This article is from WeChat official account:Big Data Digest (ID: BigDataDigest) , author: Liu Junhuan, Yang , from FIG title: “Zelda: wilderness interest”
After playing Nintendo for so many years, is your opening method really correct?
For example, have you ever seen the legendary Louis in “Super Mario 64” forever?
Or, the older version of Yoshi?
Or, have you seen an early 3D model of Link, the protagonist of The Legend of Zelda?
In fact, Nintendo did not expect these data to be seen by the majority of players. However, even if it sits on the “strongest legal department in the Eastern Hemisphere”, it still cannot withstand hacker attacks.
Since April this year, users of the anonymous forum 4chan began to expose Nintendo’s internal archive data from time to time. The exposed content involved Nintendo’s host operating system, art design, and game source code.
At the end of July, the exposure also ushered in a big explosion. The content of the exposure includes the development materials of the game series such as “Super Mario”, “The Legend of Zelda”, “Pokémon” and “Star Firefox”, involving SFC , N64 and other host platforms, the wide range and volume, can be regarded as unprecedented.
This big exposure was also dubbed “Gigaleak” by players (big leak).
Like the previous data breach, players have begun to study these complex data, trying to find out the ideas and insights of Nintendo developers decades ago.
There are also some developers who have noticed related information. For example, “Star Firefox” developer Dylan tweeted and expressed doubts: What is the situation? I haven’t read these materials myself for 30 years. I just used these data to learn programming languages in early C++. Where did hackers find these data?
He also released photos of the leaked data. These photos were tools he made for Star Fox 2 30 years ago. He commented on Twitter in shock, “Where did the hacker get the data?”< /p>
The source code of StarFox seems to have been leaked in large quantities. People are more interested in finding the word “fuck” in the comments, not because we have the first “multithreaded” tag used in the game Scripting language.
Ye Qinghui! Mario “hidden character” finally debut
Many “Super Mario” players may remember Mario’s little green younger brother, 2P character Louis.
In 1996, the first 3D work in the Mario series “Super Mario 64” was launched in Japan, but Nintendo’s game designer and Mario’s father Shigeru Miyamoto said that due to insufficient storage space, it had to be removed. The function of the two-player split-screen game, the wayYi just went offline.
Many players once thought that Louis would appear as a hidden character in “Super Mario 64”, only to fail after countless failed guesses and attempts.
Some players interpreted the base text of the statue appearing in the game as “L is Real 2401” and believed that this was proof of Louis’s existence in the game.
In the data exposed this time, some players found that Louis’s character data and models do exist in the source code of “Super Mario 64”, which also confirmed Shigeru Miyamoto’s statement: Nintendo is developing “Super Mario” “64”, I did try to add a two-player game function, and also tried to let Louis join the game.
So, in order to uphold the idea of not letting Nintendo’s data leak out in vain, many MOD developers processed the exposed models and made a more complete Louis model, and also successfully put the Louis model Replaced into the game.
In other words, relying on the leaked data, players finally saw the legendary “hidden character” Louis in “Super Mario 64”.
In addition to game data, players have also picked up some developers’ personal logs and email backups, which record a lot of life trivia.
We all know that in the process of game development, Nintendo is famous for not saying anything, even diehard fans can hardly get the game development internal and first burst.material.
It is precisely this opaque system that this time the data leak caused a carnival within the fan community.
The leakage of these data allowed some game eggs and development secrets that may never be known to finally reappear. For MOD makers and simulator developers of old games, the source code can also facilitate their work. .
Many users also try to find some Nintendo Easter eggs from the data.
For example, a Twitter user found the original bloody version of The Legend of Zelda:
The early temple of “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” looks like this:
There are also unreleased sprite samples in PokemonGo:
Is the leaked source code of Nintendo really? Are you sure?
Although Nintendo did not respond to this data breach, according to two well-known Nintendo data miners, the code should be legal in terms of the amount of data released.
“People believe that these files are real because of the large number of them, things like secret IDs that are impossible to crack.” Orcastraw said. Since the leak occurred, he has been sharing some important secrets he discovered in the data.
Nintendo’s well-known hacker MrCheeze also said: “It is relatively difficult to forge these data because you need to ‘create these games from scratch’, which means you have to submit thousands of files. It’s almost impossible.”
No matter how convincing the outside speculation is, it can only be speculation, but recently, a former Nintendo employee confirmed the leak.
As for how the hackers obtained these files, there is no exact statement yet.
This year, Nintendo has seen a lot of leaks, but since these data are uploaded anonymously, it is difficult to infer what happened in the middle. Cheeze said that all of this stemmed from the same specific information leak, but it was not certain, “we can only speculate.”
Why is there still moral controversy in this disclosure?
Although this leak is a “New Year”-like carnival for the fan community, it still needs to be a wake-up call for some people, because you may break the law by accident. You know, in the final analysis, this is still They are all private assets of Nintendo!
On the moral level, these things should not be seen by more people.
Imagine, if you are a developer of a popular game, or you are a small well-known writer, would you like your early creative drafts and ideas to be published on the Internet naked? This It means that you have lost control of your own work.
Moreover, as far as this leak is concerned, it is difficult not to push it to a moral level, because it contains too much private information, and even a file also describes the childhood experience of “Potatotou”.
At the same time, from the perspective of history and conservationists, this leak is incredible.
This is a rare observation of the game process and discarded ideas of one of the most influential and secretive companies in the video game industry. For data mining protectionists, this excitement can be morally troubled. . From this incident, we can extract a question: Does the source of the leak discredit everything that historians can learn from it?
“From a more practical point of view, data breaches can provide us with important historical and time background, which is lacking in the final product released.” Archivist Talida explained. Every commented code block, every early draft of every sprite sheet, every construction with imperfect controls, and abandoned game mechanics all provide clues and ideas for developers on how to build games. In some cases, we can even learn who is involved in all aspects of the game, and this knowledge is often lost due to the passage of time.”
This is not the first time a data breach has occurred. In the past, the source code or screenshots of the off-shelf games were often released, and some were from game studios and publishers that could not protect their intellectual property rights. But Nintendo’s leak is different. The unfiltered complete source code of a groundbreaking classic game like Super Mario, or the historical link to the early genie works of The Legend of Zelda, is on an unprecedented scale. Yes, this may only be “favorable” for game history lovers.
Considering the type and source of the data in this data breach, some game developers and commentators worry that the video game industry will become more confidential than it is now to avoid such leaks in the future.
Such concerns are not unreasonable. This data breach has already spread all over the Internet. With the fans’ promotion, it is reasonable to guess that this will intensify.
Related reports:
https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/26/21339018/nintendo-gigaleak-super-mario-64-zelda-pokemon-what-is-it -snes
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21347074/nintendo-gigaleak-controversy-history-preservation-archives
This article is from WeChat official account:Big Data Digest (ID: BigDataDigest), author:Liu Junhuan, Yang Wei