#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.

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[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!

[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?

[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

[aquatark]

Marine Encyclopedia - The Gabbiano

Endless Ocean, Nintendo Wii

*grabs yatabei blenny* YOU

[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

[l3l-diving-service]

DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS

I DID!! I'm super excited! 🤩

Until I found out that it's on Nintendo Switch, instead of on the Wii. And I don't have a Nintento Switch. And everything I look at costs between $150-$300 dollars. 💔😭