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Issue #14-S - Special Mario Challenge Edition

October 31st, 2015

November is just a few short hours away and it's time for us to unveil our big challenge: Nerd Bacon's Mario Challenge! This will be be fairly similar to how we conducted our 2-Year Anniversary Challenge back in August. Hopefully at least some of you were able to unravel the mystery throughout the last 3 issues of Greased, but if you weren't, I'm going to take a few moments at the end of this quick issue to explain the puzzles to you so that the next time we have a secret to divulge you'll have an idea of what to expect and look for.

Onto the challenge!

The rules of the challenge are pretty simple, but it's going to take a bit of dedication to finish it. That's why we're going to give you plenty of time. Here's the skinny:

• Review 5 Maio Games
• Challenge Starts November 1st and Ends February 1st
• Completion will be rewarded with an all new exclusive badge, never to be seen again: The Weird Mushroom (unofficially known as the "Skinny Mushroom" or "Luigi Mushroom")

Easy enough, right? Our aim here is to increase our overall coverage of Mario and honor the character's 30th anniversary (birthday?). Although we have collectively reviewed a number of Mario games already, there are many, many more that we haven't touched. Of course if everyone (or even half of you all) review 5 games each, there will be some overlap, but that's cool too - we love diversifying the site with multiple opinions on a single subject. We certainly encourage you to go after the dark corners of the Mario library, but there's no harm in giving us your take on the classics as well. Spin-offs are also acceptable, but cameos are not.

If you don't have any Nintendo systems or Mario games at your immediate disposal, there are plenty of great emulators out there for the likes of the NES, Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, even the DS and GameCube.

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Don't know where to start? Maybe we can help. Below is a list of eligible Mario games, including acceptable spin-offs. Next to each game in parentheses is the number of reviews NB already has for said game, useful information whether you're looking to fill in our gaps or to earn your Copy Flower badge. Games lacking a parenthetical notation have not yet been reviewed on the site. Note that this is not an exhaustive list (for instance most digital-only titles have been excluded in addition to Japanese-only games such as the Mario Artist series for the Nintendo 64DD, but they are still valid), so it is possible you may have other Mario or spin-off titles eligible for the challenge. Also note that despite crossovers with Sonic and Donkey Kong (properly originating from the latter) these are not considered spin-offs. Technically Mario is a spin-off of Donkey Kong; the Donkey Kong series has also achieved notability outside of its connections with Mario. Sonic has of course also enjoyed success outside of Mario's influence and for many years was the "hipper, cooler" alternative to Mario. Other characters with their own games such as Yoshi, Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Toad clearly owe their autonomy to the popularity of Mario.

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That's already over 125 games to choose from! Let us honor Mario's 30th Anniversary by playing as many Mario games as we can (or at least 5!) during these next 3 months. Don't miss your chance to earn one of the coolest mushrooms in Mario's repertoire! And check this out - if you haven't alreay earned the Bat Pentagram badge for reviewing 5 games in the same series, you'll add it to your sash as well! After that you'll be halfway to a Duplicator badge (10 of the same series) of your very own; consider making your way through another 5 Mario games once you've completed the challenge. This will be a tough badge to earn outside of the industry's longest-running franchises - Mario, Donkey Kong, Sonic, Castlevania, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and a small handful of others - so if you're planning on undertaking the challenge, use this as an opportunity to get a little closer to the Duplicator. Finally, since several Mario games have already been reviewed, you can give us your take on one already covered and earn the Copy Flowerbadge as well! 4 badges!

   

If you have any questions about a certain game qualifying for the challenge or not, feel free to ask! We've tried to make it as clear as possible, but I'm sure someone can find a game or two that falls into a gray area.

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So now we'll take a couple of moments to go through the clues hidden in previous issues. I was pleased that it caught the attention of a few of you, though I had hoped more of you would take up the challenge! Anyway, for those who may have spotted the clues but had trouble deciphering them, here's what was hidden and what I'd hoped many of you would figure out. The idea was to give those of you diligent enough to decode the clues as much as 3 or 4 weeks of a headstart on the challenge.

Issue 1.11-S
(Click here for the web version of 1.11-S)

If you look near both the top and bottom of this issue, you should see 2 small boxes made up of yet smaller boxes, each of a different color. I thought this would surely stand out to anyone looking for clues! A quick mouseover reveals that there's something to be clicked, but with a little more searching, you should find that each individual color leads to a separate link. Seven of these 8 squares lead to clues directly concerning the challenge, while another reveals a little something about October's secret badge.

Clicking on the teal square leads to the clue about the badge; I thought this clue was fairly self-explanatory. Once on this page, the colorful blob at the bottom leads to another page with a faded image of the Skull Box, October's secret badge. The mildly cryptic text was supposed to indicate that further participating in writing Halloween-themed reviews after earning the Pumpkin badge would net members a brand new Skull Box badge.

As for the other 7 squares, they needn't be viewed in any particular order. Each link contains 2 numbers and 2 letters. The concept here is to put the letters in order based on the numbers. The result is M A R I O C H A L L E N G E. Each link was also accompanied by a couple of images; the lowest is a simple "Back" button. The images with the numbers and letters are various mushrooms from the Mario universe which have been distorted. Underneath is part of a picture. If all the pieces are put together correctly, it'll yield an enlarged version of the Weird Mushroom. The idea here was for all the mushrooms to be swimming around your thoughts while you pieced together the Weird Mushroom, itself being the badge offered for completion of the Mario Challenge.

A further hint, for those who might be stumped yet observant, was "hidden" in the URLs of the colored boxes. The teal link led to NEWSECR.html, while the link on the following page led to ETBADGE.html. Put the file names together and you get N E W S E C R E T B A D G E or "new secret badge." A similar scheme was used for the other colors, going from left to right, top to bottom, PU.html, THELE.html, TTER.html, SIN.html, OR.html, DER.html, and finally USETHENUMBERS.html. "Use the numbers" was supposed to be enough to catch one's attention and make one look a little harder at the other page names, which, when put together, spell out "put the letters in order." So yeah, there's a little of how my brain's working when I try to make these difficult but doable.

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Issue 1.12
(Click here for the web version of 1.12)

The next issue, 1.12, includes a single clue split into 2 parts. You should notice an uppercase Greek letter "Omega" (Ω) in the upper left of the newsletter. Likewise there is a lowercase Greek "Pi" (π) in the lower right. (This was a small nod to the movie The Net from the late '90s...how hilarious is it to see how far we've come?) Both letters are clickable.

"Omega" leads to a link named DotheMath.html; that's exactly what I meant for you to do! Some folks had difficulty with figuring out just what to add and subtract here. The idea was to look for something that all the animals had in common, which in this case is legs. (Ok, technically the tentacles of a cephalopod and the arms of an echinoderm aren't exactly "legs," but visually I thought the message was clear!) Octopus (8 legs) minus Starfish (5 legs) equals 3. Three plus Ladybug (6 legs) equals 9. Nine minus Elephant (4 legs) equals 5. The next part of the equation with the "pie" was meant to allude to the second part of the clue - the "pi" symbol at the end of the issue. So, 5 plus "clicking on pi." My intent was to link the two clues as part of a single clue.

Clicking on "pi" will bring you to a page full of...dots. I drew this inspiration directly from Pokemon and presented the clue in Braille. I realized that not everyone is going to realize this is Braille at first glance, so I hid another clue in the URL/file name: xBxRxAxIxLxLxEx.html. All you've got to do is use Google and find a place to translate Braille letters, and you'll see that the result is "games." When coupled with the previous answer back from "animal math," the complete clue is 5 games.

So if you're keeping up, so far you'll have "Mario Challenge - 5 Games" as a hint. That's a good chunk of important info, right?

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Issue 1.13
(Click here for the web version of 1.13)

The final clue, given in 1.13, was dumbed down a bit after receiving limited feedback regarding the previous clues. Between the "Follow Us!" and "Contact Us" boxes on the lower left side of the newsletter, there's a small box filled with a bunch of weird looking characters, ostensibly spelling "Broken Semaphore." When clicked, you'll be brough to a page with figures holding flags in various configurations. The clue here is "semaphore," also refered to the URL as sema4.html. Much like Braille or sign language, semaphore is a system of using flags to represent letters. And much like deciphering the Braille clue from 1.12, all one needs to do is find a "semaphore alphabet" and match the flags up with letters. The result is "three months," directly referencing the November 1st through February 1st dates of the challenge.

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Now that you know the mentality behind the secrets and clues hidden throughout the last 3 issues of Greased, what do you think? Too hard? Too easy? I want them to be hard enough to be fun, but not so hard as to have you scratching your head and wandering off, so to speak. Shoot me some ideas! What other secrets can we hide (and not just within Greased, but also on the site itself, on our social network pages, dropping live hints during Twitch streams, etc.) and how can we hide them? Let us know your thoughts on peppering these secrets around and in what ways we can make it fun for you!

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That's it for now! Let those Mario reviews start rollin' on in! Keep in mind that we are not counting any previous Mario games towards the challenge (though they will count towards the Bat and Duplicator badges), only Mario reviews written between now (November 1st) and February 1st when the challenge ends. We think this will be a great project for both beefing up Mario reviews and getting a little boost of productivity to carry us through the winter doldrums. We think that 3 months is a generous amount of time to grant; we are taking the holidays into account as well as all the new releases dropping in November and December and all the cool stuff that many of you will be receiving. If you find yourself working your butt off during the holidays keeping up with news, new releases, etc. and running out of time to complete the challenge, contact us privately for possible alternate arrangements. We definitely want to celebrate Mario, but not at the expense of new holiday goodies and high profile releases. As long as you're working hard, we'll make sure you get a fair shot at receiving the exclusive badge!

If you have any other questions or concerns we're always at your disposal. I know some of you out there are bigger Mario fans than others, but hey, 30 years deserves some recognition! We'd also be glad to hear any other suggestions you may have for celebrating Mario's 30th birthday. What we really want is a huge pile of Mario reviews to add to our collection, but if you have a great idea for a Mario article that's a bit more out of the box, we're willing to consider it. Happy Mario-ing!

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NerdBerry NerdBerry@NerdBacon.com	The Cubist TheCubist@NerdBacon.com
Doc Croc DocCroc@NerdBacon.com