and if you used emulators back in the late 90s or early 2000s, you should remember how unstable, buggy, or not a 1:1 emulation of the original hardware or just the emulator itself enabling hidden things, which may have resulted in things like unused texture assets to appear.
Lastly the third other possibility not mentioned: Easter Egg. Maybe on a certain date/time or maybe some sort of special condition need to be met to trigger this texture to appear as an undocumented easter egg. Fantasia was released on November 13, 1940, may be worth trying to change the internal clock on the N64 to sometime around the 60th anniversary, as that seems like an obvious possibility if it is indeed some sort of easter egg
The decal you found looks like the two mickey textures overlayed ontop each other, one upside down and flipped.
is there any news in the goldeneye speedrunning scene? I think last time I heard of an UWR was Aztec?
There's not been much. Some Facility WR stuff, I've been thinking about making a video about it in November!
It’s probably a case of misremembering. I think OP saw the graffiti that looks like Mickey (because let’s be honest, they look very similar) and then discovered the actual Mickey graffiti when doing a deep dive look at the game’s files. Interesting to find out about that Mickey shit, never knew it was not only in the game’s files but on the XBLA port too
it is Mickey! You say "it looks similar", okay... Point to the texture that isn't Mickey and looks like it!
The one shown at 6:15 in the video is Mickey, because there is simply no other texture to achieve what you've seen on screen.
@17:50 Somewhat similar story here. Had nearly forgotten about it. No one has ever believed me, but for what it's worth: My brother and I received the game factory-sealed one faithful Christmas eve. We played it for the following two nights alternating with OoT. When awakening the next morning, I noticed an all new save file. For the first time I saw the heading "Cheats". Upon opening up level select I was treated to the view of all the stages up and to Jungle, unlocked and completed on Double Agent, and I also had access to all the possible cheats up to that point .My brother, albeit older than I, would not have had the skillz to unlock all those cheats (I believe Surface was the last stage we had gotten to), nor did he have friends over. Truly an odd mystery. :-/
I had the Mickey too, I remember showing my neighbour who didn’t have it on his. I got it in 97/98 maybe? The cartridge came with a full complete file and all cheats/levels unlocked on the first save without me having played. I’m guessing it was a certain build. I wish I still had the cartridge, it was PAL if that matters.
Could this be an instance of versioning? Like the 1.0 OoT fire temple music? Or could it be about instancing? Like certain save file, certain difficulty, with certain cheats on, or specific settings on 007 mode? Maybe the right combination throws some instance where it’s visible.
My suspicion would be OP accidentally ended up with an early build cartridge. Maybe something sent out for journalists to review or an internal copy at Nintendo or Rare. It's not unheard of for copies meant for internal use to slip into the second hand market. The used game market wasn't established back then and was very wild west. The fact the leaked XBL version has the graffiti in the level in a spot matching OP's description is really strong evidence for me. They must've used a similar early build as the base for the XBL port.
I would think that particular copy of their game contained a different build version on the game cart that had this texture visible in the game. Because there were multiple build version releases for each region so some things will be different between different game carts and some of them had this texture visible, but in some builds the code which displays this texture has a random chance of showing it maybe? Some games were able to have random textures displayed for certain things each time you load the levels it changes.
Man I wish OP still had that original cart. So curious. Very mysterious happenings, Goose!
I have played GoldenEye on the GameCube my old friend had once and he frequently used a GaneShark on it but the Mickey was still there when the system was reset. I think there was a way to activate it or a bug that causes it.
What seems most obvious to me, is that as rare as it is, a realworld enviromental phenomenal of some kind flipped a single bit in the the n64 runtime memory at the right point and caused the game to load the next or previous texture, and that on the same night, OP and his bro were like "damn look at this" enough to solidify it in their memory. More likely than those other theories imo.
This is why I love CZcams.
There is no other home for 20min of obscure gaming stuff :)
I have another interesting story, 20+ years ago my friend told me once he had found a weird gun he had never seen before in Archives, ive spent hours trying to find it never found it
That sounds truly amazing, a classic playground rumor.
Mickey mouse in 007? I don't think he was *ONTO* something, I think he was *ON* something