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00:00 For practically as long as there have been video games, there have been video game secrets.
00:04 Players have been hitting walls, jumping down holes, and sometimes just mashing buttons hoping
00:09 to find something special. Over the years, this video game signature feature has become more fully
00:15 implemented. Secrets evolved to provide more satisfying rewards. These are the secrets that
00:20 made it past you and made you say, "Wait, what?" when you finally heard about them. I'm Jess from
00:25 WhatCulture and here are 10 video game secrets everyone knows except you. Number 10, chain
00:31 boosting, Crash Bandicoot. Some people would call the Crash Team Racing series a simple knockoff of
00:37 Mario Kart. Those people though would be wrong. In fact, much like the original Crash Bandicoot
00:43 platformers, the game can be downright brutal, especially competitively. Play online and you'll
00:48 notice that you're getting absolutely smoked by everyone else. You're not even coming close and
00:53 they all have this blue fire trailing behind them. The reason for that is chain boosting,
00:58 an advanced, difficult to master technique that's practically required for high level play. By
01:04 chaining skills together, you can build up an escalating speed boost of varying color,
01:09 the fastest of which is blue. From there, you can continuously chain together any speed boosting
01:14 elements such as turbo pads and turbo power up, and you can maintain the blue boost indefinitely.
01:20 But don't expect the game to give you any help. It's something you have to learn and master for
01:25 yourself. Number 9, duplicating remembrances, Elden Ring. Like any Souls game, Elden Ring
01:31 doesn't bother explaining much to you. And also like any Souls game, it's packed with secrets.
01:37 So many they're still being discovered by persistent players. But one of the most powerful
01:41 things you might not know about is how to duplicate one of the game's most powerful items,
01:46 remembrances. Remembrances are only dropped by bosses and can be traded for one of a selection
01:52 of items. Choosing the best one is a bit of a gamble. Fortunately, you can choose two if you
01:58 know this trick. The first thing you'll need to do is find a wandering mausoleum. Don't worry,
02:03 you'll probably know it when you see it. Just listen for the telltale sound of a church bell
02:08 in the distance. Hack away at its legs a little to make the poor big guy take a little tumble,
02:12 and from there you can climb on up and find an altar that will let you duplicate any remembrance
02:17 you wish. But you should still choose cautiously, as each altar can only be used once, and there
02:24 are more bosses than there are mausoleums. So choose well, Tarnished. Number 8, Crystal Flash,
02:30 Super Metroid. The Metroid series has always been a game of exploration first. Most of the
02:36 abilities and upgrades you acquire over the course of playing are geared towards progressing through
02:40 the world more so than they are for combat. So it's no surprise that the games also have their
02:45 fair share of secret mechanics, but the self-healing Crystal Flash in Super Metroid is by far the least
02:52 likely to find without a friend or your trusty copy of Nintendo Power to clue you in. It costs
02:57 a not insignificant amount of ammo, can't be used if you have any full energy reserve tanks,
03:04 and can only be used at less than 50 health. But by entering morph ball mode, selecting power bombs,
03:09 holding down the fire button, and then pressing L, R, and down on the d-pad simultaneously,
03:15 you can get Samus out of a real pinch if you need to. Needless to say, this is the kind of thing you
03:21 could only discover through button mashing and a lot of luck. And while the cost is high, the huge
03:26 amount of health you recover is literally a lifesaver in an emergency. Number 7, Trick Enemies
03:32 with Cassettes, Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain. Metal Gear and Death Stranding creator Hideo
03:38 Kojima has never been shy about loading his games up with secret mechanics, but one seemingly small
03:44 joke in Metal Gear Solid V turns out to have actual tactical applications. I'm talking about
03:50 the sound effect tapes. Throughout the game are numerous hidden cassettes featuring some of the
03:55 greatest hits of the 80s. Most players thought them out eagerly and sometimes wound up disappointed to
04:01 find that what they thought was a new song was actually just a tape of sound effects. Kojima
04:06 trolling us again. But these tapes actually have a use. If you're hiding in the bush and a suspicious
04:12 guard saunters over, you can play any of the animal sound effects to cancel his suspicious state.
04:18 Likewise, if the same happens when you're in a toilet stall, you can play the, um, how should we
04:23 say this, stomach ache sounds to convince him he's better off not knowing what's going on in there.
04:29 So if you're ever in a deep espionage situation, don't forget that tape of Halloween sound effects
04:34 you had as a kid, because it might just save your life. Number six, use HTML to give your crafted
04:40 weapons a little pizzazz. Fallout 4. One of Fallout 4's better mechanics is the weapon and
04:46 armor customization. The game provides a generous amount of interchangeable parts that can be
04:52 liberally mixed and matched. This not only allows you to tailor a weapon to your preferences,
04:57 but also mixes up the loot you'll find. Add in the game's random legendary weapons with their own
05:02 unique effects, maybe a new paint job, now you've got a piece that just screams you. Even better,
05:07 you can name your new weapon, truly making it your own. To NPCs, you're the boss character with
05:12 the unique item drop. But did you know you can further customize the name with a couple of basic
05:18 HTML tags? Yes, by adding the appropriate code, you can have the name underlined, bold, or in
05:25 italics. So that's pretty neat. Look, we never said these would all be useful secrets. Number
05:30 five, shield surfing. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the
05:36 Wild was a throwback to the legendary franchise's infancy. A giant open world with little in the
05:42 way of direction, it was naturally also packed with secrets for players to discover. But by far
05:47 the coolest of these, and the least practical, was shield surfing. To participate, the first thing
05:52 you're gonna need is a shield, obviously. Now go to the top of the biggest hill you can find.
05:57 Finally, use the left trigger to raise the shield, then X to jump, then A in midair. Link will land
06:04 feet planted on his shield, and now all that's left to do is perform sick tricks by using the
06:09 analog stick and the X button. Link can even fire arrows while surfing, but this is unwieldy and
06:15 impractical to say the least. And yes, there is a side quest that teaches you to do it, but it's so
06:20 far out into the mountains, you'd really have to go out of your way exploring to even find it.
06:24 Number 4 - Wave Dash - Super Smash Bros. Melee
06:28 The first time you saw a wave dash was probably when you were getting your butt handed to
06:33 in what started as a friendly game of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Fast forward to the competitive
06:38 Smash Bros. scene, and the question everyone wanted to know, was it fair game to exploit what
06:43 is essentially a glitch? Now synonymous with the Smash Bros. brand, wave dashing was a completely
06:49 unintentional gameplay mechanic. By repeatedly and rapidly jumping, then dodging to the ground,
06:54 the game created the illusion that you were sliding around the arena like Sonic on ice skates.
06:59 This allows you to be the most obnoxious hit and run fighter, as you can wave dash in, get a hit,
07:05 then wave dash out before your opponent's attack animation could even complete. It took quick
07:09 fingers and a good amount of practice to use it effectively, but the wave dash quickly became a
07:14 necessity if you wanted to play competitively. It's gone through a few different iterations
07:19 over the years after being embraced by Nintendo, and it no longer feels quite so exploitative,
07:24 but rarely does a secret game quirk become such an iconic mechanic.
07:28 3. Melee Boost - No Man's Sky By now we all know how No Man's Sky has gone
07:34 above and beyond making up for its shortcomings upon release. Now we have vehicles and mounts to
07:39 traverse a planet's terrain, making it much less of a slog to explore a planet. But until you reach
07:44 that point in the game, on-foot travel is still a slow and tedious chore. This goes double if
07:50 you're exploring a hazardous planet. Your health is rapidly draining, you're short on shield
07:54 batteries and life gel, there's a cave just ahead of you but you can already tell you're not gonna
07:59 make it if only you were faster. That's where this handy little trick comes in. By using your melee
08:04 attack and then immediately following up with your jetpack, you'll boost forward at a breakneck
08:09 speed. This does drain your jetpack quickly, but alternating between sprinting and the melee boost
08:15 is your best bet to get anywhere fast. Just make sure you look before you leap.
08:19 2. Kill Undead By Casting Life - Final Fantasy Series
08:24 Like most RPGs, the Final Fantasy series has a rock-paper-scissors style of elemental weaknesses.
08:30 You can usually count on fiery enemies to be weak to ice, robotic enemies to be especially
08:35 sensitive to electricity, and undead enemies especially flammable. It's the dry skin. And yet,
08:41 rarely are you taught that undead enemies have a much more significant weakness - healing magic
08:46 and items. After all, if a spell heals the living, then it stands to reason that it would unheal the
08:52 dead. And if it resurrects your party, then it also makes sense that it would kill a dead thing
08:56 even more. Okay, doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense, but you can't deny there's a certain
09:01 logic to it. What's even better is that many undead bosses throughout the series are just as
09:06 susceptible to death by life as your average zombie grunt. To the undead, your white mage
09:11 might as well be a walking nuke. 1. Mobile Stash - Cyberpunk 2077
09:17 You know how it is, you're running around questing in a big, open-world RPG. You find an epic piece
09:23 of loot, but it's a bit out of your league, meaning you lack the stat requirements to wield it.
09:28 Since it's only taking up inventory space for now, you go back to your main hub and drop it
09:32 in your convenience stash. And then after a couple hours of leveling, ding ding ding,
09:36 you finally pump that stat up to the minimum you need for that shiny new weapon. Too bad you have
09:41 to stop what you're doing and go all the way back to your stash just to equip it, then go back to
09:46 the task at hand. Add double annoyance if fast travel points aren't conveniently located. But
09:51 Cyberpunk 2077 makes that minor inconvenience a thing of the past, as your car's trunk allows
09:57 you to access your stash from almost anywhere you want. There's nothing quite like the sheer
10:02 convenience of being able to pull right up to the door of a building full of techno thugs and swap
10:07 out any equipment you might need. And no need to worry about those pesky carry limits anymore.
10:12 That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in that comment box if you can think of
10:16 any other video game secrets that you reckon everyone knew before you did. As always,
10:21 I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me. If you like it,
10:26 come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm @JessMcDonald,
10:29 but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.