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[Regiruler]

Good rule of thumb: if it's described in a fan wiki, or if there's footage of it anywhere on youtube, it doesn't count. The larger the game is contrasted with how obscure your entry is will make for a better post, but games past a certain popularity basically have their insides torn asunder provided they're at least a year old.

This will naturally lean towards older titles, although I will start with something from a game just last year.


The infamous Metroid Prime Blast Ball, despite its fan backlash, had a fairly large playerbase given that it was entirely free with online play. The game has random powerups, which normally consist of a Shield, Speed Burst, or Eject.

A 4th powerup, missile (which gives you unlimited missiles for a set duration), is so obscenely rare that I've only encountered it twice in over 30 hours, and I've only ever heard of one other person getting it. To this day this screenshot I took (along with its miiverse post) is the only consolation that I have that I wasn't crazy. It's so rare that it may have even been just a glitch of a leftover powerup idea, and NLG may have even patched it out by this point.

 

[chaosblade]

This obviously doesn't apply anymore since it was discovered and is now documented, but 14 years from release to discovery is pretty nuts.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=391332

 

[Regiruler]

This obviously doesn't apply anymore since it was discovered and is now documented, but 14 years from release to discovery is pretty nuts.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=391332

It sucks that the images are taken down which detracts from Robotnik's post, but that's pretty crazy nonetheless.

 

[psyfi]

This obviously doesn't apply anymore since it was discovered and is now documented, but 14 years from release to discovery is pretty nuts.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=391332

that's one of my all time favorite GAF threads

 

[DesiacX]

In Beetle Adventure Racing on the N64, there is a glitch that only me and a few people i know are aware of. Obtain the Handbrake cheat from one of the flower boxes, and turn it onto whatever the highest setting is. This works in Multiplayer (Beetle Battle?), and im not sure about the other modes.

At that point, go up to any ramp (or ledge) at the fastest speed you can go, and handbrake while turning as fast as you can. Logically speaking, this would cause you to do a really nice spin as you descended towards the ground. In actuality, it causes you car to spin so fast, that it flies out of bounds and is best described as a tornado.

tl:dr, max out handbrake cheat, handbrake at ramp, spinout like a tornado.

 

[uocooper]

The ability to run in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I remember people being pissed that they played the entire game without knowing it was an option.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-11-you-can-actually-run-in-everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture

Rapture originally built up movement speed the longer the player held the thumbstick in position, but the feeling from testers was that a bespoke button was the better option.

Once the shift to R2 was implemented, however, the launch was looming, and "something had been missed." Namely, the notification on the controller icon in the options menu. Oops. Apparently is is mentioned in the online manual however. But who reads those?

"We probably should have announced the run button before launch, but we didn't," Pinchbeck said.

 

[MechaX]

It was discovered already, but to kind of piggyback off of Mama Robotnik's discovery, Breath of Fire 2 has an alternate way of getting a secret character used for powering up your party way earlier than normal and other secret treasures that involves standing on a goddamn switch tile for literally 10 minutes. And you lose access to the tiles if you finish the dungeon.

Breath of Fire 2 was released in 1994.

This secret wasn't discovered until at least 2012. It only started to get documented years later and even then, people who play the game still don't know about it.

 

[ZealousD]

You can get past the infamous barrel in Sonic 3 by having Tails jump on it and then Sonic can spin dash under it and squeeze through.

I have never heard anybody mention this, even though I've actually heard several times how people found ways to actually clip through the barrel and walls around it.

 

[Stoze]

The ability to run in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I remember people being pissed that they played the entire game without knowing it was an option.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-11-you-can-actually-run-in-everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture

Similar to that, The Witness has a button to let you run and speed up line movement that a lot of people missed, probably because there was no controller layout shown in the pause menu/setting. I love the game but that's pretty silly, no idea if it was patched in after the first couple weeks of launch though.

 

[Nyoro SF]

In Ys 7, the game never tells you that Flash Guard is in it.

You press R to guard normally. But if you tap L on an incoming attack and time it right while holding R, you'll get a Flash Guard and avoid any damage. I was around a third of the way through the game before a friend informed me that it existed.

What's funny about this undocumented mechanic is that it makes the game trivially easy (though the game is already extremely easy already).

 

[duckroll]

Off the top of my head - Quest for Glory 4's special attacks and the Whirlwind spell. It's been many years since I last touched the game but I remember when I was a kid I played it and there were the weirdest missing things in the game. The manual mentions a whirlwind spell that doesn't seem to exist anywhere, and the classes are each supposed to have a super move in combat that triggered in secret ways. I don't remember any walkthrough back in the day that explained how to manually trigger them but I remember seeing the cartwheel attack for the rogue when I used autobattle. It was weiiiiiird.

 

[Rhete]

A friend of mine found a room in Chrono Trigger where after beating a boss, if you come back and go to the menu, you get attacked by some enemies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUC-EPvCcg

I believe you can use this to skip the boss outright by going to the menu on the frame it'd normally spawn


Another friend found out that if you pause and unpause quickly and the start of a level in Wrecking Crew NES, it'll start the level quicker. Again speedrunners seem to be aware of this but I couldn't find any documentation of it online.

 

[Lunarwhale]

It was discovered already, but to kind of piggyback off of Mama Robotnik's discovery, Breath of Fire 2 has an alternate way of getting a secret character used for powering up your party way earlier than normal and other secret treasures that involves standing on a goddamn switch tile for literally 10 minutes. And you lose access to the tiles if you finish the dungeon.

Breath of Fire 2 was released in 1994.

This secret wasn't discovered until at least 2012. It only started to get documented years later and even then, people who play the game still don't know about it.

hooooly shit. I think that I need to replay this now.

 

[KHlover]

There's some really, really rare voicelines in Overwatch. I play the German version, so I'm not even sure if they exist in other languages.

D.Va: "Na, etwas Käse zum Whine?" ("would you like some cheese with that whine?")

McCree *I think* (maybe Soldier?) Edit: Or Tracer? She has two guns after all...fuck: "Mit dem/der Zweiten (der Zweiten would make sense if it's Tracer, she has two of em after all) schieß ich besser" ( it's a wordplay on the German TV channel ZDF's slogan "Mit dem Zweiten seh ich besser")

I can count how often I've heard these on one hand after over 100 hours of Overwatch. I only found a thread on the blizzard forums, no other hint towards their existance.

 

[Dangerblade]

Dunno about rare these days, but I remember up until a few years ago very few people seemed to know about the Sonic suicide in Sonic CD.

 

[mattwhite924]

You can get past the infamous barrel in Sonic 3 by having Tails jump on it and then Sonic can spin dash under it and squeeze through.

I have never heard anybody mention this, even though I've actually heard several times how people found ways to actually clip through the barrel and walls around it.

Up until a few years ago I thought that was the way you had to get by it. I avoided playing through Sonic 3 just because of that one barrel. When I found out you just stand on it and hold up and down it blew my mind.

 

[Rookhelm]

The original Road Rash (i think the original, I suppose this could be one of the sequels, but I'm almost positive it's the original) for Genesis used a code system for your progress.


If you put all zeroes as a code (which I decided to be dumb and try as I was guessing codes), it sorta glitches the games out. All the tracks have weird lengths (some are like, zero miles, some are like hundreds), and as far as I can remember, you can't really play any of them.

It's weird.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Gobliiins 4 exists.

 

[Shil Pencer]

You can get past the infamous barrel in Sonic 3 by having Tails jump on it and then Sonic can spin dash under it and squeeze through.

I have never heard anybody mention this, even though I've actually heard several times how people found ways to actually clip through the barrel and walls around it.

I spent so many hours trying to get past this by jumping and i did...one time.

 

[Nyoro SF]

Another is UMvC3 and voice lines. The game actually has a sizeable amount of lines that are unused in the final product. Judging by their contents it looked like there was going to be special dialogue that played during fights between particular characters among regular typical fight dialogue that just goes unused for whatever reason.

Unfortunately the only people that know about this are the modders and they didn't respond to my request for a voice line dump.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Final Fantasy 9 has a side quest that involves you exiting the final dungeon, going across the world map to one screen in one town, and talking to characters there, and repeating this 9 times at specific points in the final dungeon. It was discovered about 13 years after the game released.

I would say <0.01% of people who played the game have done this quest. It might not QUITE make the OP's standards (I think some Wikis document it now, and there are some GameFAQs threads that do as well) but I think relative to the popularity of the game its obscurity and the time to discovery make it notable.

 

[Muskieratboi]

There's a crapload of Temp Scoring (music put in a game/music before it's finished) still in the files for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.

As in, there's shit from the Inception and Deus Ex: Human Revolution Soundtracks in there.

There's also a LOT of unused assets.

I really should make a TCRF page about that game sometime.

 

[joeblow]

Playstation VR has an awesome puzzle game called Statik. One cool feature that the game doesn't mention in its option menu is that if you have a mobile phone with the Playstation app and use it to access the PS4's remote play function, it will then automatically open up additional co-op levels where one person uses the PSVR headset while the other uses the phone to interact with the game.

 

[ghibli99]

The ability to run in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I remember people being pissed that they played the entire game without knowing it was an option.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-11-you-can-actually-run-in-everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture

Even knowing that it was an option, it sucked and was still too slow. Still enjoyed the game, but there's no reason why you had to move so slowly.

 

[ASaiyan]

Two years old and widely known now, but the fact that you can hold A and restart from the beginning of a world in the original Super Mario Bros, and this was not discovered for thirty years after its release, still blows my mind. Makes the game a heckuva lot easier to complete too, lol.

 

[StayDead]

Two years old and widely known now, but the fact that you can hold A and restart from the beginning of a world in the original Super Mario Bros, and this was not discovered for thirty years after its release, still blows my mind. Makes the game a heckuva lot easier to complete too, lol.

That's got to be older than that. I was using that back on the Wii VC release.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Final Fantasy 9 has a side quest that involves you exiting the final dungeon, going across the world map to one screen in one town, and talking to characters there, and repeating this 9 times at specific points in the final dungeon. It was discovered about 13 years after the game released.

I would say <0.01% of people who played the game have done this quest. It might not QUITE make the OP's standards (I think some Wikis document it now, and there are some GameFAQs threads that do as well) but I think relative to the popularity of the game its obscurity and the time to discovery make it notable.

If I recall correctly it was also described in the FFIX Ultimania Guide. (Which is of course Japan-exclusive.) I wouldn't be surprised if Square made that quest ridiculously convoluted just to justify the usefulness of the Ultimania Guide.

 

[CloudWolf]

Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV have had some events since the release of those games that I have yet to see after more than 1000 hours of playtime.

 

[UncleSporky]

This isn't necessarily something that no one knows about, it's probably been documented for a long time now, it's at GFAQs etc. Still something I bet very few people know about.

Kid Icarus on the NES has a hidden internal level up/XP system. You have to hack the game apart to find out about it, it's not based on your score or hearts. HP (endurance) gain is based on score, and the manual hints at this but is vague and poorly-translated. But your strength stat which determines how much damage you deal is XP-based. The romhacker who discovered it called it Skill.

To get a Strength upgrade in a given stage, you must have at least 10000
Skill. Thankfully you cannot have a negative Skill value. These things affect
your Skill:

-300 for taking damage, except for damage tiles like lava
-10 for firing an arrow
-500 for breaking a pitcher in the Treasure chamber
+300 for entering a Holy chamber
+100 for defeating an enemy that drops a small heart
+300 for defeating an enemy that drops a half heart
+500 for defeating an enemy that drops a big heart
+100 for collecting a small heart (if you have less than 998)
+300 for collecting a half heart (if you have less than 994)
+500 for collecting a big heart (if you have less than 989)
+100 for collecting a mallet
+1000 for collecting or buying back a Weapon
+100 for buying anything in a shop except a chalice or Weapon
+300 for entering the Score tally screen (redundant)
+8000 for killing a boss (redundant)

As you can see you need to be a good player to keep racking it up, take less damage, be more accurate/fire fewer arrows. And you need to keep spending those hearts so you can collect more, if you're maxed out then you're just leaving tons of XP on the table.

 

[chitnex]

Maybe in the Spyro 3 boxing minigame where, if you have another controller plugged in, you can play with two people? This very well may be known by tons of people, but I haven't thought about it in a while.

edit: there's some youtube videos of it after all.

 

[Rookhelm]

Two years old and widely known now, but the fact that you can hold A and restart from the beginning of a world in the original Super Mario Bros, and this was not discovered for thirty years after its release, still blows my mind. Makes the game a heckuva lot easier to complete too, lol.

Not to shit on anyone's parade, but we were using this trick as kids when the game was actually out in the 80's.

Not sure where the 30 years came from

Also, that article is wrong anyway...it puts you at the first level in a world, which is what I think you said, but the article doesn't.

 

[Lijik]

This is semi-well known but in Shadow the Hedgehog whenever you're teamed up with one of the mascoty characters like Sonic or Amy, a second player can plug in another controller and play as them creating a kinda janky co-op mode (the camera only follows shadow and the game is constantly swapping out your teammate on its own forcing you to reset your partner in the pause menu)

 

[Fhtagn]

In the final area of Dark Souls, there are enemies evenly spaced through the run up to the final boss.

If you get summoned and then return to the area, the final of these enemies is missing every time, without having fought them. If you sit at a bonfire they return.

Very subtle thing, probably a bug.

 

[Prophane33]

Not to shit on anyone's parade, but we were using this trick as kids when the game was actually out in the 80's.

Not sure where the 30 years came from

Also, that article is wrong anyway...it puts you at the first level in a world, which is what I think you said, but the article doesn't.

Yeah this is common knowledge to many of us who played the game back in the 80s.

 

[UncleSporky]

Not to shit on anyone's parade, but we were using this trick as kids when the game was actually out in the 80's.

Not sure where the 30 years came from

Also, that article is wrong anyway...it puts you at the first level in a world, which is what I think you said, but the article doesn't.

Yep, it was in one of the official player's guides or atlas.

If you want some quick documentation of age of this trick here at least is a GFAQs guide not updated since 1999 that mentions it.

 

[Tank Jr.]

Silpheed for Sega CD has an error handler that'll dump you back to the title screen with an extra continue.

 

[Metzhara]

Two years old and widely known now, but the fact that you can hold A and restart from the beginning of a world in the original Super Mario Bros, and this was not discovered for thirty years after its release, still blows my mind. Makes the game a heckuva lot easier to complete too, lol.

I remember figuring this out in the late 80s. My dad used to show me all the cool tricks (he taught me the "infinite" lives trick in 3-1) and I accidented upon this.
Oddly enough... he was less enthusiastic than I expected. Still don't understand that. I thought it was amazing (as I listened to "Under the Milky Way" by the Church.)

In short, I thought it was "common knowledge" and only found out it wasn't when I told a friend in high school when we were doing some NES runs and I wondered why he kept starting over. One of the many ways dads ruin your life!

 

[khaaan]

The back of the NiGHTS: Journey Into Dreams box only shows the Wii remote and Nunchuck as supported controllers...It totes works with a Gamecube controller though. I don't think that it's that big of a secret though.

 

[TransTrender]

Final Fantasy 9 has a side quest that involves you exiting the final dungeon, going across the world map to one screen in one town, and talking to characters there, and repeating this 9 times at specific points in the final dungeon. It was discovered about 13 years after the game released.

I would say <0.01% of people who played the game have done this quest. It might not QUITE make the OP's standards (I think some Wikis document it now, and there are some GameFAQs threads that do as well) but I think relative to the popularity of the game its obscurity and the time to discovery make it notable.

I wanted more info on this and I figured other people would as well so here's a link:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=568409

 

[Man God]

A lot of people don't know about this from the gen one pokémon games.

 

[Dreamwriter]

There’s a dancing rhythm game in the Gameboy Color “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, where you can see Flitwick boogie down

 

[Zevenberge]

The bomb arrows in Link's Awakening. Equip the bow and bombs and press A+B to fire a bomb arrow. As far as I know it is never mentioned ingame or in the manual. It might be said during one of the telephone conversations, but I never listened to them all.

 

[jasminlovesyoux]

You can get past the infamous barrel in Sonic 3 by having Tails jump on it and then Sonic can spin dash under it and squeeze through.

I have never heard anybody mention this, even though I've actually heard several times how people found ways to actually clip through the barrel and walls around it.

That's the only way we knew how to get past it growing up.

I think I only learned about the up down mechanic like ten years after the fact.

 

[Pejo]

I love these threads. Had never heard about the Legacy of Kain or Breath of Fire things, tempted to read up on them and try it out. Subbed.

 

[GlassBurrito]

A bug in Ghostbusters 2009 borked a few online multiplayer achievements on the Xbox 360 which was subsequently patched 18 months after its release. That patch that arrived a year and a half later did not fix the achievements from unlocking and the likelyhood of the Payday and On The Payroll achievements unlocking under normal circumstances is about 10%.

 

[Celine]

"vagina in Geist" (glorious thread):

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=678073

 

[Willenium]

This isn't necessarily something that no one knows about, it's probably been documented for a long time now, it's at GFAQs etc. Still something I bet very few people know about.

Kid Icarus on the NES has a hidden internal level up/XP system. You have to hack the game apart to find out about it, it's not based on your score or hearts. HP (endurance) gain is based on score, and the manual hints at this but is vague and poorly-translated. But your strength stat which determines how much damage you deal is XP-based. The romhacker who discovered it called it Skill.



As you can see you need to be a good player to keep racking it up, take less damage, be more accurate/fire fewer arrows. And you need to keep spending those hearts so you can collect more, if you're maxed out then you're just leaving tons of XP on the table.

This one is pretty wild. Imagine the amount of work that went into assigning those values!

 

[QuantumBro]

Unlocking Chapter 3 in MGSV. It's not really worth the trouble though.

 

[Hero]

Final Fantasy 9 has a side quest that involves you exiting the final dungeon, going across the world map to one screen in one town, and talking to characters there, and repeating this 9 times at specific points in the final dungeon. It was discovered about 13 years after the game released.

I would say <0.01% of people who played the game have done this quest. It might not QUITE make the OP's standards (I think some Wikis document it now, and there are some GameFAQs threads that do as well) but I think relative to the popularity of the game its obscurity and the time to discovery make it notable.

Wow, I've never heard of this quest.

Do you get anything good for it?

 

[Kingpin Rogers]

The moon in Breath of the Wild has a smiling face on it in reference to Majora's Mask.