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Action Replay Unlocks Hidden Wind Waker Areas

by Mike Sklens - April 16, 2003, 4:25 pm EDT
Total comments: 15 Source: CodeJunkies.com

Explore secret test areas in Wind Waker. Screenshots now available.

The fine folks over at CodeJunkies.com have created what they call their best cheat codes ever. Using Datel's Action Replay for GameCube, you can now unlock some secret test areas from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. These areas are most likely left over from earlier stages of development. They are full of walls covered in numbers, in lieu of proper textures. There's also a lake to swim across, with transparent water instead of the normal blue cel-shaded variety you find in the main game.

The codes are available on CodeJunkies.com, and you can follow the source link above to get them.

Link runs through ladder land

Link is mighty strong

Grandma, where am I?

Snazzy transparent water

Link takes a dip

Link checks out his private playground

Man, this place is HUGE

Talkback

ShanDApril 16, 2003

I like that water a lot better than the water they used in Wind Waker ... I feel it should have been used ... although it would probably be extremely taxing for the cube to run all those transparency effects.

enigma487April 16, 2003

frickin cool!

KimchiApril 16, 2003

Crap... Now I want an Action Replay.

Grey NinjaApril 16, 2003

Quote
Originally posted by: ShanD
I like that water a lot better than the water they used in Wind Waker ... I feel it should have been used ... although it would probably be extremely taxing for the cube to run all those transparency effects.


I am sure that the new water was done for stylistic reasons, not performance reasons. I have to say that the water in Wind Waker was one of the most mesmerizing things for me though. I just couldn't get enough of staring at the water, watching ripples. (remember that scene in Dragon's Roost? Where you were on the spring with all the ash flying around? To me that was one of the most gorgeous moments in the game)

Grey NinjaApril 16, 2003

Sorry, just a followup, which normally would have been an edit right after posting....

Color in many cases is set with 4 numbers. RGBA. Zelda probably uses a palette rather than RGBA, but the principle remains the same. the 4th color, Alpha Blending, is used to specify the transparancy of the object. Alpha Blending is fairly easy to do, and it's supported in hardware on the GameCube. Having transparent water wouldn't take that much power at all I don't think.

JoshumsApril 16, 2003

"Explore secret test areas in Wind Waker. Screenshots now avaliable." <------should be "available", not "avaliable"

The OmenApril 16, 2003

Minus world!

ThePermApril 16, 2003

i loved finding hidden stuff with my n64 gamesharks....alas both no longer work...sigh..i saw an action replay at target nd i was like....hmmm

Infernal MonkeyApril 16, 2003

Ah ha ha, this hidden beta level type thing looks alot like Kirby's Dream Course =P

JoeyApril 16, 2003

One thing I notice is that Link is wearing the PJ's that he had in the begining of the game. I wonder if this was originally from a early part?

EpitaphApril 16, 2003

Reminds me of cronotrigger when you beat the hardest mode

KulockApril 16, 2003

Wow, that next-to-last shot just _screams_ "Mario Sunshine" to me.

Quote
Originally posted by: Grey NinjaColor in many cases is set with 4 numbers. RGBA. Zelda probably uses a palette rather than RGBA, but the principle remains the same. the 4th color, Alpha Blending, is used to specify the transparancy of the object. Alpha Blending is fairly easy to do, and it's supported in hardware on the GameCube. Having transparent water wouldn't take that much power at all I don't think.


It might've been easy to make the water transparent, but what it shows makes all the difference. Transparent water in The Wind Waker... well, imagine the world ocean. Now they would've had to have shown _something_ below the water, rendered the polygons that went under the water in each frame, the extra things on the horizon that you'd be able to see because it was now transparent...

I don't know, I understood why they used the untransparent water in The Wind Waker, and I kind of dug it, it looked nice. (It's probably the part of the style change I like the most.) They already proved they could do nice water effects in Mario Sunshine (which resulted in some terrible framerates in spots, remember using your hover pack in certain places like Ricco Harbor, and even if you were facing away from the water, with all of the refracting going on it'd just bog down suddenly). They would've also forced some "diving" element into Wind Waker if they had transparent water, and diving's always been awkward in Zelda games, so it was nice to skip on it for once.

But I'm very happy to see this, this is something that was missing while Interact was in control of the Gameshark in America. All they did was pump out Infinite Health, Infinite Lives, Infinite Ammo, Unlock all Characters, bam, move on. Infinite Lives, Infinite Continues, Unlock all Stages, bam, move on. They didn't go for the interesting codes, and they refused to let gamers hack their own codes even when they finally figured out how, threatening some with lawsuit initially if they released their codes. They pulled this through the DC and some of the PS2's time, but finally, now that Datel's handling it again, we're seeing some old-school, Game Genie-style "Let's see what weird things we can dig out" codes. Altering physics in Mario Sunshine, a debug area in Wind Waker, I'm actually interested in getting a PAR again after I swore off GSes due to Interact's pathetic performance and policies with them.

Grey NinjaApril 16, 2003

Quote
Originally posted by: Kulock
Wow, that next-to-last shot just _screams_ "Mario Sunshine" to me.

Quote
Originally posted by: Grey NinjaColor in many cases is set with 4 numbers. RGBA. Zelda probably uses a palette rather than RGBA, but the principle remains the same. the 4th color, Alpha Blending, is used to specify the transparancy of the object. Alpha Blending is fairly easy to do, and it's supported in hardware on the GameCube. Having transparent water wouldn't take that much power at all I don't think.


It might've been easy to make the water transparent, but what it shows makes all the difference. Transparent water in The Wind Waker... well, imagine the world ocean. Now they would've had to have shown _something_ below the water, rendered the polygons that went under the water in each frame, the extra things on the horizon that you'd be able to see because it was now transparent...


When you are out on the ocean though... you can't see the bottom. I would imagine that they would just fog the underwater areas with a dark color so you couldn't see the bottom, or use that crazy blurring effect they made for Mario Sunshine.



***** ENDING SPOILER ******





Remember at the end of the game when you are fighting Ganon though? The water is coming down all around you, and the sky is also composed of water? I just LOVED that scene as well. The water was a realistic sort, but it just fit with Hyrule so well.

KulockApril 16, 2003

...So it'd look almost exactly the same as it currently does, there'd just be a short area where you could see the bottom of the boat, and Link if he jumps in. ^_^;

It's not like it'd help with finding the sunken chests, they purposefully made those harder to get already by making the glow disappear when you approached (so you had to listen for the chorus, which is more based on where the camera is, and not the boat). The only water it would help was the water in enclosed areas, where they could afford to stick visible details below it.

ShanDApril 18, 2003

In reply to all the replies to my post, what I meant was if the water was transparent, they would have needed to put all kinds of things under it so the overworld didn't look completely barren. They'd need to put reefs, fish, etc, etc.

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