-Philip Coast Philip-
Smash Ace
Preface: who would really be useful is someone from the melee workshop forums who could just outright say what the conditions would have to be for a different character's ID or whatever to get loaded up, or whether that's even possible, or why Master Hand gets loaded up but not others, and why his character at the victory screen says Sheik. I really think that would be the next step in this. At the bottom is a video showcasing some of these concepts and applications, but not really going into as much detail as this post, of course.
Hi all,
Though I don't post much anymore, a friend linked me to the (hoax) giga bowser thread this week, before realizing it might have been fake. He (probably) did so because recently I was telling him all this info I discovered about the menu system when messing around with the stock and name entry glitches during spring break this year. (I don't play videogames much at all anymore, but I went home then, and my little brother and I decided to look up some glitches we hadn't tried yet, and so we messed around a bit.)
Well, it got me thinking again, maybe Giga Bowser is really possible? By using the menus and glitching through stuff, and a specific glitch that causes the game to freeze. I mean, it seems like it might be possible... but I stopped at the last hurdle(s) I came across. So I'm not saying this method is 'the way' – but here are my notes thus far.
First, I need to give some background info on the menu system, and after I'll go onto the Stock Glitch and such.
(I added useful links at the bottom of this post.)
You know how you're at the character select screen, and someone presses back, or holds B, and it goes back a menu? Or say you go to the stage select screen, and someone picks a stage you don't want, so you reset back to the main menu by pressing L+R+Start?
Well the menu system has a few different functions that aren't intuitively grasped. One of those is to “save” or store your character data, while the other is to “reset” things back to the last setting you had saved.
To illustrate: if you boot up the game, then pick a character, and then press the back button, or hold B, you'll go back to the main menu, right? When you load up the character select screen again, though, it will be as if you hadn't picked a character at all – no character will be selected, just like when you turned it on the first time. Thus, when you press back, or hold the B button, you do a 'menu reset'.
On the other hand, if you 'soft-reset' (I know, same terms, but don't get confused here) by pressing L+R+Start, then you do a 'menu save', and though you get 'reset' back to the main menu, your character data is saved, so that when you load up the character select screen again, the character you previously selected is still active. You can do this in two ways: the L+R+Start reset (LRS), or by going through to the stage select screen – both ways of navigating the menu will save your character data.
There's a third way, though, to manipulate the game data, and that's through the Name Entry Glitch, which is a combination of hitting the back button while you're going through to the stage select screen. In this glitch, you end up going through to the stage select screen, forcing the game to accept whatever was previously selected (even if it was an 'impossible' setup, like say, no character was selected, or only one person was, or everyone was on the same color team), but your force the game to do this not always in a way that gives the game the chance to fix any errors. In other words, you can sometimes force the game to crash.
A couple of immediate (positive) outcomes of NEG are the Master Hand Glitch, and the Black Character Glitch. To get Master Hand, don't select any character, and NEG through to the stage select screen, and the game loads up Master Hand. (If you previously selected a character though, the game will crash, so make sure you deselect your character, menu save, and then NEG through.) To get a black character, you set 4 of the same characters to the same colored team, and NEG through, and the game will force the fourth player to accept the fourth color on a same-color-team: black (because there isn't really one).
Important to note, since the game “saves” your character data, and loads it up back up again once you end the match, the same information you selected will be the same. That is, if I picked Falcon, I'll still be Falcon when I go to the character select screen again. Obvious? I'll comment in a moment.
***
A bit of reading so far, eh? We're just at the 20% mark
Here's where it starts to get a little more complicated, and a bit more interesting.
Likewise to the above statement about picking Falcon and staying Falcon, if I put four Foxes on the same team, making them all the same color, and then menu save out (either LRS to menu save, or NEG and then either LRS or ending the match), the game is now storing 1st player as normal red Fox, 2nd player as light red Fox, 3rd player as dark red Fox, and 4th player as black Fox.
Since non-active character data isn't overwritten when you menu save, you can turn off all the players except 4th player, giving you a single, black Fox when you NEG through. You can also just turn off 1st and 3rd players, pitting light red Fox against black Fox. Or, since Samus' neutral color is red, you can just have 1st player vs 4th player – normal Samus vs. black Samus.
Menu resetting comes in handy, here, actually, because if you accidentally pick a wrong character, or mess things up somehow, just do a menu reset (hold B, or press back button), and all your info will be the same again (revert back to what it was).
Likewise, a menu save can really speed things up. Protip: if you want to access one of these glitches quickly, just set up all the characters how you want them to be, then menu save out, and everything will be saved and 'recorded' in the game, so you won't have to pick everything again if you mess up the NEG or something, and you can speed up the process to get to playing: you don't need to have the game 'load up' what you've selected, just as long as you select it. And, saving it will give you a safety net.
But, some information the game doesn't seem to care too much about. For example, remember when I mentioned that hitting the back button, or doing a menu reset will revert your data back to what it was last time? Well, not for team mode – a menu reset will still save team color data.
Another thing is duplicate character colors. For example, with the Same-Color Glitch (deselect a character right as another character switches to that same color, while hovering over that character), the costume or 'player order rank' is essentially assigned right there, because you can start the game normally, and have two players be the same color. However, when you end the match, the game seemingly reassigns costumes based on player order rank, as when it loads the characters in the character select screen.
A variation of this is when you use the same character twice to do a character Stock Glitch – the game will just assign both characters the same neutral color – so the costume you have chosen doesn't seem to matter as much as, say, what the 'rank' of the characters may be, as decided in the character selection screen, by, perhaps, doing the Stock Glitch.
Buut...
When no character identity is selected (distinguished from character costume, the identity is who the game is storing as your originally selected character, even if you deselect – so if you do, you have to menu save your deselection first for the game to store 'no' character identity), the game defaults to Master Hand. The big question here is, then, is it possible to trick the game into selecting a different character identity other than Master Hand, when no other identity is selected - and would we do this through the character Stock Glitch, somehow?
(It's probably best I cover this section first, before going on to the next, I realize. Otherwise, skip ahead to “Differences between Menu Save and NEG,” then come back to this section.)
Because the menu system saves character info, why not trick it into changing the character's costume, by “switching” costumes? This works because you're telling the game to switch a character's costume by a number of costumes greater than the costumes that character actually has, which ends up changing the character's “stock,” or image/avatar. This also works in 'reverse': if you tell a 6-costume character to change to a 5-costume character's 5th slot, the 6-costume character will change by two costumes in the Y-direction, or 5 costumes in the X-direction. Example:
Kirby has six costumes, in this order (pressing “X”):
1. Pink
2. Yellow
3. Blue
4. Red
5. Green
6. White
However, Samus has one less costume color:
1. Red
2. Pink
3. Black
4. Green
5. Purple
If I pick Kirby, then hover over Samus and change to Pink Samus (her second costume), then menu save – Kirby's 'costume slot' will change by one – and he'll go to his Yellow costume. However, if I pick Kirby, then hover over Samus, and change her Purple costume, then save – Kirby will change by 5 slots – and he'll end up at Green, or “2” backwards, in terms of Y-presses.
In worldjem7's list (Thread: Character Selection Bug) he makes the distinction of “firsts” and “seconds,” characters that can be used to switch costumes. However, probably the reason ihavespaceballs (ihavespaceblondes) got confused in his later post (thanks for the pattern-rec. and work btw) is because OP's list of seconds was incomplete: his seconds list was forgetting other characters with 5-costume slots (Doc, Mario, Samus, etc.). But, IHSB somehow also made another mistake and overlooked something he thought he tried but messed up on somehow, and I'll get to that in a moment.
Quick note: when I say "2-Yoshi", what I mean is Yoshi's second Y-press costume, or Yoshi's second Y-costume. Either way.
worldjem7's original list:
1sts
Captain Falcon
Kirby
Yoshi
2nds
(2-Captain Falcon)
(2-Kirby)
(2-Yoshi)
Donkey Kong
Link
Mario
Marth
Peach
Purin (Jiggs)
Samus
Zelda
Clink (Y. Link)
Doc
Emblem (Roy)
Ganon
3rds
Falco
Fox
Game and Watch
Koopa (Bowser)
Luigi
Mewtwo
Ness
Poponana
Pichu
Pikachu
In this list, firsts can act as seconds (just use two Y-presses, or their 5th X-costume), but seconds can't act as firsts. All thirds can use seconds and firsts, but seconds can only use firsts.
Going by this modified list, and the method the game uses to save costume data, we can explain the following examples:
When a first “picks” a first, the number of costume changes is one. When a first picks a second, the number of costume changes is two. When a first picks a third, the number of costume changes is three. It doesn't matter where the first started out: the new number of Y-costume changes replaces the old, plus the additional count (because of the costume-amount difference between characters). So if I go from Any-Color Falcon to 1-(Y-press)-Kirby (White), I'll turn into 1-Falcon (Blue). If I go from Any-Falcon to 1-Samus (Purple), I'll turn into 2-Falcon (Green). If I go from Any-Falcon to 2-Fox (Purple), I'll go to 3-Falcon (White) + 1 (ending up at Red).
All good and well. But, why do some characters default to others, when going in 'reverse'?
IHSB tried some different orderings and finally figured it out based on naming convention. His original list:
---CF group
Captain Falcon - 1st
Donkey Kong - 2nd
Fox - 3rd
Game and Watch - 3rd
---Kirby group
Kirby - 1st
Koopa - 3rd
Link - 2nd
Luigi - 3rd
Mario - 2nd
Marth - 2nd
Mewtwo - 3rd
Ness - 3rd
Peach - 2nd
Pikachu - 3rd
Poponana - 3rd
Purin - 2nd
Samus - 2nd
---Yoshi group
Yoshi - 1st
Zelda - 2nd
(Sheik - 2nd)
Falco - 3rd
Clink - 2nd
Doc - 2nd
Emblem - 2nd
Pichu - 3rd
Ganon - 2nd
His reasoning still rings true: everyone between CF and Kirby changes to CF in their 6th slot (so: dk, fox, and g&w), everyone between Kirby and Yoshi change to Kirby in their 6th slot, and everyone past Yoshi defaults to Yoshi in their 6th slot.
This means that all characters go to the firsts, first, and in do so in order of descension: DK, Fox, and G&W all go to CF as their first character, because he's the closest first above them.
As for the seconds, the second will be the closest second to that character, also in order of descension: Ness goes 'up' to Marth, not Peach, and Luigi goes to Link. And while it may look like I just reordered the list so that this holds true for Falco and Pichu – which is what IHSB's confusion was about – the problem was that he ordered the clones alphabetically, while I just looked at the order of names as they appear in the debug menu, and now the list makes sense: Falco and Pichu are both 3rds, and while the other characters in their group go to Yoshi, Falco goes to Zelda, and Pichu goes to Roy. The modified list above reflects this, and I've colored all the viable 2nds that would be switched to - the other 2nds would never get switched to.
Speaking of the debug menu, let's look at who appears next on that list:
Master Hand
Male Wire Frame
Female Wire Frame
Giga Bowser
Crazy Hand
Sandbag
Popo – Used in Target Test mode
Now, though Master Hand is after Ganon, on the victory screen, his character always says Sheik. And so does Giga Bowser's.
But before I move on to that, let me summarize with a few applications.
If you don't already know, if you boot up Melee, no mem card, and select Ness, then deselect and hover over purple Samus, do an L+R+Start reset, and go back into the character select screen, your character will now show a white Marth, even though he hasn't been unlocked yet. I think this happens because the game is forced to load up different character stocks.
Say Fox picks his 'first', which will result in a Blue Falcon, but Blue Falcon is already chosen – both characters will appear on the character select screen, but the characters themselves will be different.
As for deciding what color characters appear when the game starts, the game will go to the neutral character color, even if a character has that color chosen already. Say that I pick Fox's 1st, and my icon is Blue Falcon. Then say someone picks fox – and his color goes to neutral. When the game starts, both players will be fox, and both will be neutral color – it's like an easy same-color glitch.
You can do this effect twice, though, with a character's first and second, so that you can have three neutral-colored Foxes appear on the stage. And if you want four white Foxes to appear, just do the same-color glitch for the last two Foxes – all Foxes will appear in neutral-costume, though one will have DK's stock and the other will have Falcon's.
In worldjem7's post, he also mentions something else: port priority. But it's in reverse: 4>3>2>1.
This means that if player 3 picks a first (or second) with a character, and then player 4 (using that same character) picks a first (or second, as long as it leads to the same level of hierarchy as player 3) afterward, or at the same time, then player 4 will have the changed stock, while player 3 will have reverted back to neutral. Oddly, attempting to use the same color glitch in this manner is impossible – the game just won't let you. That is, you can't same color glitch when you're hovering over a different character than you've selected.
However, say two players have picked Fox, and the first player picks Fox's first, and the other player picks Fox's second. The first Fox will show up as Captain Falcon, while the second Fox will be DK. It's possible, at this point, for the second Fox to change his costume back to normal, and for the first Fox to cycle backwards (Y-direction) from Falcon, to DK, and then to a colored Fox, finally. What this means is that, because you have the same character selected, you can now use the same color glitch to get duplicate stocks for the same character: two Foxes with a Green DK stock, or two with Falcon stock.
Two Guiding Questions: How do we force a different character; What kind of changes can we make?
Stock Glitch (SG) – when you change your character's icon (avatar) through a menu-saved costume change
Name Entry Glitch (NEG) – allows you to get past impossible character select scenarios, forcing the game to either come up with some data (and possibly freeze), or accept what data there is
Menu save – L+R+Start reset (LRS), or going to the stage select screen – 'saves' certain info
Menu reset – using back button, or holding B – 'resets' or reverts most info back to what it was
and, Hover glitch (or "Deselect glitch")– an SG without a menu save: select a character, deselect and hover, and NEG – causes freezing, unless two or more of the same hover glitching character is chosen
Now to combine some things.
Though NEG and menu saving will allow you to store data, both don't work the same way. The only way I know this is through a glitch that always causes the game to freeze, that wouldn't normally happen if I were just menu saving. This might be important later on, so hang on to this tidbit. I'll mention how you set it up, first.
When you select a character, at least two pieces of information are saved: which character you selected, and which costume you selected. Combinations and extensions of the latter are what form the Stock Glitch, but what happens when you pick a character, but don't pick a costume – you instead hover over any character's costume, even if it's the costume you just chose – and NEG through? The game will crash (freeze), every time. My only guess as to why this is is because the game isn't given the opportunity to assign a costume for that character, and so it crashes when trying to 'load up' the character+costume choice (because there is no costume choice). The reason I know that this is limited to the NEG is because in the Stock Glitch, when you menu save, a costume gets assigned, but with NEG, that step gets bypassed – more on how to set this up in a moment.
A note about Master Hand. The rule is slightly different for him. It's true, if you select a character, then deselect, and NEG through, the game will crash upon loading a stage (because no costume was selected for the character – in line with the above reasoning). However, if you select “no” character (and you can assure this by deselecting your character, menu saving, and then going back to the character select screen) and then hover over any costume, and NEG, the game won't crash, and Master Hand will load up fine. Why is this? I have two guesses. One is that Master Hand is his own character, and therefore doesn't have a costume scheme like the other characters do, making him sort of 'immune' in that aspect – why code a costume selection for him when you can just always assign his character the same costume? The other is that the game only assigns 'part' of a costume (like player-order rank), and then does a check to see if it needs to distribute costumes amongst players normally, assigning the next X-costume in line. That is, even though it appears you can assign your costumes pre-game, and pre-NEG, like when getting a black character, when you do this “hover glitch,” the game will crash when it has... what? I'm not sure. The wrong character, the wrong costume, the wrong rank? But this “hover glitch” actually works – doesn't freeze the game – when two of the same character are selected.
This next paragraph essentially describes where I 'left off' (in regards to getting Giga Bowser, or, more likely, Male Wire Frame):
I think that this hover glitch (deselect, hover over any costume or no character at all, then NEG) doesn't allow the game to assign a costume, or rank, but I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. I'll describe “the test” anyway: Because when two of the same characters are selected and the hover glitch is performed with one of them, the game won't freeze, and because a reverse port priority takes effect with the Stock Glitch (SG) when giving the same costume to the same characters, when you set up an SG with a lower priority port player, and then try to hover glitch (essentially an incomplete SG) that same costume with a higher priority port player, and NEG through, the game fails to take the costume from the lower player, and just assigns a neutral costume (based on normal player order rank) to that character instead, all while not freezing the game.
These are basically thoughts and notes of some things I've tried so far.
Some notes:
Team mode: They see to be their own beast, and the only explanation I can come up with is that the game assigns a team and and rank, and then assigns colors based on that – the Stock Glitch has no effect here, based on FFA character costume ordering.
Stock Glitch – The game will assign a neutral color (same player order ranking?) to the same character, even if two of those characters perform the Stock Glitch separately, and a third is just chosen as the neutral costume: that is, if I SG with two Foxes, and have a third, neutral-costumed Fox, when the game loads, I'll have three white Foxes. You can get four neutral Foxes this way, by doing the same color glitch with the two remaining Foxes. Pretty cool.
Double hover glitch: Four Foxes turns up four Foxes, colors dispersed normally. Four no-characters turns up four Master Hands, all white. Stock Glitch/menu save doesn't work on Master Hand – he's his own character.
Freezing: If I pick 3 Zeldas (on teams), and one Master Hand, then have all three Zeldas transform while the stage loads, sometimes I get a freeze. But just all Zeldas doesn't do it, team color doesn't affect it, position of teammates doesn't affect it, 3 vs. 4 characters doesn't affect it, seems semi-random.
Thoughts: When you hover glitch, sometimes the icon changes right before the stage select screen loads. Maybe the game stores character data, but not costume data – similar to how it might do with team mode costumes – that is, assign a color based on the other characters selected, or the player order rank applied to same characters. The same-color glitch gets past this by assigning rank/costume at the get-go; same as the stock glitch, which assigns a 'costume' that doesn't... quite load properly.
rule: any character --> no character --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> no character --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> no character --> NEG --> hold A = freeze
falcon --> no char --> NEG = freeze
falco --> hover over second --> NEG = freeze
falco --> second --> menu save --> no character – > NEG = freeze
falcon --> hover over first --> NEG = freeze
falcon --> hover over non-first --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> hover over zelda --> NEG = freeze
rule: character --> different or no costume --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> hover over white kirby --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> hover over first --> save --> hover over second --> NEG = freeze
rule: hover glitch doesn't apply to master hand
no character --> dif costume --> menu save --> NEG = ok
no character --> dif costume --> NEG = ok
no character --> firsts --> NEG = ok
However, this rule gets broken if two or more of the same character is selected – the game then won't freeze.
Other combinations:
zeldas w/master hand, team or ffa
transforming while stage loads, one, or multiple zeldas
on same team or not
master hand on different team or not
---
I tried some stuff out last night and figured out some new things.
You can change your character while doing an NEG glitch at the same time. So, set up to do a two-person NEG, and while hitting A on both of the first controllers, hit A or B to either select a different character or deselect your current character. Your character icon will change appropriately as the stage select screen loads, but of course if you deselect your character, the game will freeze (unless you have another of that character already selected).
Example: set up to do NEG with two controllers. With third controller, select Zelda, or Falcon, or whoever. While pressing buttons for NEG, at the same time, press B on the third controller to deselect your character, or, while hovering over another character, press A to select them. The game will only freeze if you deselected a character you only have one of. (So if I had two Zeldas, but deselected one of them as I was doing the NEG, the game wouldn't freeze, but if I only had one Zelda, the game would freeze.)
Somewhat related: Someone said somewhere that you can't have Zelda at the same time as Master Hand. Possibly. But if you have Zelda on a computer team, she can totally exist at the same time as Master Hand, and the game won't freeze.
This makes me think that computer teams might be different than normal player teams? Because check out this next factoid.
I found in my notes, somewhere, something about only being able to control a different character with another player's cursor, and while I later realized I read the context for that incorrectly, I still messed around with it and found out this:
Name entry screen (normal) also has same effect of Stock Glitch, but only if someone else is holding your icon.
So, if you select a character, then hover over another character (for a Stock Glitch), then enter the name entry screen (with another controller), the Stock Glitch won't take place. However, if you do the same with someone else's character (make them a computer first), and then enter the name entry screen (again, with another controller), the Stock Glitch will take effect.
Some other character selection nuances I'm not sure if I ever made a mental note of before:
-If you menu save, then change another player from human to computer, the game will randomly assign them a character.
-However, if you menu save, then change another player from human to computer, then pick up their icon and place it down again, changing them from human to computer again, the game won't randomly assign them a new character - they'll stay the same.
-And of course, just for reference, if a player changes their own character from human to computer, their character will stay the same.
-Also for reference: the cycle goes human-->same or random cpu-->off-->human
Zelda --> deselect while NEG = freeze
Falcon --> deselect while NEG = freeze
2 Zeldas --> 1 deselects while NEG = ok
Character --> change to Zelda + NEG = ok
Zelda + character --> character changes to Zelda while NEG = ok, colors assigned properly
HG --> NEG --> LRS (at stage select screen) --> to normal match load = doesn't do anything different
Which means a second NEG instead of a normal loading probably wouldn't do anything
Something to try: HG w/cpu --> NEG = ?
(If a single computer wouldn't freeze the game after a deselect+NEG, then maybe their ability to be randomly selected might come in useful?)
(unplugging the controller at the same time as NEG?)
If NEG causes menu reset and menu save effects to take place at same time...
then this might explain why, when you select a character, then deselect, and NEG, during the loading of the next screen, your character's icon will switch back to that character's neutral costume, as the stage select screen loads, but then the game will still hang after that because...?
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Single_Person_Melee (one-person NEG)
http://www.smashboards.com/threads/the-official-master-hand-guide.278836/
Stock Glitch
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Stock_glitch
Debug
http://tcrf.net/Super_Smash_Bros._Melee/Master_Debug_Menu
http://www.freewebs.com/master-o-darkness/ssbmdebugmenu.htm
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Debug_menu
Costumes
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Palette_swap_(SSBM)
http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Palette_swap_(SSBM)
http://hyrulecentral.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/character_select.jpg
Credit:
Exchord92 - NEG, Master Hand, Black Character
REVOLUTION324 - one-person NEG
my youngest brother, for testing a bunch of scenarios for me and coming up with some of the ideas
Perhaps the fact that Master Hand and Giga Bowser both have the character name “Sheik” at the victory screen is just a fluke, or maybe it actually points to something.
Why are the characters' costumes linked to each other as shown on the debug roster? Is there a way we can force an identity change too, or perhaps utilize the normally-inaccessible Sheik to somehow get to Master Hand or Giga Bowser? My bet is on finding a way to glitch to Male Wire Frame first, but maybe costumes aren't the way to go.
Why does the game glitch when you NEG with a single character that's deselected, but not when you have two of that same character? And it might seem that computers have their own costume rules. So, is anything else different about them. Also, G&W just loads his own black costume in 4-player team mode - what if he's CPU controlled? And does this mean anything. Could a random computer character selection be manipulated and combined with the NEG?
Oh, in case you just skipped down to the bottom, here's a video showcasing some of the techniques I listed: Single black character, single black master hand, menu save for quick setup, light vs dark characters, multiple stock glitch, four white Foxes.
Hope some of that was interesting or useful.
Hi all,
Though I don't post much anymore, a friend linked me to the (hoax) giga bowser thread this week, before realizing it might have been fake. He (probably) did so because recently I was telling him all this info I discovered about the menu system when messing around with the stock and name entry glitches during spring break this year. (I don't play videogames much at all anymore, but I went home then, and my little brother and I decided to look up some glitches we hadn't tried yet, and so we messed around a bit.)
Well, it got me thinking again, maybe Giga Bowser is really possible? By using the menus and glitching through stuff, and a specific glitch that causes the game to freeze. I mean, it seems like it might be possible... but I stopped at the last hurdle(s) I came across. So I'm not saying this method is 'the way' – but here are my notes thus far.
First, I need to give some background info on the menu system, and after I'll go onto the Stock Glitch and such.
(I added useful links at the bottom of this post.)
The Menu System - “Saving” and “Resetting”
You know how you're at the character select screen, and someone presses back, or holds B, and it goes back a menu? Or say you go to the stage select screen, and someone picks a stage you don't want, so you reset back to the main menu by pressing L+R+Start?
Well the menu system has a few different functions that aren't intuitively grasped. One of those is to “save” or store your character data, while the other is to “reset” things back to the last setting you had saved.
To illustrate: if you boot up the game, then pick a character, and then press the back button, or hold B, you'll go back to the main menu, right? When you load up the character select screen again, though, it will be as if you hadn't picked a character at all – no character will be selected, just like when you turned it on the first time. Thus, when you press back, or hold the B button, you do a 'menu reset'.
On the other hand, if you 'soft-reset' (I know, same terms, but don't get confused here) by pressing L+R+Start, then you do a 'menu save', and though you get 'reset' back to the main menu, your character data is saved, so that when you load up the character select screen again, the character you previously selected is still active. You can do this in two ways: the L+R+Start reset (LRS), or by going through to the stage select screen – both ways of navigating the menu will save your character data.
Outcomes of the Name Entry Glitch (NEG)
There's a third way, though, to manipulate the game data, and that's through the Name Entry Glitch, which is a combination of hitting the back button while you're going through to the stage select screen. In this glitch, you end up going through to the stage select screen, forcing the game to accept whatever was previously selected (even if it was an 'impossible' setup, like say, no character was selected, or only one person was, or everyone was on the same color team), but your force the game to do this not always in a way that gives the game the chance to fix any errors. In other words, you can sometimes force the game to crash.
A couple of immediate (positive) outcomes of NEG are the Master Hand Glitch, and the Black Character Glitch. To get Master Hand, don't select any character, and NEG through to the stage select screen, and the game loads up Master Hand. (If you previously selected a character though, the game will crash, so make sure you deselect your character, menu save, and then NEG through.) To get a black character, you set 4 of the same characters to the same colored team, and NEG through, and the game will force the fourth player to accept the fourth color on a same-color-team: black (because there isn't really one).
Important to note, since the game “saves” your character data, and loads it up back up again once you end the match, the same information you selected will be the same. That is, if I picked Falcon, I'll still be Falcon when I go to the character select screen again. Obvious? I'll comment in a moment.
***
A bit of reading so far, eh? We're just at the 20% mark
Here's where it starts to get a little more complicated, and a bit more interesting.Saving Character Info, and Light vs Black Fox
Likewise to the above statement about picking Falcon and staying Falcon, if I put four Foxes on the same team, making them all the same color, and then menu save out (either LRS to menu save, or NEG and then either LRS or ending the match), the game is now storing 1st player as normal red Fox, 2nd player as light red Fox, 3rd player as dark red Fox, and 4th player as black Fox.
Since non-active character data isn't overwritten when you menu save, you can turn off all the players except 4th player, giving you a single, black Fox when you NEG through. You can also just turn off 1st and 3rd players, pitting light red Fox against black Fox. Or, since Samus' neutral color is red, you can just have 1st player vs 4th player – normal Samus vs. black Samus.
Menu resetting comes in handy, here, actually, because if you accidentally pick a wrong character, or mess things up somehow, just do a menu reset (hold B, or press back button), and all your info will be the same again (revert back to what it was).
Likewise, a menu save can really speed things up. Protip: if you want to access one of these glitches quickly, just set up all the characters how you want them to be, then menu save out, and everything will be saved and 'recorded' in the game, so you won't have to pick everything again if you mess up the NEG or something, and you can speed up the process to get to playing: you don't need to have the game 'load up' what you've selected, just as long as you select it. And, saving it will give you a safety net.
Information Prejudice – (feel free to skip this section and move straight to the Stock Glitch)
So, certain character info can be saved, through menu saving, so that I can play as a single black Fox, or a single black Master Hand, or whichever.But, some information the game doesn't seem to care too much about. For example, remember when I mentioned that hitting the back button, or doing a menu reset will revert your data back to what it was last time? Well, not for team mode – a menu reset will still save team color data.
Another thing is duplicate character colors. For example, with the Same-Color Glitch (deselect a character right as another character switches to that same color, while hovering over that character), the costume or 'player order rank' is essentially assigned right there, because you can start the game normally, and have two players be the same color. However, when you end the match, the game seemingly reassigns costumes based on player order rank, as when it loads the characters in the character select screen.
A variation of this is when you use the same character twice to do a character Stock Glitch – the game will just assign both characters the same neutral color – so the costume you have chosen doesn't seem to matter as much as, say, what the 'rank' of the characters may be, as decided in the character selection screen, by, perhaps, doing the Stock Glitch.
Buut...
When no character identity is selected (distinguished from character costume, the identity is who the game is storing as your originally selected character, even if you deselect – so if you do, you have to menu save your deselection first for the game to store 'no' character identity), the game defaults to Master Hand. The big question here is, then, is it possible to trick the game into selecting a different character identity other than Master Hand, when no other identity is selected - and would we do this through the character Stock Glitch, somehow?
Costume swap, or, Character “Stock Glitch”
(It's probably best I cover this section first, before going on to the next, I realize. Otherwise, skip ahead to “Differences between Menu Save and NEG,” then come back to this section.)
Because the menu system saves character info, why not trick it into changing the character's costume, by “switching” costumes? This works because you're telling the game to switch a character's costume by a number of costumes greater than the costumes that character actually has, which ends up changing the character's “stock,” or image/avatar. This also works in 'reverse': if you tell a 6-costume character to change to a 5-costume character's 5th slot, the 6-costume character will change by two costumes in the Y-direction, or 5 costumes in the X-direction. Example:
Kirby has six costumes, in this order (pressing “X”):
1. Pink
2. Yellow
3. Blue
4. Red
5. Green
6. White
However, Samus has one less costume color:
1. Red
2. Pink
3. Black
4. Green
5. Purple
If I pick Kirby, then hover over Samus and change to Pink Samus (her second costume), then menu save – Kirby's 'costume slot' will change by one – and he'll go to his Yellow costume. However, if I pick Kirby, then hover over Samus, and change her Purple costume, then save – Kirby will change by 5 slots – and he'll end up at Green, or “2” backwards, in terms of Y-presses.
In worldjem7's list (Thread: Character Selection Bug) he makes the distinction of “firsts” and “seconds,” characters that can be used to switch costumes. However, probably the reason ihavespaceballs (ihavespaceblondes) got confused in his later post (thanks for the pattern-rec. and work btw
) is because OP's list of seconds was incomplete: his seconds list was forgetting other characters with 5-costume slots (Doc, Mario, Samus, etc.). But, IHSB somehow also made another mistake and overlooked something he thought he tried but messed up on somehow, and I'll get to that in a moment.Quick note: when I say "2-Yoshi", what I mean is Yoshi's second Y-press costume, or Yoshi's second Y-costume. Either way.
worldjem7's original list:
Now I modify and complete his list:
1sts
Captain Falcon
Kirby
Yoshi
2nds
(2-Captain Falcon)
(2-Kirby)
(2-Yoshi)
Donkey Kong
Link
Mario
Marth
Peach
Purin (Jiggs)
Samus
Zelda
Clink (Y. Link)
Doc
Emblem (Roy)
Ganon
3rds
Falco
Fox
Game and Watch
Koopa (Bowser)
Luigi
Mewtwo
Ness
Poponana
Pichu
Pikachu
In this list, firsts can act as seconds (just use two Y-presses, or their 5th X-costume), but seconds can't act as firsts. All thirds can use seconds and firsts, but seconds can only use firsts.
Going by this modified list, and the method the game uses to save costume data, we can explain the following examples:
When a first “picks” a first, the number of costume changes is one. When a first picks a second, the number of costume changes is two. When a first picks a third, the number of costume changes is three. It doesn't matter where the first started out: the new number of Y-costume changes replaces the old, plus the additional count (because of the costume-amount difference between characters). So if I go from Any-Color Falcon to 1-(Y-press)-Kirby (White), I'll turn into 1-Falcon (Blue). If I go from Any-Falcon to 1-Samus (Purple), I'll turn into 2-Falcon (Green). If I go from Any-Falcon to 2-Fox (Purple), I'll go to 3-Falcon (White) + 1 (ending up at Red).
All good and well. But, why do some characters default to others, when going in 'reverse'?
IHSB tried some different orderings and finally figured it out based on naming convention. His original list:
And Modified (I also added jiggs):
---CF group
Captain Falcon - 1st
Donkey Kong - 2nd
Fox - 3rd
Game and Watch - 3rd
---Kirby group
Kirby - 1st
Koopa - 3rd
Link - 2nd
Luigi - 3rd
Mario - 2nd
Marth - 2nd
Mewtwo - 3rd
Ness - 3rd
Peach - 2nd
Pikachu - 3rd
Poponana - 3rd
Purin - 2nd
Samus - 2nd
---Yoshi group
Yoshi - 1st
Zelda - 2nd
(Sheik - 2nd)
Falco - 3rd
Clink - 2nd
Doc - 2nd
Emblem - 2nd
Pichu - 3rd
Ganon - 2nd
His reasoning still rings true: everyone between CF and Kirby changes to CF in their 6th slot (so: dk, fox, and g&w), everyone between Kirby and Yoshi change to Kirby in their 6th slot, and everyone past Yoshi defaults to Yoshi in their 6th slot.
This means that all characters go to the firsts, first, and in do so in order of descension: DK, Fox, and G&W all go to CF as their first character, because he's the closest first above them.
As for the seconds, the second will be the closest second to that character, also in order of descension: Ness goes 'up' to Marth, not Peach, and Luigi goes to Link. And while it may look like I just reordered the list so that this holds true for Falco and Pichu – which is what IHSB's confusion was about – the problem was that he ordered the clones alphabetically, while I just looked at the order of names as they appear in the debug menu, and now the list makes sense: Falco and Pichu are both 3rds, and while the other characters in their group go to Yoshi, Falco goes to Zelda, and Pichu goes to Roy. The modified list above reflects this, and I've colored all the viable 2nds that would be switched to - the other 2nds would never get switched to.
Speaking of the debug menu, let's look at who appears next on that list:
Master Hand
Male Wire Frame
Female Wire Frame
Giga Bowser
Crazy Hand
Sandbag
Popo – Used in Target Test mode
Now, though Master Hand is after Ganon, on the victory screen, his character always says Sheik. And so does Giga Bowser's.
But before I move on to that, let me summarize with a few applications.
Make Your Character Appear As Not-Unlocked Characters
If you don't already know, if you boot up Melee, no mem card, and select Ness, then deselect and hover over purple Samus, do an L+R+Start reset, and go back into the character select screen, your character will now show a white Marth, even though he hasn't been unlocked yet. I think this happens because the game is forced to load up different character stocks.
Duplication – Color and Stock
Say Fox picks his 'first', which will result in a Blue Falcon, but Blue Falcon is already chosen – both characters will appear on the character select screen, but the characters themselves will be different.
As for deciding what color characters appear when the game starts, the game will go to the neutral character color, even if a character has that color chosen already. Say that I pick Fox's 1st, and my icon is Blue Falcon. Then say someone picks fox – and his color goes to neutral. When the game starts, both players will be fox, and both will be neutral color – it's like an easy same-color glitch.
You can do this effect twice, though, with a character's first and second, so that you can have three neutral-colored Foxes appear on the stage. And if you want four white Foxes to appear, just do the same-color glitch for the last two Foxes – all Foxes will appear in neutral-costume, though one will have DK's stock and the other will have Falcon's.
Costume “Stealing”
In worldjem7's post, he also mentions something else: port priority. But it's in reverse: 4>3>2>1.
This means that if player 3 picks a first (or second) with a character, and then player 4 (using that same character) picks a first (or second, as long as it leads to the same level of hierarchy as player 3) afterward, or at the same time, then player 4 will have the changed stock, while player 3 will have reverted back to neutral. Oddly, attempting to use the same color glitch in this manner is impossible – the game just won't let you. That is, you can't same color glitch when you're hovering over a different character than you've selected.
However, say two players have picked Fox, and the first player picks Fox's first, and the other player picks Fox's second. The first Fox will show up as Captain Falcon, while the second Fox will be DK. It's possible, at this point, for the second Fox to change his costume back to normal, and for the first Fox to cycle backwards (Y-direction) from Falcon, to DK, and then to a colored Fox, finally. What this means is that, because you have the same character selected, you can now use the same color glitch to get duplicate stocks for the same character: two Foxes with a Green DK stock, or two with Falcon stock.
Two Guiding Questions: How do we force a different character; What kind of changes can we make?
Recap on terms
Stock Glitch (SG) – when you change your character's icon (avatar) through a menu-saved costume change
Name Entry Glitch (NEG) – allows you to get past impossible character select scenarios, forcing the game to either come up with some data (and possibly freeze), or accept what data there is
Menu save – L+R+Start reset (LRS), or going to the stage select screen – 'saves' certain info
Menu reset – using back button, or holding B – 'resets' or reverts most info back to what it was
and, Hover glitch (or "Deselect glitch")– an SG without a menu save: select a character, deselect and hover, and NEG – causes freezing, unless two or more of the same hover glitching character is chosen
Now to combine some things.
Differences between Menu Save and NEG
Though NEG and menu saving will allow you to store data, both don't work the same way. The only way I know this is through a glitch that always causes the game to freeze, that wouldn't normally happen if I were just menu saving. This might be important later on, so hang on to this tidbit. I'll mention how you set it up, first.
When you select a character, at least two pieces of information are saved: which character you selected, and which costume you selected. Combinations and extensions of the latter are what form the Stock Glitch, but what happens when you pick a character, but don't pick a costume – you instead hover over any character's costume, even if it's the costume you just chose – and NEG through? The game will crash (freeze), every time. My only guess as to why this is is because the game isn't given the opportunity to assign a costume for that character, and so it crashes when trying to 'load up' the character+costume choice (because there is no costume choice). The reason I know that this is limited to the NEG is because in the Stock Glitch, when you menu save, a costume gets assigned, but with NEG, that step gets bypassed – more on how to set this up in a moment.
A note about Master Hand. The rule is slightly different for him. It's true, if you select a character, then deselect, and NEG through, the game will crash upon loading a stage (because no costume was selected for the character – in line with the above reasoning). However, if you select “no” character (and you can assure this by deselecting your character, menu saving, and then going back to the character select screen) and then hover over any costume, and NEG, the game won't crash, and Master Hand will load up fine. Why is this? I have two guesses. One is that Master Hand is his own character, and therefore doesn't have a costume scheme like the other characters do, making him sort of 'immune' in that aspect – why code a costume selection for him when you can just always assign his character the same costume? The other is that the game only assigns 'part' of a costume (like player-order rank), and then does a check to see if it needs to distribute costumes amongst players normally, assigning the next X-costume in line. That is, even though it appears you can assign your costumes pre-game, and pre-NEG, like when getting a black character, when you do this “hover glitch,” the game will crash when it has... what? I'm not sure. The wrong character, the wrong costume, the wrong rank? But this “hover glitch” actually works – doesn't freeze the game – when two of the same character are selected.
This next paragraph essentially describes where I 'left off' (in regards to getting Giga Bowser, or, more likely, Male Wire Frame):
I think that this hover glitch (deselect, hover over any costume or no character at all, then NEG) doesn't allow the game to assign a costume, or rank, but I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. I'll describe “the test” anyway: Because when two of the same characters are selected and the hover glitch is performed with one of them, the game won't freeze, and because a reverse port priority takes effect with the Stock Glitch (SG) when giving the same costume to the same characters, when you set up an SG with a lower priority port player, and then try to hover glitch (essentially an incomplete SG) that same costume with a higher priority port player, and NEG through, the game fails to take the costume from the lower player, and just assigns a neutral costume (based on normal player order rank) to that character instead, all while not freezing the game.
Some Data and Combinations of Effects
These are basically thoughts and notes of some things I've tried so far.
Some notes:
Team mode: They see to be their own beast, and the only explanation I can come up with is that the game assigns a team and and rank, and then assigns colors based on that – the Stock Glitch has no effect here, based on FFA character costume ordering.
Stock Glitch – The game will assign a neutral color (same player order ranking?) to the same character, even if two of those characters perform the Stock Glitch separately, and a third is just chosen as the neutral costume: that is, if I SG with two Foxes, and have a third, neutral-costumed Fox, when the game loads, I'll have three white Foxes. You can get four neutral Foxes this way, by doing the same color glitch with the two remaining Foxes. Pretty cool.
Double hover glitch: Four Foxes turns up four Foxes, colors dispersed normally. Four no-characters turns up four Master Hands, all white. Stock Glitch/menu save doesn't work on Master Hand – he's his own character.
Freezing: If I pick 3 Zeldas (on teams), and one Master Hand, then have all three Zeldas transform while the stage loads, sometimes I get a freeze. But just all Zeldas doesn't do it, team color doesn't affect it, position of teammates doesn't affect it, 3 vs. 4 characters doesn't affect it, seems semi-random.
Thoughts: When you hover glitch, sometimes the icon changes right before the stage select screen loads. Maybe the game stores character data, but not costume data – similar to how it might do with team mode costumes – that is, assign a color based on the other characters selected, or the player order rank applied to same characters. The same-color glitch gets past this by assigning rank/costume at the get-go; same as the stock glitch, which assigns a 'costume' that doesn't... quite load properly.
Combinations with NEG and Stock Glitch:
rule: any character --> no character --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> no character --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> no character --> NEG --> hold A = freeze
falcon --> no char --> NEG = freeze
falco --> hover over second --> NEG = freeze
falco --> second --> menu save --> no character – > NEG = freeze
falcon --> hover over first --> NEG = freeze
falcon --> hover over non-first --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> hover over zelda --> NEG = freeze
rule: character --> different or no costume --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> hover over white kirby --> NEG = freeze
zelda --> hover over first --> save --> hover over second --> NEG = freeze
rule: hover glitch doesn't apply to master hand
no character --> dif costume --> menu save --> NEG = ok
no character --> dif costume --> NEG = ok
no character --> firsts --> NEG = ok
However, this rule gets broken if two or more of the same character is selected – the game then won't freeze.
Other combinations:
zeldas w/master hand, team or ffa
transforming while stage loads, one, or multiple zeldas
on same team or not
master hand on different team or not
---
More thoughts.
Changing or Deselecting Character During NEG
or
"Change your character while the stage select screen loads"
I tried some stuff out last night and figured out some new things.
You can change your character while doing an NEG glitch at the same time. So, set up to do a two-person NEG, and while hitting A on both of the first controllers, hit A or B to either select a different character or deselect your current character. Your character icon will change appropriately as the stage select screen loads, but of course if you deselect your character, the game will freeze (unless you have another of that character already selected).
Example: set up to do NEG with two controllers. With third controller, select Zelda, or Falcon, or whoever. While pressing buttons for NEG, at the same time, press B on the third controller to deselect your character, or, while hovering over another character, press A to select them. The game will only freeze if you deselected a character you only have one of. (So if I had two Zeldas, but deselected one of them as I was doing the NEG, the game wouldn't freeze, but if I only had one Zelda, the game would freeze.)
Somewhat related: Someone said somewhere that you can't have Zelda at the same time as Master Hand. Possibly. But if you have Zelda on a computer team, she can totally exist at the same time as Master Hand, and the game won't freeze.
This makes me think that computer teams might be different than normal player teams? Because check out this next factoid.
Name Entry Screen and Different-Player Controlled "Effects"
or
"Change your opponent's stock with the name entry screen"
I found in my notes, somewhere, something about only being able to control a different character with another player's cursor, and while I later realized I read the context for that incorrectly, I still messed around with it and found out this:
Name entry screen (normal) also has same effect of Stock Glitch, but only if someone else is holding your icon.
So, if you select a character, then hover over another character (for a Stock Glitch), then enter the name entry screen (with another controller), the Stock Glitch won't take place. However, if you do the same with someone else's character (make them a computer first), and then enter the name entry screen (again, with another controller), the Stock Glitch will take effect.
Some other character selection nuances I'm not sure if I ever made a mental note of before:
-If you menu save, then change another player from human to computer, the game will randomly assign them a character.
-However, if you menu save, then change another player from human to computer, then pick up their icon and place it down again, changing them from human to computer again, the game won't randomly assign them a new character - they'll stay the same.
-And of course, just for reference, if a player changes their own character from human to computer, their character will stay the same.
-Also for reference: the cycle goes human-->same or random cpu-->off-->human
More data and tests
You can NEG and have someone switch to a computer player at the same time.
Zelda --> deselect while NEG = freeze
Falcon --> deselect while NEG = freeze
2 Zeldas --> 1 deselects while NEG = ok
Character --> change to Zelda + NEG = ok
Zelda + character --> character changes to Zelda while NEG = ok, colors assigned properly
HG --> NEG --> LRS (at stage select screen) --> to normal match load = doesn't do anything different
Which means a second NEG instead of a normal loading probably wouldn't do anything
Something to try: HG w/cpu --> NEG = ?
(If a single computer wouldn't freeze the game after a deselect+NEG, then maybe their ability to be randomly selected might come in useful?)
(unplugging the controller at the same time as NEG?)
If NEG causes menu reset and menu save effects to take place at same time...
then this might explain why, when you select a character, then deselect, and NEG, during the loading of the next screen, your character's icon will switch back to that character's neutral costume, as the stage select screen loads, but then the game will still hang after that because...?
Sources
NEG
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Black_character_glitchhttp://www.ssbwiki.com/Single_Person_Melee (one-person NEG)
http://www.smashboards.com/threads/the-official-master-hand-guide.278836/
Stock Glitch
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Stock_glitch
Debug
http://tcrf.net/Super_Smash_Bros._Melee/Master_Debug_Menu
http://www.freewebs.com/master-o-darkness/ssbmdebugmenu.htm
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Debug_menu
Costumes
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Palette_swap_(SSBM)
http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Palette_swap_(SSBM)
http://hyrulecentral.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/character_select.jpg
Credit:
Exchord92 - NEG, Master Hand, Black Character
REVOLUTION324 - one-person NEG
my youngest brother, for testing a bunch of scenarios for me and coming up with some of the ideas
Concluding thoughts
Perhaps the fact that Master Hand and Giga Bowser both have the character name “Sheik” at the victory screen is just a fluke, or maybe it actually points to something.
Why are the characters' costumes linked to each other as shown on the debug roster? Is there a way we can force an identity change too, or perhaps utilize the normally-inaccessible Sheik to somehow get to Master Hand or Giga Bowser? My bet is on finding a way to glitch to Male Wire Frame first, but maybe costumes aren't the way to go.
Why does the game glitch when you NEG with a single character that's deselected, but not when you have two of that same character? And it might seem that computers have their own costume rules. So, is anything else different about them. Also, G&W just loads his own black costume in 4-player team mode - what if he's CPU controlled? And does this mean anything. Could a random computer character selection be manipulated and combined with the NEG?
Oh, in case you just skipped down to the bottom, here's a video showcasing some of the techniques I listed: Single black character, single black master hand, menu save for quick setup, light vs dark characters, multiple stock glitch, four white Foxes.
Hope some of that was interesting or useful.
