Can you find your way out of the Kaizo Trap?

[Black Aeronaut]

I dunno if I posted this here or not.  And I didn't want to put it in the Video thread because I was afraid it either take over the thread or get lost in everything else.

This is Kaizo Trap.

Kaizo is a Japanese word that basically translates to 'Modified' or 'Hacked'.  It started seeing usage in gamer culture with the advent of 'Kaizo Mario World' which was a hacked version of Super Mario World for the SNES that was insanely hard - the very first predecessor of of the absurdly hard Mario Maker games people make today.

And in fine Kaizo fashion, this video has five secret endings that you can find.  You will only find one link to the next ending in each video.  The clues are hidden, usually in hexadecimal code... and sometimes even in binary... but it always translates out into ASCII.

I will give you guys one hint to get started...  Your first clue is cleverly hidden in the instruction manual we see near the beginning of the video.

Good luck, gentlemen.

[Matrix Dragon]

The first rule of Kaizo is to never play. Remember the suffering of ProtonJon!

[Sofaspud]

... arrgh.
Okay, so, I've found the way to at least 3 -- I'm going with the assumption that 'outside' links, so to speak, are not counted among the endings.

This has sucked up waaaay too much of my time.  I've been staring into the abyss too much I think.

Even with YouTube set to HD quality, there's some stuff that's too badly pixelated for me to make it out.  I don't suppose there's a better source than YouTube?  (I might just be too old for this shit, I dunno.)  Also, at least one link I followed takes me to a "This video is unavailable" message from YouTube.  So... not sure if that's legit or what.

Still, though.  Interesting diversion, thanks!

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Black Aeronaut]

Here you go, Spud: http://www.reddit.com/r/kaizotrap

Also, if you're totally lost, some Youtubers have put in some very helpful hints and outright solutions in the comments. On one end one youtuber was kind enough to put down all the bits of hex code for easy copy-pasta.
EDIT: Oh crud, you're stuck in the MAZE!!!  That one's several videos you need to find the hidden links to.  Your clue is hidden in hex-encoded ASCII in Ending 3.  Think of a really obvious spot where you see numbers.  Big, bold printed ones.

Also, wanna take a moment to say that I love the small touches in the original video.  Like the text in the lift-shaft that propels our Heroine to confront her SO:

UNASSISTED RUN ONLY
TOOL-ASSIST PROHIBITED

No Save Scumming
No Slow Motion
No Frame Advance
No Rewind
No Memory Display
No Code Injection
No Pause
No Hope
No End

And if you pause it at just the right moment where the game reboots...

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD 'HATE' WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

MAXIMUM MALEVOLENCE DETECTED.

[Sofaspud]

Yeah, I've found a lot of them, and I found one ginormous block that when decoded reads as an... advertisement?  I think.  But clearly I'm still missing one somewhere.
Also, out of curiosity, is the DNA sequence at the beginning of #1 meaningful in any way?

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Sofaspud]

Nyaargh.  So... many... rickrolls...
I'm about ready to pack it in, this has progressed past fascinating to frustrating.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Black Aeronaut]

Sofaspud wrote:

---

Yeah, I've found a lot of them, and I found one ginormous block that when decoded reads as an... advertisement?  I think.  But clearly I'm still missing one somewhere.
Also, out of curiosity, is the DNA sequence at the beginning of #1 meaningful in any way?

Not that I'm aware of.
And yes, there are a LOT of rickrolls, especially in the LONG Ending.  (Admittedly, some of them have rather nice music, like that awesome Indie Rock cover of Duran Duran's Ordinary World by an Australian group called Something For Kate.  You actually hear it in the background of the Long Ending at one point - the rickroll was animator's way of crediting the source, I guess.)

Are you stuck on the Long Ending or the Short Ending?

[Sofaspud]

Technically I *think* I'm stuck on the Short Ending (#4), but I keep falling into this rickroll loop.  Or finding the Nyanwhale.  Again.
Right now I'm trying to see if there's any meaning to the pattern of non-ASCII byte values encoded in the block that contains the URL.  I was poking through the subreddit you linked looking to see if any kind soul had already extracted the Morse audio, but it doesn't appear so.  I can decode it just fine but my Morse is rusty enough that I want a sample of *just* the Morse rather than fiddling with Youtube sliders over and over again.

Also, either I'm misinterpreting the images OR the pattern you follow is not as simple as H->E->F->W.  Or, I suppose, the chain is broken: I keep stumbling on a "This video is no longer available" message, and I dunno if that's just another rickroll or if that's where I was supposed to go but link rot has set in.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Black Aeronaut]

I'll PM you the trick to getting out of the maze.
EDIT: Not sure what was discovered with the morse coding, but I think someone discovered a message in there.  Not sure what it was exactly, but fairly certain it was some kind of Easter Egg - one of many in this series of videos.  (Hell, if you look carefully at the portrait on the wall in the house at the very end of the Good Ending, you'll see the bridge blocks Mario is on suddenly turn into coins, letting Mario plummet to his doom.  Very telling, neh?)