Remember "playground rumors?" Those were something I super took for granted when I was a kid. I didn't realize back then that those were actually some of my favorite parts of playing video games; the fact that even single-player games became social experiences. Like when the character select screen just has one silhouette left and you've tried everything, and then your classmate Nick tells you that HE figured out how to unlock that character, and he tells you how to do it, and you have no idea if he's fibbing or not until you get home and try it, and even if it doesn't work you never fully rule out the possibility that you did something wrong, so you start testing different variations of the method hoping something changes the outcome, it was basically a childhood introduction to the scientific method. Yeah, now that I think about it, because of video games and playground rumors, I understood the fundamentals of the scientific method without even realizing it, ironically at a time where I would zone out in class if the teacher so much as said the words "scientific method."

Given that it's been almost ten years since I so much as set foot in a school that had a playground, not counting my college which had an on-campus daycare, I can't say for sure if playground rumors are still alive. But even back then, playground rumors also extended to the lunch room and the school bus, so you'd think that if they were still around that I would have kept hearing them well after Elementary school, though I suppose that it could just be a matter of my peers growing up around me though, because there is actually nothing the kids in my middle school loved more than spreading rumors, they just went from harmless rumors about weather or not there was going to be a Luigi's Mansion 2 on the Wii, or if the DS version of Super Mario Galaxy actually exists out there somewhere to rumors about who's the best dressed and who's having sex, who's got the money, who gets the honies, who's kind of cute, and who's just a mess. Basically what I'm getting at is that I have no idea if kids on the playground still spread rumors and perpetuate secrets about video games, but given that the Internet is where it is now and the fact that datamining is a thing and because of that it doesn't seem like secrets in video games actually stay secrets for very long anymore, (frankly I think Pokemon should just stop doing event-exclusive legendaries. We find out about them months before their official reveals, they're not secrets, nobody is surprised by them, they might as well just put them in the game somewhere to catch like any other legendaries.) I'm willing to guess that they're not really around anymore, and that's just sad to me; because without them, no Smash Bros. game, or Pokemon game, or games from a ton of other series, will ever be as charming to me as the ones I played when I was a kid through a combination of both nostalgia as well as merely playing them at a time that was just really good for the kind of games they are, because the Internet was around, but not what it is today, making it basically a whole massive-ass playground to talk about the secrets on. One of my favorite things about video games growing up was something that just can't exist in our world now because of how times changed and technology evolved. It's like the VHS format, the G4 TV network, the Kids WB and Fox Kids blocks, and most recently Toys R Us, they all may have died for good reasons, but it was still just as sad to see them go nonetheless.

Now why did I say all that? Because one of my favorite rumors I heard on the playground back in fifth grade, not too long after Samus gave me my sexual awakening, (?taht timda I did kcuf eht yhW) involving a stripperiffic unlockable texture for Zero Suit Samus. By that point in time I was a little less naive when it came to those video game rumors, especially given that this one in particular just seemed both too good to be true, and quite clearly not Nintendo's usual M-O, but I actually fell for this one though, through a combination of wishful thinking and because there was actually "proof" of its existence. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWGGEV0iS5s) Any method anyone would tell me to unlock this costume, I tried it, hours of my life that I will never get back were spent trying to get a fictional character to take her clothes off, *looks at my gallery, noticing that nothing has changed* that shouldn't make me feel nostalgic, why does that make me feel nostalgic? I was a dumbass kid. I mean, even back then I knew what textures were and that anybody could modify them, but I also knew what rendering was and that those Brawl cutscenes were pre-rendered, meaning that a change in texture theoretically shouldn't alter the opening cutscene, it seemed like it had to be real. The only way I could think of to alter a pre-rendered cutscene was to Photoshop each frame one at a time, and I figured some Joe Schmo on the Internet wasn't going to have the patience to go frame by frame just to fake a nearly-naked Samus. I never considered, however, the fact that the kind of person who would make fake video game content to pass off as real is also, generally speaking, the same kind of person who has nothing better to do than edit the footage frame by frame for hours at a time. In fact, given the low framerate on that video, it should have been pretty obvious that that's how it was done, assuming that's how it was done.

Either way though, Meno Uno Suit Samus and all the other playground rumors out there; they may be gone, but I can only hope that they're never forgotten, may the Pokegods that are so totally real, no seriously, I'm not lying, my uncle works for Nintendo, allow it

Sorry, the weather was really warm today, like record warm, we went from having Winter weather with snow and everything less than a week ago to today feeling like the middle of Summer, and when the weather gets all warm and Summery, I don't know why, but I just can't help but wax nostalgic. Like, even more so than usual.