3DS Swapnote Special Stationery List - trying to complete

Okay so I know I don't blog very much on this channel anymore. I'm mostly taken up with my Newbie GM blog, all about my Doctor Who Roleplaying experiences and Lave Radio, the Elite: Dangerous Podcast as well as Escape Velocity the full-cast audio drama based on Elite: Dangerous.

But, I am still an avid gamer and a bunch of us have been trying to figure out our Swapnote Special Stationery list, especially since the Swapnote Update in April 2013 gave us the ability to see how many we had each collected.

I've search the internet a bunch of times, but I can't find a list of Swapnote Special Stationeries I can understand, so I thought I'd make my own, based on the ones I have on my system. Hopefully my 3DS pals can send me the ones I'm missing.

I have 52 pieces of Swapnote Special Stationery at the time of writing (now 63 - see updates at bottom). My list is:

• Animal Crossing (insect outlines)
• Animal Crossing (Japanese - border of character faces)
• Art Academcy (Faint flowers in background)
• Bravely Default Flying Fairy (Character with giant speech bubble)
• Christmas Candy Cane, Baubles and falling stars
• Christmas Gift Bow and falling flowers
• Denpa RPG 2 (Japanese - Antenna Tower)
• Denpa RPG 2 (Japanese - Denpa Men in conga line holding a green cloth?)
• Denpa RPG 2 (Japanese - Family in fron of figure with bouquet)
• Denpa RPG 2 (Japanese - Girl sitting in front of pile of presents)
• Dillon's Rolling Western  (Faded paper poster)
• Dillon's Rolling Western (Rope outline with silhouettes)
• Dragon Quest Monsters (Japanese - Wood frame with vines)
• Dragon Quest Monsters (Slime silhouetees)
• Fallblox (2 columns of cartoon figures)
• Fire Emblem (Japanese - Row of pixel sprite figures across bottom)
• Fire Emblem Awakening (Character in front of faint world map)
• General - Beach with surfer silhouette
• General - Writing Paper/Pad with coloured lines
• Harmoknight (floating musical notes)
• I Fight Dragons (Photo booth faces with zooming figures)
• Lego City Undercover (group of 5 crooks)
• Lego City Undercover (police car)
• Luigi's Mansion (Ghosts zooming down corridor)
• Luigi's Mansion (side-scrolling ghosts)
• Mario and Sonic (Tennis and Fencing)
• Monster Hunter? (Cartoon Cat holding meat above head)
• Monster Hunter? (Cartoon Cat holding sword in front of waves)
• New Super Mario Bros 2 (Falling coins with gold mario and silver luigi)
• New Super Mario Bros 2 (Gold mario with fireball, ALONE, with falling coins and coin stack)
• New Super Mario Bros 2 (Luigi tripping with coins and Mario jumping)
• New Super Mario Bros 2 (Raccoon mario flying with scrolling coins)
• New Year Party Poppers with falling confetti
• Nintendo Direct (Japanese - Super Mario Land 8-bi scene with pagoda)
• Nintendo Direct (Nintendo Direct logo with Japanese pagoda with hills and fireworks, on blue stripe background)
• Nintendo Direct (Red top+bottom borders with map of europe)
• Nintendo Direct WiiU Black
• Nintendo E3 2012 with zooming bubbles
• Nintendogs and Cats (with reverse-zooming cloverleaves)
• Paper Mario Sticker Star (Mario with hammer in front of yellow checked background)
• Pokedex 3d Pro (Cartoon Genesect on white background)
• Pokemon Black/White 2 (Genesect on blue/purple background)
• Pokemon Black/White 2 (Genesect on grey background)
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (3 blue circles)
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (Blue)
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (Red)
• Swapnote Update (Flying letter with green baseline + pencil)
• The Legend of Zelda (Vine border with 6 pixel-sprite figures)
• Valentines (chocolate birds and falling flowers)
• Valentines (frame with stitched hearts)
• Valentines (Lace corners with zooming hearts)
• WiiU (Faint Miiverse in background)

UPDATE!

Since posting this appeal to my 3DS buddies I have had an excellent response from the lovely Alana who has provided me with the following additional swapnote special stationery:

• GameCenter CX (Japanese - Pixel art King on zooming starfield)
• Pokemon Black/White 2 (paper in two halves, black border left, white right, black and white Kyurem depicted)
• Super Mario 3D Land (Jumping mario with raccoon shadow on airmail border with logo)
• Mario Tennis Open (Peach on right with tennis balls scrolling left to right)
• Mario Tennis Open (Mario on left with tennis balls scrolling right to left)
• Monster Hunter? (Cartoon Cat holding playing card? with duck on head and pink background)
• Culdcept (Japanese - shows zooming rectangles with Manga girl in foreground, reads "Omiya Soft" in border)

UPDATE 2!

I also have the following stationery:

• Super Mario AR Card
• Mario and Donkey Kong - Minis on the Move
• Animal Crossing (Isabelle with zooming leaves)
• Monster Hunter 4 - Big English Logo and Silhouette Tribal Design

Why be a hero? - Good Versus Evil

Over at Playfire, a social network site for gamers, they have an interesting take on trophies^[1]. One thing that is clear with trophies is that the value of the trophy itself isn't a clear indicator of how difficult it is to gain. Some Bronze trophies are painfully hard to gain, while some Gold trophies are awarded simply for reaching the end of the game.

Playfire displays some interesting statistics about the prevalence of each game's trophy. For example, did you know that to date only 24% of players^[2] have seen all the endings of Heavy Rain? Or that a massive 46% of players have the Platinum Trophy for Assassin's Creed II, meaning that they have bought all the upgrades, paintings and collected all of the stray feathers around Renaissance Italy?

Screencapture of Playfire Trophy statistics

I recently finished inFamous - a very good and often underrated 3rd person action game. It succeeds as a genuinely original superhero origin story where other games based on established comic book heros have failed. Cole's abilities are based around what makes a videogame fun, rather than trying to work out how to make a given hero's powers work. It's something that I hope the upcoming inFamous 2 delivers as well as this game.

One interesting aspect of inFamous is the once-ubiquitous moral choice system; which, in this case, translates into whether you play as a Hero, healing the sick and restraining criminals to face justice or a Villain, destroying baddies and citizen alike, destroying at will and sucking fallen victims' life forces to fuel your abilities. The only way to achieve the Platinum trophy in this game requires two play throughs. Once as a hero and once as a villain.

The first time I played this I made a choice: I really wanted to be the anti-hero. I'm a Live Role-Player and the idea of playing a character totally different to myself is always highly appealing. It occurs to me that in most games, even ones like GTA where you fill the shoes of a sort of anti-hero, you still end up taking mostly moral actions. I decided that, in playing inFamous, I wanted to be a proper villain. None of this "basically good at heart but makes wrong choices nonsense" - I decided that in my mind my character had been hurt, felt used and considered himself a victim and therefore lashes out at the world around him in order to inspire fear, if he can't win respect.

Evil Cole from inFAMOUS

I bore no conscience about civilians caught in the crossfire. If I ran low on energy I would grab a passer-by to drain them of their vital energy. If there was the chance to rob somebody for rewards, rather than help them and hope for reward, I'd do it. Outside of the game's own mechanic was space for some personal expression through role-playing: fallen enemies (particiularly if they'd put up a tough fight and annoyed me) would be drained of their energy regardless of whether I needed it - it became an expression of vengeance. Being the villain was empowering, but ultimately lonely; People throw stones at you in the street, forcing you to have to live your life on the rooftops of the city, and your loved ones turn further away from you. But, as a game-play experience it was genuinely liberating and different to how most games feel.

Playing as a Hero totally changed the experience of the game. I had to modify my battle technique to avoid hurting civilians. More than that, there were similar role-playing experiences to what I had enjoyed as a villain. If I saw a sick pedestrian in the street I simply couldn't pass them by, even if I was in the middle of a chase. If I saw an injured criminals, my instinct was to use Arc Restraint (kinda like handcuffs) to hold them down to prevent them hurting anyone else. The civilians of the city rallied to my cause and even joined in the fight, assisting me by hurling rocks at the enemy, rather than me.

All in all it gives a compelling insight into the psychology of a driven humanitarian/broken vigilante or, as we more commonly name them: superhero.

What's interesting about Playfire stats, is that the majority of players choose to be a good guy. 26% of Playfire players have the platinum trophy and have therefore played both sides of the coin, so we'll discount them from our analysis. 35% of the remaining players finished the game as a Hero, while only 18% chose to finish the journey as a Villain.

Good Cole healing a civilian in inFAMOUS

The most helpful stat is for the Karma Powers upgrades. There are 15 good or evil missions that must be completed to fully upgrade a power on either side; this is an exclusive arrangement - it's not possible to fully upgrade one particular "good" power if any opposing karma mission has been completed and vice-vera. 20% of players fully upgraded their Good powers, with only 8% of the players fully upgrading their evil powers.

So, less than a third of players who chose a full single path through the game chose to play as the bad guy. I'd like to believe that in real life, most people strive to do what they think is the right thing. People make mistakes, sure or are selfish or have misguided aims which cause what it right in one person's eyes to be wrong to others; but few people specifically aim to do the villainous thing. So, given the choice within a non-threatening environment like a game, why do so few gamers choose to explore boundaries by playing a proper anti-hero?

In "Why Dark Games are Good", Andy Robertson talks about "safe spaces for dark stories" in which he addresses the issue that there is nothing wrong with exploring darkness in an environment where it has no real impact. My own experience of playing as a villain in inFamous allowed me to explore some curiosity in my mind and feel liberated from game- and role-playing habits - but, more importantly I learned that ultimately the effect of seeking to improve, rather than destroy was far more rewarding. Playing violent or dark videogames doesn't turn you to violence - but it does and should provide a environment without real consequences to explore violence and bad choices and the impact that they have.

Perhaps it would do players some good to spend a little less time trying to be the hero and take the chance to learn why they don't want to be a villain.

<sup>1. Trophies and achievements, but I'm going to stick to the one term for this (back)
2. Based on users of playfire only - therefore probably tipped toward the more "hardcore" gamer (back)</sup>

Concerning PS3 Trophies, 360 Achievements and Nintendo not joining the party

I had to confess recently to being something of a Trophy Whore.

For the uninitiated, Trophies (on the Playstation 3 - the XBox 360 equivalent is Achievements) are a ticklist of tasks which can be completed within a game. However rather than simply existing within the game itself, these awards are connected with your online profile. Even if you uninstall and sell on the game, the legacy of your actions in that game live on through your ID.


There is a great variety between titles as to the kinds of trophies offered and the skill required to achieve them (more on that later), but they typically involve awards for getting through certain parts of the game, completing the game on different skill settings, unlocking all in-game features and trying all of the game modes. Genre-dependent, other trophies are for things like winning a set number of online matches, beating a target speed-run time, getting all the women in the game to like you...

Then there are the random trophies which are even genre dependent, but based upon the title itself: I've got trophies for everything from "flipping the bird" to a cop in Mirror's Edge, performing a successful barrel roll in Wipeout HD, flying a helicopter under all the bridges in GTA IV to spending a target amount of money on courtesans in Assassin's Creed II.

Generally speaking, gaining all the trophies for a particular title will gain you the Platinum trophy on PS3 - or similar accolade on XBox.

The top trophies are meant to be an indication of real skill, but sometimes that doesn't work and the skill required to beat all challenges varies greatly from game to game. Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time (HD re-release) features a platinum trophy which can be gained in a few evening's careful play. Wipeout Fury, on the other hand, features trophies which are pretty painful. Complete 20 Zones without hitting the sides of the track? I should co-co!

My PSN card. I have a surprising number of trophies for a fitness game.

I can generally tell at a glance if I'm going to try for the platinum having taken a look at the trophies on offer. I'm currently playing Brutal Legend and I'm pretty sure the challenges offered aren't for me, heavily reliant as they are on multiplayer success: not something at which I excel these days and also a viral trophy dependent on find another player who already has it.

I didn't think I was a trophy whore for a while, because in my mind trophy whores are people who play, buy or download games specifically because they offer a cheap or easy Platinum trophy. There's something very arbitrary about playing simply to boosts one's own player score.

However I did find myself recently choosing to not bother playing a game because it didn't offer trophies. That sounds a bit trite - actually I had a choice between two games in a series and I chose the title with trophy support over the older title without. I also felt a little pang of disappointment when I realised that neither Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light or Costume Quest offered a platinum trophy for 100% completion. (especially since Lara Croft GoL presented a steeper challenge than many other games!)

It led me to wonder where my own fascination with trophies comes from. Also, having read recently that the Nintendo 3DS will not feature an achievements system I found myself disagreeing with the sentiment, feeling that the system will be somehow incomplete without this peripheral feature.

In that article, Nintendo's Bill Trinen is quoted as saying "When they create their games, [Nintendo's designers] don't tell you how to play their game in order to achieve some kind of mythical reward... Basically, the way the games are designed is they're designed for you to explore the game yourself and have this sense of discovery."

I disagree with that statement for the first reason I love achievements and trophies. I find they encourage me to attempt things in the game it would not have occurred to me to try unless someone had suggested it. That's not to say that the trophy system diminishes my sense of intelligent exploration - it just shapes it into a target to hit.

Costume Quest + Platinum: What I'd like to see

Take GTA IV for example. It doesn't take a genius to realise that one of the first things you are going to attempt when you first grab a helicopter is to fly under one of the city's bridges. That "sense of discovery" comes naturally to gamers - it's why we love the medium. However, without a pointer (and a system to keep track of progress) would I have spent a very entertaining hour or so flying around the city to try and fly under all the bridges in the game? Probably not.

Similarly, GTI Club+ offers a couple of trophies for the following: get a carwash and still win a race and win a race by turning around and reversing over the finish line. This adds a great sense of fun to the experience and really enhances the challenge available.

Done well (and we'll all played games with trophies clearly added as an afterthought) the trophies available for a game add to the game experience - they integrate with the gameplay, provide additional replay value and expand your skill with the game. Batman Arkham Asylum is a great example of Trophies implemented well. The combo achievements encourage you to raise your game in terms of melee fighting accuracy, and some of the trophies help expand side plots featuring the ridder and the Spirit of Arkham.

It is true to say that you can implement these kinds of objectives and rewards in-game. Batman Arkham Asylum would be the same game without trophies - you could simply move the achievements to an in-game menu and live without a unified achievements system.

But what is fun about the trophy system is sharing your achievements with others. If I have a friend playing the same game as me I can look at their trophy list and gauge how far along they are with a game - even provide a bit of help if they need it.

Sure there's an element of competition - but isn't it nice to be able to add a bit of friendly competition even to games with little or no multiplayer element?

Metroid Prime 3 had quite a nice idea - when you complete the game it posts a screenshot of the "game complete" screen to your message board on the Wii with a percentage of completion. Unfortunately, the Wii's message board is a bit useless and can't be navigated with ease or readily shared with friends. But I like the idea - beyond trophies or achievements - that you can take a snapshot of your experiences with a game and record them for posterity.

You only get a view like this through trying to get all the trophies

I think my love of trophies comes down to a feeling of completeness; of closure. This is purely a personality issue, but with so many games offering replay value and open worlds to explore (even after the main game is completed) I often feel that there I some games I never finished - just abandoned. Having a checklist of specific tasks to complete does at least give me a sense of closure with a game.

It's also a way of recording memories. We all play so many games and have so many experiences. If you have trophies, take a stroll down memory lane and take stock of some of the things you have achieved and experiences in the games you have played.

I'd like more games to capture memories. I'd like to be able to play back what I just did and take photo snapshots of incredible moments I witnessed, hilarious mishaps I encountered or poignant beats that spoke to me. To quote Blade Runner, "I have seen things you people would not believe ... all those moments will be lost like tear-drops in the rain."