TL;DR The most challenging parts of developing TRAUMA for iOS was fast blur with a big radius and realtime video into texture streaming with synchronized audio.

A sample of the sourcecode of TRAUMA iOS. This particular function is to detect which image was selected by the player.

The original TRAUMA was completely created by Krystian and is using Flash as base technology. Even if there are ways to compile Flash directly into an iOS app, it seems to not the way to go for a game like ours. TRAUMA seems to be simple but it is based on some really performance intensive effects. It is a 3D game with a lot of blurring and video textures.

We wanted to create an iPad version and so I started from scratch. Later when we saw that the gesture painting is working well on smaller screens we decided to support iPhones and iPod touches too.

In the end the game is based on a C core for math and Objective-C for all the device specific components and the menu. The result is a portable core without losing the look and feel of a native iOS application.

You might ask why we didn’t use an engine. The popular cocos2d is obviously a 2d engine. Unity has no support for video textures and also I’m not a big fan this engine. The unreal UDK was not available at this moment. Also I don’t want to use a multiple platform engine because I would lose control over the user interface which should consist of iOS standard elements.

Redesigning the menu

The original menu was to fiddly for iPad. I started before the first retina iPad and drawing all the small font didn’t work out. Still I wanted to keep the four separated scenes and the direct access to options and the movie gallery.

Krystian is very picky when it comes to user interfaces and it took multiple iterations before the current sliding menu was finished. Now the only drawback to the original is that you cannot view all discoveries at once.

“Krystian is very picky when it comes to user interfaces…”

Having a nice interactive menu is an overlooked component of many games. The menu is one of the first things you will see in a game and it should fit into by having the same art style, using the same input methods and also shouldn’t break with the expected behavior of the platform. There is no good menu that is the same on a touch-based and a cursor-based interface.

One of the more complex menus in Xcode’s Interface Builder.

Soon after the release of TRAUMA people started to ask for and iOS version and the game seems to be perfectly made for touch, but it was not. In the original version you use the mouse cursor to find frames, click on them to go there and hold down the mouse button to paint a gesture. But there is no hovering on a touch screen. Either you have your finger on the device or there is no input at all.

In my first implementation I used a button to switch between search and paint mode, but it felt totally awkward. I also played around with using a second finger to switch between the input modes. Than I came up with the idea of tap and hold to switch. You start with searching for frames and could enter gesture paint mode when you shortly paused your motion. This was similar to the original version.

But the first implementation that convinced Krystian was when we started with gesture mode and used hold to switch to search mode. This also radically changed the gameplay. On iOS you are using far more gestures to navigate between frames because you are starting with gesture painting. It is also much more likely that you discover the move left, right and back gestures on your own.

Fading out gesture paint and hold to flash frames were implemented thanks to your fine beta testers. Many had problems to enter the search mode. Before that there was a lot of random tapping to find neighbor frames.

Writing a gesture recognizer

When you start with gesture detection you might think it is some dark voodoo magic. But it turns out to be pretty straight forward in the end. A good entrance point is “Easily Write Custom Gesture Recognizers”. Even if the final algorithm used in TRAUMA is slightly different, you will get the idea.

Detecting gestures is one of the crucial tasks in TRAUMA. So I spend a lot of time optimizing the gesture recognizer until it has a pretty high level of tolerance. Nothing is more frustrating to paint a gesture and than it is not recognized. On the other side I tried to ensure that random painting is not accidentally treated as a gesture.

Finding the balance here is pretty hard and I know that TRAUMA sometimes fails to detect an obviously correct gesture. I still try to improve this and we hopefully will ship an update later.

I have written a UIGestureRecognizer subclass that can be used in each iOS application. When I’m happy with the results and have cleaned up the code I will push it to GitHub.

“Detecting gestures is one of the crucial tasks in TRAUMA.”

Minimal loading times

I wanted the iOS version to have no loading times at all. Everyone hates loading times and so I tried to keep them as low as possible.

Since each frame in TRAUMA is unique and the iOS devices only have a small amount allocatable of memory compared to a desktop, it is impossible to keep a whole scene in memory at once.

Therefore I have written a texture streaming engine. When you enter a frame all neighbor frames will be loaded. When a certain amount of textures is loaded the ones that are more than two steps away from the current frame are unloaded. Also when memory is low on the device all frames except the current one and its neighbors will be discarded.

The same is true for audio assets. Only the focus and gesture sounds are preloaded at start. All others are streamed. This is also true for the videos.

Even the two seconds of blank screen when starting a scene is a delay Krystian wanted to have, so you are not instantly dropped into the game.

There are only a few games on iOS that use the benefits of dynamic texture loading. This is kind of sad. Loading times can make a huge difference when it comes to the gaming experience.

High performance, big radius blur

When you hold down your finger for a short moment before you can search for frames by sliding over the screen. When you hit a frame it will be focused. Technically it changes from a blur with a big radius to a blur with a very small radius. Blur is a highly computing intensive task.

TRAUMA is using an optimized two-pass gaussian blur with a constant sized filter kernel. Also the frame is rendered into the scene before the blur is performed. Projecting your image before blurring it is an additional pass but the result is much better for images that are not parallel to the screen plane.

I spend a lot of time optimizing the blur algorithm and parameters. But even if all neighbor frames are flashing there is no drop in the frame rate.

I will write a full article about high performance blurring with shaders in my blog soon.

Developing Shaders in Xcode

Realtime video texture streaming

Another big challenge on iOS was streaming video into textures. When I started developing with iOS 5 the API was not capable of grabbing realtime frames from a video. I used AVAssetReaderOutput in the beginning but it had some major issues when you need to drop a frame. But thanks to the fine folks at Apple iOS 6 finally offered AVAssetReaderOutput, exactly what we were looking for.

This class delivers the image you need right now. It supports frame dropping and also takes care of audio and video synchronization.

Sadly you have some serious hangs, up to 3 seconds if you use two instances of this class at the same time. Therefore if you leave a video frame in TRAUMA the playback is instantly stopped and the next video texture is loaded. You might notice this in the first scene when you toggle the frames with the stacked spheres. But this is only a small drawback.

Summary

After all the biggest challenge was to understand the existing XML-files with a left handed coordinate system, a ton of exceptions and strange attributes like uptothisone="true" while all documentation only existed in Krystian’s head and sometimes no even there.

Still we had a lot of fun porting TRAUMA even if we needed to fight over some details. We also improved some minor parts: the photo previews are now unique images instead of empty frames and you can explore the location in Apple Maps when you have found all photos in scene.

I spend a lot of my spare time to make this game possible. I like technical challenges as much as making games. I have learned a lot and if you want more detailed information about the implementation just drop me a line on ADN or Twitter.

You can play TRAUMA on iOS here

The games industry has a sickness. It’s an acute lack of innovation. We don’t have a cure yet. But here is a mixture that may provide temporary relief: mix equal parts Far Cry 2, Amnesia and Myst. You get Miasmata.

Far Cry 2 Parts

Just like Far Cry 2, Miasmata is a first-person open-world game. You are free to roam an exotic jungle. The game worlds consists of a lush, natural environment – something that is notoriously difficult to pull off with polygons. Like in Far Cry 2 a big part of the game is survival. There are camps on the island where you can heal up and save the game. The most dramatic gameplay moments occur when you struggle to get to the next camp.

The game is played “modelessy” in first person. Which means there are (almost) no 2D interface elements. More importantly, there are no in-game 2D menues. If you check your map the player character actually takes the textured 3D object of a map and holds it in your viewport. You also collect various documents and notes which end up in an actual 3D notebook. Far Cry 2 did this to enhance immediacy and immersiveness. That game was very much about putting players into a desolate war zone and not providing any means for them to distance themselves from the situation. Miasmata tries the same and it works although I feel it’s less justified here.

Miasmata adopts the “modelessness” of Far Cry 2. While successful, it remains a solution in need of a problem.

As in Far Cry 2 the player character is suffering from a disease. It was Malaria in Far Cry 2. The disease in Miasmata is unnamed. But while the Malaria in Far Cry 2 was more flavor than anything, in Miasmata the entire goal of the game is to find a cure. Just like in Far Cry 2 you will pop pills from now and then to keep the symptoms at bay. Just like in Far Cry 2, you never actually feel sick at all but they sure try to convey the idea in various interesting ways.

Amnesia Parts

Like in Amnesia there is actually no real combat. There are no firearms of any kind. Unlike in Amnesia there are at least daggers and you can throw some stones. I’m not going to spoil how they are used. But you never actually kill anything and anybody. Like in Amnesia, the game focuses very much on creating drama by making the player feel weak and vulnerable.

A more stylistic relation to Amnesia is a focus on the manipulation of chemicals and victorian-looking scientific tools to solve puzzles. Although Amnesia is more super-natural/alchemistic while Miasmata plays it slightly more realistic.

Refreshing to play as a character, whose special ability is not punching people but doing science.

Myst Parts

Like in Myst you start on an Island. There are no people on the Island. The Island is full with abandoned houses, ancient ruins and mysterious statues. You find documents that hint vaguely at a story. But the experience is more about figuring it out yourself while soaking up the gorgeous environment and the enigmatic atmosphere. Unlike Myst this game features fluid FPS controls and real-time 3D. There are no actual mechanical puzzles either. No button pushing and gear turning. But with combat not being part of the gameplay, your challenge is more of a cerebral nature.

Other Parts

And finally, there are some very interesting aspects which I haven’t seen in a game yet. I really love the way the map works in Miasmata. The game doesn’t keep track of your position on the map. You need to figure it out by triangulation. This sounds more complicated than it is. In your viewport you simply click on two landmarks you already know the position of. The player character will automatically draw two lines on the map at the right angle to each other. Where they meet is your current position. Every time you determine your position this way, a small area of the map around you will be automatically revealed. So you can actually chart the whole island this way. But you need to explore strategically. You need to keep climbing hills and carefully preserve line of sight to already established landmarks. It is a fascinating, new idea. It conveys an an unusual concept of exploration which seems authentic and provides unique, engaging interaction.

The triangulation of the player’s position is one of the game’s most unqiue mechanics.

The game also features realistic walking. By that I mean you are not blessed with that one super-strength we all seem to take for granted in an FPS: immunity to stumbling and falling. If you steer your character over a steep incline, you will slip off and tumble down the hill. If you run down steep a path without controlling your speed, you might get your feet twisted and fall over. All of this can make the previous task of always having to seek out vantage points to triangulate your position REALLY interesting.

None of the above systems make the game especially difficult or complicated. But they do add a certain sense of realism to the exploration. Miasmata is not a game where you are afraid of getting killed by mutant space alien zombies. It’s a game where you are afraid of slipping and falling down a steep hill while going hiking. It’s a game where you are afraid of and getting lost in the woods. It’s a game where you are afraid of not making it back home before sundown.

Missing Parts

Miasmata is an indie game made by two brothers. So yes, there are a lot of unpolished bits. When interacting with lab tools, there are no sound effects. The plants looks nice but all human and animal 3D models are horrible – “my first 3D model”-level-horrible. The designers dodged around an inventory system and arrived at a very unintuitive and disappointing solution. You may think that a game about collecting plants would give you some sort of bag or a backpack or at least pockets…

Gameplay-wise, there are other bits curiously missing. The game details some aspects of outdoor survival in a painstaking way. Yet, you never have to eat. You just need to drink regularly. Apparently that is supposed to be a stand-in for supplies in general. Curiously, there is a great deal of fauna being simulated, sometimes even down to individual bugs. It makes me wonder if food management was part of the original game design.

I like the nuanced way the story is conveyed. But ultimately, it just never goes anywhere. Considering how many ancient ruins you find, there is pretty much nothing to be discovered about them. You find a lot of corpses too but you find out next to nothing about those people and why they died. The elements for a great drama are in place. They just have never been taken advantage of. Oh, and here indie dev protip: if you work on your game for such a long time, for the love of god spend the few bucks on ANY KIND of voice actor to read the few diary entries you left for players to find. There is no bigger turnoff than finding a page with a wall of exposition text on it. Voice actors are the cheapest way to improve your game’s perceived production values.

Sadly, Miasmata never seems to take narrative advantage of it’s set pieces.

One problem the game runs into I’m familiar with my work on TRAUMA is a certain redundancy in the items you find. You collect a lot of plants in Miasmata. Because you can go everywhere, the designers couldn’t anticipate in which order you find the plants. So a lot of the plants you find do the same thing just to make sure the players will be able to do those basic things no matter where they go. This is great at first. But by the end of the game it can feel quite disappointing to discover that the new plant you found is the just the 4th variation of the same basic healing plant. In general, there is not much you can do with the plants anyway. The developers tried to come up with some tonics other than “healing” but didn’t seem to find anything interesting.

Finally, the game has been released on a self-made engine. It is a perfect example of why it’s the worst idea for a indie dev to attempt. Even if you make it, you just end up with a horribly un-optimized engine. I just bought my Notebook recently and had to turn most effects down to quite unflattering settings. Which is a pity, because a big draw of the game should have been the lush, natural environment. I saw other people having much better results so this may be a driver issue. Yet, I don’t think I would be having the same problem if this was the Crytek Engine.

Drink Me!

The above mentioned shortcomings shouldn’t stop you from trying the game. In fact, this interesting article makes a great point about how a game like Miasmata should be held to different standards. Because as far as creativity and innovation goes, we hold AAA titles to much lower standards than independent games. I had a fantastic time in Miasmata. It inspired me a great deal. It should inspire you to. Do yourself and some smart indie devs a favor. Try it out on Steam.

Here is an interesting game thing to get. Nintendo recently released a book called Hyrule Historia in the west.

Around 250 pages. A4 Format. Full-color. Hard-bound with golden print on the cover.

The books is somewhat unusual. On first sight one could call it an artbook for the Zelda series. The main bulk of the content does focus on character and environment art. Needless to say, the artwork is quite stunning.

Most of the pages show character and environment artwork. Mainly from Skyward Sword.

As always, I find myself drawn to the concept art more than to finished results. At various points the book shows variations that were considered during development process.

There are some character design sketches every now and then.

One unusual feature is that the book attempts to cover ALL of the Zelda games. Indeed there are chapters dedicated to the various games. However, there is an obvious focus on the most recent installment, Skyward Sword. Because I haven’t played it yet, most of the depicted characters and creatures are insignificant to me. Sadly, the Zelda part that interest me the most – A Link to the Past – received a laughably minor treatment. It’s basically just one page with a few images of Link.

The book contains some game design documents. They are rare and appear only as very small thumbnails. But they are fully translated.

Besides the artwork, there is some actual behind-the-scenes / game design material as well. Every now and then there are scans of game design documents and notes. Suprisinglly, all of the hand-written text on those scans has been replaced. This sacrifices the authenticity for comprehension. I do enjoy the result. My only problem is that this kind of content is just too scarce. There are just a few pages scanned in total. They usually appear as tiny thumbnails together on one page. I would have loved to see an entire chapter dedicated to those.

Zelda fans get the Rosetta stones to be able to read ancient runes in the games.

A big deal for Zelda fans are probably the translations of various alphabets from the different games. Using those Rosetta Stones, one is able to read the ancient Engraving and Scrolls. I’m surprised that the devs went the length to actually design a translatable alphabet. I wonder if the translated texts are actually readable in a real language or if they result in random gibberish.

The key stone of the book – the 1st official Zelda timeline.

The key stone of the book is the first official Zelda timeline. A mind-boggling attempt to sting all of the various Zelda games into one, big, overarching story. Personally, I always found the story of the Zelda games quite tired and stereotypical. The attempt to weave them together into one big epic is adorable. But it is a disingenuous gesture to present this side-by-side with behind-the-scenes material. The individual episodes don’t seem to have been designed with a meta-narrative in mind, yet the book implies that they were.

It is an odd book. It seems to evoke the idea of giving a glimpse behind the scenes. But it does so in a very reserved, controlled and dumbed-down fashion. It never quite commits to exposing Zelda series as the artificial, designed product. It gives us as small peek and pulls the veil close again and distracts by extending the game’s in-game narrative even more. It’s fan-fiction made by the original authors – authentic and opulent. But at the same time condescending, pandering and masturbatory.

If you have been playing games in the 80ies and 90ies, chances are you have some interest in the Zelda series. In spite of the above, I recommend Hyrule Historia. At around 250 hard-bound, full-color pages for just 25 EUR it is at least quite a bargain for a weirdly dissonant and certainly pretty experience.

I got the Prometheus Blu-Ray on Christmas. It was the über-mega-special edition with a ton of special features. Perhaps not quite as much as Red Letter Media suggested but I ended up spending an entire day watching it.

There is some very cool material on there. I was especially surprised by the edited scenes. There was a lot material that didn’t make it tn the film which wold have likely cleared up a lot of confusion about it. Here are some of the ones that struck me most.

• 

  “Guys, I’m gonna explain to you why this movie make sense even if it doesn’t appear so…”

  Longer Briefing apparently there was initially a much longer and more detailed pitch by the two archaeologists. It would have addressed some scientific concerns like how Evolution fits into the idea of Engineers creating life on earth. In the current edit, one of the other scientists asks about that but they just shrug it of. This undermines the credibility of the premise. Another advantage the longer pitch would have brought is to clarify what the expectations of the expedition were. The acts of multiple characters are motivated by strong beliefs that they would actually meet living engineers in person. This belief is never properly established in the shorter pitch. Without that, the disinterested way the characters react to the spectacular finds kinda doesn’t make sense.

• Weyland talks to David supposedly, there was a scene planned where David would visit Weyland in his cryosleep. One thing I never understood is why David infected Holloway with the black goo. Well, that scene might have clarified that it was the an order by Weyland which David blindly follows because he is a Robot. David still visits Weyland in the final cut but we never learn what they say. They drop some ominous lines in the confrontation between Vickers and David afterwards. But it’s never really clear and so it seems contrived and stupid.

• Biologist finds life one thing that is particularly annoying about the final edit is how the exobiologist and his punk-geologist friend react when they find the engineer corpse. It seems inconsistent in how they later react to the big worms. Apparently, there was a short scene bit in the room where Shaw takes off his helmet. It would have shown the exobiologist finding a small worm and being quite excited about it. That scene would have been an additional data point in the characterization of this particular character and would made his behavior appear a bit more consistent.

• Captain comforts Vickers one scene I REALLY liked and that was cut was one between Vickers and the Captain. After Vickers burns infected Holloway, she is shown being emotionally devastated in her quarters. The Captain forces himself into her quarters and tells her a story about a similar mission he had once, where he also had to kill people, who were infected by bio-weapons. The scene would have improved the movie in two ways. It would have added some more emotional depth to the two characters. Especially the captain is very under-played in that movie. Perhaps more importantly, it would have hinted more clearly an an interpretation of what the hell the pace is. At the end the characters are willing to sacrifice their life for the belief that this is a bio-weapon facility. But it’s never very clear where they got this idea from.

Moist of the scenes were cut because of pacing and length issues. It is kinda hard to see if this was really a good idea. But it is true that watching those kinds of scenes in isolation makes it very difficult to feel how they would have fit into the overall flow of the movie. On the other hand, some of them were so incredibly short. That scene with the Biologist was just a few seconds. I can’t help thinking that it wasn’t really worth cutting it.

Hearing the overall intents of the movie, I noticed two very distinct visual effects that really did a lot of damage to how people interpreted the movie:

• 

  “Nonsense. It makes me feel great. Smarter. More aggressive.”

  The black goo at the beginning The movie starts out with an Engineer drinking something and then falling apart into pieces to begin new life on earth. The stuff he drinks is difficult to properly recognize. It looks dark so a lot of people, including me, assumed it was the same goo the crew of the Prometheus finds. The problem is that none of them has the kind of reaction the Engineer in the beginning has. Which makes the black goo appear weird and inconsistent. It turns out that the filmmakers intended for the stuff from the beginning to be different. There is a part where they hire a molecular chef to design it. They add a honeycomb structure and some spheres to make sure it looks organic and alien. They intended some similarity to the black goo but also wanted it to look distinct. I think they accidentally ended up going to far with the similarity. There should have been more obvious warning flags that this is clearly different from the black goo.

• 

  I’m not crying. I’ve just been cutting worms.

  The eye worm One of the most memorable special effects is the little fish/worm that comes out of Holloway’s eye when he finds out he is infected. I think that was a bad idea. They wanted to show something shocking and biologically creepy, yet inconspicuous. But making it a worm just added a lot of unnecessary red herrings in context of the worms they find in cave. It just muddled up the question of what the goo actually does. From the making-of material, it seems the stuff is really just supposed to cause some mutations to whatever gets in contact with it. The end result being what happened to the punk geologist or to the worms in the cave. Imagine Holloway just finding an infected vein or something and the movie becomes much more consistent.

But the last things brings me to a final observation. The initial script was a real Aien prequel. Instead of goo, the scientists would have found Alien eggs. Instead of weird goo mutations there would have been facehuggers and chestbursters. Instead of the eye worm there would have been a chestburster scene. Instead of David spiking a drink it would have been David trapping a scientist with and egg. Once you replace the goo with Aliens a lot more puzzles pieces fall into place:

• Infecting People It makes more sense for David and Weyland to infect people. They wanted to meet a living alien and using the eggs may appear like a reasonable way to do this.

• Shaw’s “We Must Leave” speech By the end, Shaw insists that they were “wrong” and they should leave. But the goo is a very passive danger so there is no reason to flee. And there really is nothing they were wrong about. With aliens, this speech makes way more sense. They were wrong about the eggs being eggs of the Engineers. They are about to go back to a hive of aliens and Shaw is desperate to warn them.

One thing the Blu-Ray never properly answered is why the opted not to have aliens. Clearly, a lot of the scenes were written with aliens in mind and don’t make any sense without them. They tried to replace aliens with a different kind of danger and just failed in finding an adequate replacement. They created this goo and made it really hazy and unclear so it always fits whatever they just needed in the plot. But there is just so much it can do to fill that alien-shaped hole.

One possible explanation was that the story would have been very predictable and derivative with aliens. As it is, a lot what makes Prometheus work is the mystery. The movie is good at keeping you guessing. Aliens are such a tired trope, the first time the audience would have seen an alien egg, the entire movie would have been spelled out for them. So having mystery is good. The film just never delivers all the payoffs it sets up. I wonder where that short-sighted mystery-driven approach came from? Oh, wait! Look who who came in to do a late rewrite of the script.

Another thing that came to mind is that perhaps there was some rights / licensing dispute. Or the studio got worried when looking at the reviews Alien vs. Predator 2 received. In any case, somebody from above really wanted to downplay the alien connection. This would explain why they didn’t just downplay the aliens but completely excised them. Even the way they talk about the movie seems contrived. Why not openly admitting that it’s an Alien Prequel? It certainly seems to be written that way. Why the talk of “Alien DNA”? It’s Alien but not Alien?

I still like a lot about the movie. There are some really good themes still present in the story. The production design is nothing short of spectacular. It seems to me like the movie started out as a very simple, well written movie and they kinda broke it in re-writes and through some poor editing choices. What do you think?

Here is something weird that Nintendo of Europe did recently. They gave me coins.

SWAG!

You may not be familiar with Operation Rainfall. It was basically a fan campaign to convince Nintendo of America to localize and publish 3 specific Japanese Wii games: Xenoblade Chronicles, Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. It started out with Xenbolade Chronicles being announced for a European release but not for a north american one. The 3 games have been identified by the movement as particularly exceptional examples of complex, core-gamer titles which the Wii console was somewhat lacking in the west.

Operation Rainfall was an exceptionally successful campaign of this sort. It gained quite some traction with various, well-organized and productive forms of raising awareness. It eventually developed into a full gaming news site / blog. It was successful too. Nintendo of America eventually did release Xenoblade Chronicles. The other two titles were picked up by Xseed and found their way to North America.

Meanwhile in Europe, we got all 3 games in luscious special editions. And then we got coins.

SWAG detail

The first European Club Nintendo members, who registered all 3 games received a free special set of 3 coins as a “thank you”. I was among the lucky ones. It took Nintendo of Europe quite some time to actually ship them so by the time I received them I kinda lost track of the whole story and forgot to post about it.

The coins are pretty nice. Not sure what material they are from. They certainly feel heavy so I assume some kind of painted / coated metal? Each coin has the logo of one of the 3 games. There is a graphic from the corresponding game on the back. The set comes in a nice, back box. Each coin is in it’s own removable, plastic shell. I’m guessing that’s to avoid wear. As you can tell, I’m not a coin expert.

All of the SWAG from every side

This is one of those incredibly bizarre gaming stories we may never really completely understand. What motivated Nintendo of Europe to spend that extra money for that kind of reward? I’m pretty sure most of the fans in Europe were already pretty glad they didn’t have to convince Nintendo of Europe to import the games. The extra reward seems so incredibly superfluous. Especially since the actual artifact is so arbitrary and anonymous. You could make those kind of coins for any game, really. Perhaps it would have been more justified for a game like Mario, where collecting coins is actually part of the game.

So perhaps there was some kind of political reason at play here? Was this Nintendo of Europe rubbing it in to Nintendo of America? Was it Nintendo of Europe’s way of weighing in and trying to convince Nintendo of America to import the games? Were they just exploiting the situation to raise their public image? Did they even have an image problem in the first place? Were the developers involved somehow? Or was this just a genuine tip of the hat to the fan movement of Operation Rainfall? I guess we assume that the coins would have never been made without them, right?

Apart from speculations I really have no clue what caused this to happen. Perhaps we are going to hear an explanation years later. Or perhaps you, dear reader, have a better idea? Until then I’m going to file these babies in my vault under W as “Weird” or “WTF”.

P.S.: The games are actually quite interesting. So coins of no coins, I recommend checking them out!