#endless ocean wii game

[river-taxbird]

The Endless Ocean games on Wii!

Endless Ocean 1 and 2 are an awesome duology of Wii games where you scuba dive, learn about fish, and collect treasure. The main gameplay loop consists of exploring vast underwater environments, find hidden treasure, and interact with fish to fill up a fish-dex. Playing it as a kid even encouraged me to try scuba diving!

They look fantastic too, it's like, still the PS2 era graphics, but it's on Wii so it is like, the peak of that. It has that charming low poly look I have seen a lot of people craving.

Most of your time in the game is just exploring and taking in the environment, but there is always something to find. When you interact with fish, you fill up a fish-dex, and you can learn real world facts about them. If you play it, you'll have so many fish facts to share with people. (When they're accurate, the games are old)

They even have a story with pretty good human characters. The environments are fantastical, you visit ancient ruins, ship graveyards, even sunken castles, but the human characters means it always stays grounded and has some pathos.

If you are into older games and you're looking for a shorter length game with low-fi graphics, gameplay that doesn't really resemble anything before or since, and to learn a bunch of cool fish facts, I can't recommend Endless Ocean enough. I think they might be kind of rare these days, but they work great, and are thematically appropriate, on Dolphin, and should work fine with a normal controller, especially Endless Ocean 2 as it had Classic Controller support.

[bixels]

Finally made cover art for Project Pacifica.

[aquatark]

My previous post made me realize that not a lot of people here are aware of Endless Ocean's bowmouth guitarfish glitch fiasco, which I think is a shame because 1) it's an interesting look into this game's history, and 2) I find it really funny... long-winded explanation incoming!

So! you see this guy?

You can place him in the game's aquarium, right? I bet if you've played the game, you've done it without even thinking twice!

...Well, in the initial Japanese release of Endless Ocean (known over there as Forever Blue), you couldn't. In fact, attempting to place this little scrimbly in the aquarium crashes your game.

Now this isn't too bad, since you can just press the reset button and continue your game normally, right? well... if you happen to leave the aquarium and save the game after having opened the creature placing menu, selecting a bowmouth guitarfish, and then closing the menu without placing anything... then congrats! you can never use the aquarium again, because it autoplaces whatever you left in that menu on your next visit! :D

In case you're wondering what this looks like in action, this video taken around the game's launch showcases it well, while also using the game's MP3 playback feature to put some anime music in the background, which I think adds to the experience:

So... how does this happen? How could something like this make it into the final game?

Turns out, this is due to how Endless Ocean categorizes creatures internally. Each creature in the game falls into a category, depending on the movements and behaviors the developers wanted to give them. For example, "migrate" type creatures follow a set of coordinate points creating a route around a stage, whereas "swim" type creatures simply swim around the area in which they are placed within a certain radius. Think of a whale shark's movements versus that of a butterflyfish - they have very different AI telling them how to behave.

Now, trying to load a creature of one type as a creature of another... does not make the game happy, to put it lightly. It doesn't know how to handle the request, and so crashes to prevent further weirdness from ensuing. There is only one byte (literally the second smallest unit of digital information storage you could use) per creature responsible for telling the game what type to load the creature as, and this includes when placing creatures in the aquarium. A slip of the keyboard caused a dev to type the wrong number in this byte, making it attempt to spawn bowmouth guitarfish placed in the aquarium as "swim" type rather than their correct "migrate" type. Literally one wrong number caused the game to crash, and for ears to bleed across Japan.

Since the aquarium is unlocked so early in the game, people discovered this on day one, in their first play session... and since Endless Ocean was a launch game for the Wii in Japan, that's even worse. It's not exactly a great look for your brand new console to have a game break so bad you can't use a mechanic anymore. And Wii game crashes are not pretty. So, Nintendo put out a statement on the day of release, notifying people of the problem, how to avoid it, and saying that a recall would be put in place. A week later, they released another statement, which stated people could apply to have their games replaced with an updated version, which would be mailed to them free of charge, by either phoning in or filling out an application online. This service continued up until 2020, over ten years after release! They really didn't want any copies of the broken version around... good thing we have archives of it!

The updated version even has different box art, with an added blue bar at the bottom, showcased in this incredibly crunchy image:

I love picturing Nintendo executives freaking out after a humble diving game causes such a mess they have to print the game again, losing them a lot of money and causing the game to get a lot of negative press...

I've seen old forum threads talking about the game as if it's garbage before it even came out internationally, because this situation was pretty much the only major news coming out about it. Can't have helped sales, at least...

Anyway, the game was patched to fix this glitch, along with a few other minor tweaks, and it was this version of the game that got translated worldwide. Japanese fans love joking about the whole ordeal, and I can see why! For example, on the bowmouth guitarfish's Niconico Pedia page (for which the closest equivalent in English would be something like Know Your Meme), this is recounted comedically as "...probably the most notable moment for the bowmouth guitarfish in the history of the internet", which is probably true! There's even image macros about it!

So yeah. The bowmouth guitarfish's reputation was forever tainted, and some Nintendo execs to this day probably wince when they see one.

tl;dr - A developer for Endless Ocean typed one number wrong in the code, making the game explode if you place a bowmouth guitarfish in the aquarium. Nintendo had to recall the game, and that specific fish has lived on in infamy among Japanese fans ever since.

Next time you use the aquarium, try putting a bowmouth guitarfish in there, and be grateful you can at all!

[fruitiermetrostation]

[oktaviaslabyrinth]

Nineball Island (Night) // Endless Ocean: Blue World (2009)

[keirashark]

THEY’RE MAKING A NEW ENDLESS OCEAN GAME

HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK

ENDLESS OCEAN 2 WAS MY FAVORITE WII GAME IM GONNA CRY

[brianmccormicksmash52321]

Happy 135th birthday, Nintendo!

[ubtendo]

Im playing that new endless ocean game for the switch right now

I mean, story is like a 3/10 so far, but can somebody explain to me why I am in a cute coral reef one moment, and I turn suddenly I am in the ancient times swimming with dinos💀

[doyouknowthisgame]

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

oh yeah and for those of you wondering (no one) i HAVE ordered endless ocean luminous in hard copy, i AM waiting anxiously for its arrival, im TRYING TO HOLD OUT HOPE that i enjoy it more than the reviews claim i will, and i WILL be unreachable when it first arrives

[butterflycultist]

Nineball Island

This small island is only 100 feet in diameter. Surrounded by miles of coral reefs, the island is a perfect getaway spot. Jean-Eric won it from a friend in a game of 9-Ball.

🌴 x 🏝 x 🌴

🌊 x 🏖 x 🌊

🌴 x 🏝 x 🌴

[falling-mist]

This is so silly but im so fucking excited about endless ocean luminous!!! Like the last time i ever saw the endless ocean property was on the fucking wii the wii!! And i just found out about it by accident this past week im so very excited about it i remember basically nothing about it but it was you know a wii game so honestly while i hope they improved it im also hoping some more of the same jankiness you know?

[aquatark]

kind of randomly spurred post, but i was just wondering how many endless ocean fans knew about the development screenshots we have of the first game... so i figured i'd share them with you all, along with some light analysis for those interested in this game's development history!

so the development photos i'll be going into in this post were revealed to the public in 2014-2015, shared on the twitter account of ichiro mihara, the vice president of arika and series producer of the endless ocean games! nowadays, he mostly just posts food pics and pokemon go stuff... kinda living the dream ngl

below is the complete set of screenshots:

the most obvious difference here to most players would be creatures placed where they shouldn't be, such as the yellow boxfish in an atypical zoom, and the presence of false clown anemonefish in the abyss and ship's rest. while the boxfish photo i don't have any explanation for other than the creature moving around a little at some point in development, the anemonefish photos i have a more interesting explanation for!

we can use these photos, along with multiple other photos of clownfish in eo1 zooms taken during development (which are used on the plaques of eo2's aquarium), to deduce that this clownfish species was used as a test creature for zoom environments! i mean, it's pretty obvious they weren't intending for you to actually find clownfish in the depths... and due to their order in the game's internal d code life system, we can assume they were among the first zoom mode creatures to be added. it all lines up! though i'm glad the little guys don't have to suffer that insane water pressure anymore...

now, another big difference is the lack of water fog in most of these photos! it's especially obvious in the photos taken in zoom mode that this portion of the game had yet to be figured out at the point those photos were taken. for comparison, here's the yellow boxfish photo compared with a photo of the same staghorn coral zoom in the final game:

big difference, huh? this fog would be even stronger if i weren't using an emulator to take my photos - dolphin tends to skimp a little on the fog. but, this lines up with what we know about this game's development: during a post-release developer interview (which you can view translated into english here), they mentioned struggling to make this fog feel right - more oceanic than foggy feeling, and accurately changing with the player's current depth - and these photos illustrate that there was a time where fog in zoom mode spots was neglected entirely!

the screenshot of the open encyclopedia also has a lot of interesting differences from the final game. take a look here, comparing the same page:

(note that of course, the development photo was taken in japanese, while my screenshot is in english: "fish who live in the ocean" is actually what the deep sea section is called in the final japanese release... trust me, i checked)

so obviously, the layout of these pages is completely different! i imagine the details on these small fish would have been barely legible on the average person's tv at the time, so making them bigger was a good call. additionally, the encyclopedia used to be navigated using arrow buttons and a back button to exit! this back button is completely unused in the final game, probably just because it's redundant when in the final game, you can just press the b button to go back. three other small changes are that:

in the dev screenshot, the encyclopedia's page background is just a texture, as opposed to a 3d model as seen in the final game. this means it's likely the pages didn't flip like a real book does at this point.

the scientific names of the giant squid and the oarfish was altered.

there are no page numbers in the encyclopedia.

now, for a quick lightning round of smaller changes!

in the final game, there is only one place to find remoras: accompanied by the whale shark in entryway slope, in small numbers. this contrasts with the whale shark photo, in which way more remoras are seen surrounding it, and in an area deeper than entryway slope allows. since this photo was also an old promotional image, and we have footage of the game from previews around the same time, the most plausible explanation is that this whale shark was placed in the game's unused test stage (which i should also make a post about at some point lol).

the penguin photo was taken with an angle impossible in the final game, as was the polar bear photo and the starck's demoiselle photo.

also in the penguin photo, there are two hatches typically present on the deck of the gabbiano (one on either side of the mast), that are absent.

the water surrounding the gabbiano in the polar bear photo is a different color than in the final game.

the starck's demoiselle photo has a bright cyan water color in the background, which is never visible in the final game without camera hacks.

finally, one fun fact regarding the starck's demoiselle photo: it's actually used in-game, both in this game and in the sequel! in eo1, it can be found occasionally placed in the fake magazine spreads sent to the player for a C grade photo request, and in eo2, it is the photo used to represent "DIVING MAGAZINE" when viewing photo requests!

that's all of my rambling for now, i hope you found this interesting! if this kind of longpost is something you'd like to see more of in the future, let me know! i've got all sorts of topics in the chamber that i just need an excuse to write about lol

[sugarandice3]

Okay guys, I need to put y'all on something.

Back in the Wii era, there was a game called "Endless Ocean: Blue World." Y'all I'm telling you this was one of the best games we played on the Wii. It had a compelling story with characters that felt like actual people, complete with flaws and individual motivations. And the gameplay? AMAZING. It could be super chill and relaxing most of the time with intense parts that kept the game compelling. In addition to this, the game had so many side-quests that actually 100% it took a while. Overall, it was way more fun than a diving game had any right to be. Soooo, if you think that sounds fun, well I have news for you.

A NEW ENDLESS OCEAN GAME IS COMING OUT IN MAY

The trailer is horrible, but shows that the game has promise. I'm hoping that as more gets revealed, we'll get to see it really shine. More people need to show excitement for this game so that we can get a quality game that can live up to the rest of the franchise.

[80roxy08]

HOLD THE FUCK UP THEYRE DOING A NEW ENDLESS OCEAN ?

why am I only learning about this now omggg

[grinbrothers]

Endless Ocean - Wii Wonders!

Souldin's wonderful review of the Wii game; Endless Ocean! Premieres at 6AM BST on 17/1/2024!

Welcome to a review of the Touch Generation Nintendo IP, Endless Ocean. Dive down into the dark and mysterious depths of the Manauri Sea, encountering ancient structures and unfamiliar aquatic wildlife in this oddly relaxing experience.

Wii Wonders Season 2 Cover Art by AngelAik0: https://www.deviantart.com/angelaik0/art/Commission-Nanka-872606281 Wii Wonders Story Art by xXxSai: https://www.deviantart.com/starteam2017/art/Commission-for-Sould1n-811636274 Wii Wonders Controls Art by Ang_YUSOX: https://www.deviantart.com/starteam2017/art/Commission-Nanka-811758731 Wii Wonders Gameplay Art by Seasickjelly: https://www.deviantart.com/starteam2017/art/Chibi-Monochrome-Commission-Nanka-831774583 Wii Wonders Conclusion Art by Sakka-sama: https://www.deviantart.com/sakka-sama/art/Com-Nanka-833535376 Endless Ocean is exclusive to the Nintendo Wii.

Date Made: 29/10/2023 to 4/11/2023 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXCFgLZmjBeMCt-QbSoDhVA Tumblr: http://grinbrothers.tumblr.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrinBrothers