Michael English Daibouken (What’s Michael?) Solve (forever)
https://pangenttechnologies.tumblr.com/post/646015772168257536
This post links to this video:
https://youtu.be/B7Auj0jfAW0
Michael English Daibouken (What’s Michael?) NES Famicom Disk System
from description:
It’s Michael, that mischievous dancing cat from Makoto Kobayashi’s comedy manga and anime “What’s Michael?” In this edutainment game for Nintendo’s Famicom Disk System, kids will learn English with the help of Michael, his wife Poppo, their “student” children, and that fat cat Nyajira (Catzilla). It’s an okay platformer from Scorpion Soft, where you must jump carefully to collect letters, then float around to collect words (?) There was also a PC-88 adventure game of What’s Michael? which included a lot more of the manga’s characters and story. The manga and anime presented several different versions of Michael in different situations. This game’s Michael is actually a cat from space (!)
At the beginning (18 seconds in) is a ‘STORY’ screenshot, which has some suspicious misspellings.
Then between the first and second sections (8:47 in) this appears:
Overlaying that on the ‘story’ reveals:
Reading off in RGB order gives: XBUTGQNCGBXMTLXOUUJYMSFYYIPIYD
Vigenere with key ‘sassenh’ (The name of the player in the video, all that could fit in the field) FBCBCDGKGJFIGEFOCCFLFAFGGECBGD
A1-PF 6232347A7069756E336B6167753274
hex b24zpiun3kagu2t
link https://mediafire.com/?b24zpiun3kagu2t testcard.gif
This image does freaky things if you zoom it in and out. Inspecting the GIF revealed there were two layers, one in color, one in black and white. It’s also made up of 6x5 ‘blocks’ of color. Where on the color level, the colors are inverted within each ‘block’ matching the ‘black or white’ locations. (Don’t know if that made sense, you might have to check the file out for yourself)
By looking at the colored image, through the black-and-white image, with either the black or the white made transparent, led to two possible ‘Pangent colored’ blocks.
Suspecting a mediafire link and assuming all pairs of blocks would start with either a ‘3’ a ‘6’ or a ‘7’ for hex digits or lowercase letters, the one with the ‘white as transparent’ was chosen:
White:
62 75 39 34 6a 6e 36 7a 6c 68 38 34 31 61 35 bu94jn6zlh841a5 https://mediafire.com/?bu94jn6zlh841a5 bracelet.jpg
decompose into RGB:
Red:
Green:
Blue:
It is braille; black is dot, white is empty
Red: F E N A J M G S O K Blue: S S Y T P T Y T X T Green: L Z F I Y B L C F O
Read it in columns to get FSLESZNYFATIJPYMTBGYLSTCOXFKTO
Vigenere with argentina to get FBFAFGFLFACCFCFEGBGHFOGJGKFKCI -> pangent hex -> bagka3cerxnpzj9 https://www.mediafire.com/?bagka3cerxnpzj9/ expect.txt
Excerpt from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Comparing to the original reveals missing letters in Pangent’s version:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1400/1400-h/1400-h.htm
grlttwnncewnkryjsPfcltpxosgdwq
Vigenere with 'argentina’
gafpgdfacefhgefbfPflfpcegfgdfk
A1-PF 716F7461356875626F6B6F3576746A
hex: qota5huboko5vtj
https://mediafire.com/?qota5huboko5vtj whatsassen.gif
This GIF is the ending to the Michael English Daibouken game, as seen in the video, but the colors of the cat and kitten at left are changed.
To match some of Leslie’s cats … Caterine, a kitten, Mayor Sassenheim, and presumably the cat from “Shenanigans”
Some kind of obscured datamatrix at the bottom right…
Can be decomposed into RGB for three datamatrices.
R: GNOGJLFJKM G: BSSWCSBPOW B: MTGNVHIWFO
Read in RGB order, GBMNSTOSGGWNJCVLSHFBIJPWKOFMWO
Vig argentina, A1PF, hex, zpavwho4hj642li
https://www.mediafire.com/?zpavwho4hj642li familyfloe.png
Byte values of the background colours as hex values gives s3s6whbs0fanwdl
https://www.mediafire.com/?s3s6whbs0fanwdl jigspice.png
ScopingL solved this puzzle:
As with some other puzzles, the first version of this difficult puzzle was unsolvable, and was replaced by Pangent. We then tried to scale the image according to the numbers provided on the image. Starting at 1111x608, then using Rawpixels to adjust to 750x900, then looking at the Blue channel, and some faint shapes might be visible, but it appears we need a more pixel-accurate placement/solving of the jigspice.
Taurtini found the original source image on Google, then redid the puzzle solve to match, trying to get a pixel accurate version:
Then resized the image according to the numbers on the jigspice.png image:
Wow! We’re getting somewhere!
Just the blue channel:
Taurtini then did further graphics-fu to get a cleaner image, using the colors from the source image to get a version without the blue marks, and then differencing the blue marks against that:
Decoding this using the Pangent Color/Emoji code gives:
6E 6E 38 7A 38 31 75 67 6A 77 68 74 38 68 70
hex: nn8z81ugjwht8hp
https://www.mediafire.com/?nn8z81ugjwht8hp
this cyberspice ZIP contains what appears to be a version of a now-defunct official Spice Girls fansite. Here is an archive from June 7, 2000:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000607054759fw_/http://c3.vmg.co.uk/spicegirls/spiceworld/bridge.html
Start with index.html. Pangent’s version seems more complete than the archived version online, although how accurate it is I don’t know. It looks like they recreated the Recreation Zone.
There’s also this Ozy and Millie comic from June 15, 1998:
and sure enough, there is a Spice Girls Screensaver file in the archive! spicesaver.exe
It was discovered that each of the main HTML files had long rows of single-letter-named PNG images inserted after the main text. These are either solid white or transparent, and not normally visible.
By changing the background of the page (as was done in the Guinea Pig Dance Page from the David Beckham’s Soccer Gameplay Solve)
-these PNG images create visible shapes.
Here they are presented in the order on the index.html page:
The Bridge: Ginger Observatory: Posh Recreation Zone: Sporty Spice Academy; Scary Teleportation: Baby
The first four are 6 rows of 29 columns.
The last one is 5 rows of 29 columns. Making a 29x29 grid if they are all clumped together. Does it look like anything?
If the bits are saved into a Portable Bit Map (PBM) file, each bit represents one pixel, so the 29x29 image can be created from the following:
P1 29 29 11011100100001010001101110001 10101110010110010001110010100 00110000100001011110101100110 10101100010011000110001010110 10001010010101011010100001000 10100001000100010101101010110 00101011110101001010001000011 10000100011011010011100010010 01100100010100001000010011000 01110110101111000000101001010 00011001010000101111000100010 10010100010001110000100101001 10100001011110001000010001100 01010011100011001010010101010 10010101011010100001001110010 01000110010000101001110101000 11110101001010001100010001010 00010001110001100010010100101 10010100001000000111100111001 11101111010100101001010001101 01010010101111000110010000100 10011000000000100101011110101 01011010001000010001000110001 00000011001010010101011010100 01011010100001000110010001101 10000101101001110101001010001 01001010001100010011010011100 11100011100110010100001000110 00001001010110000111011100101
Or I guess we could have Nearest Neighbor resized it. The 29x29 image has some diagonal elements. This suggested we could run it through Arnold’s cat map, offset=2 to get this:
enlarged a bit:
31 62 63 75 30 78 33 63 34 61 37 6E 35 71 79
hex: 1bcu0x3c4a7n5qy
https://mediafire.com/?1bcu0x3c4a7n5qy housecall.zip
Dr. Garfield HTML5 game included, along with an image calling.jpg of a Spice Girls Phone. The Sister Location created a puzzle using this phone for the Super Spice World solve, and this is solved similarly.
original image:
rgb=123 letters on the digits
6734456765 bggrbgbbbr 4746666643 brbgbbbgbb 5456773643 rrbbrgggbb
rgb OQEGIKOROJ IPINOOONIF JGLOPQENIF
Gronsfeld with key from 'original image’: 96253097 FKCBFKFKFD GKFNFHFHGA GGCHGKCIFF
FKCBFKFKFDGKFNFHFHGAGGCHGKCIFF 6A326A6A647A6D68687177387A3966
j2jjdzmhhqw8z9f
https://mediafire.com/?j2jjdzmhhqw8z9f moonbeamPGE.zip
A Super Mario Brothers X level.
It’s quite difficult- I got a few messages from the Yoshis and didn’t make it very far in the game, so I opened it up in the Platformer Game Engine (PGE) Editor. Yoshi phrases: 1 (Green) Your password is: moonbeam 2 (Blue) Your password is: startrail 3 (Red) Your key is e0d8291acb34567, in that order. 4 (Yellow) Remove every other letter and reverse. 5 (Cyan) Your password is: lifesaver 6 (Purple) Decode this string: b8h8jbjoudfwszgrdmewnzlihtrcgo 7 (Grey) Yoshis come in many interesting colors, such as green, purple, yellow and red.
Green, Purple, Yellow, Red: Your password is: moonbeam Decode this string: b8h8jbjoudfwszg rdmewnzlihtrcgo Remove every other letter and reverse. Your key is e0d8291acb34567, in that order.
your password is moonbeam, decode this string: b8h8jbjoudfwszgrdmewnzlihtrcgo
vigenere with 'moonbeam’ p8t8voikurtiemfndasizmkehhfosb
remove every other letter and reverse: bohemianmirko88 sfhkzsdfetuivtp
Your key is e0d8291acb34567, in that order. e0d8291acb34567 bohemianmirko88 sfhkzsdfetuivtp
1234567890abcde amrko88eionimhb dzuivtpksfftehs
https://mediafire.com/?amrko88eionimhb hyacinRPG.ZIP
This contains a video of what appears to be The Heart and the Crown story as an RPG rather than the story program we encountered in Spicegirls.zip way back in 2016
https://humansoulsarg.tumblr.com/post/150433706803
The video artwork appears to be enhanced versions of Eric’s artwork we’ve seen scattered about, sometimes at the end of puzzle trails, sometimes in the Heart and the Crown game (spicegirls.zip) and even hardcopies mailed to players.
The scenes in this video could very well be from the spinoff mentioned by Alyssa (as Leslie) texting with Lottie from the Kung Fu Panda text.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/178516577354907648/826974696708112424/unknown.png
During the video, the stats in the upper right change, the three values are LVL, HP, and MP and are as follows:
001 044 099 004 116 118 003 056 118 009 050 121 x1 x4 x3 x9 013 048 110 011 053 098 002 044 118 008 056 121 005 056 118 007 056 104 006 056 100 010 053 121 014 048 122 012 048 098 016 101 111 015 101 122
Sort by LVL, ignoring one set of the repeated first four.
001 044 099 002 044 118 003 056 118 004 116 118 005 056 118 006 056 100 007 056 104 008 056 121 009 050 121 010 053 121 011 053 098 012 048 098 013 048 110 014 048 122 015 101 122 016 101 111
Next, take the values only when they change
044 099 118 056 116 056 100 104 121 050 053 098 048 110 122 101 111
converting to decimal ASCII gives:
,cv8t8dhy25b0nzeo
This is 17 characters, and we’re looking for 15 for a mediafire. The comma can easily be dropped, and then with a little creative argument, the 'c’ from 099 can also be dropped and the final 15 characters work as a valid Mediafire link!
(Maybe the 44 and 99 values were intended to show as Alyssa/Entity numbers?)
https://mediafire.com/?v8t8dhy25b0nzeo
prelude.zip containing some pictures and a video.
The pictures include a cat yawning (yawn.jpg) I think this is the new cat whose name we don’t know, from the shenanigans video.
1ever.png
2ever.png
3ever.png
And a video prelude.mp4 - which shows some construction of a cubic-ish building possibly in London? some boats and bridges, street signs for 'Sugar’ and 'Spice’, a penguin encouraging us to do the wild thing, then a scene from the Atari 2600 game 'Raiders of the Lost Ark’ on timescape’s setup, before the power is turned off, with the audio going to static and the video ending at that point. The music playing appears to be Marina Diamandis “If I Left the World” (w Gryffin and Model Child)
Solving the PNG images is pretty straightforward using the Pangent Color/Emoji map as this time, they haven’t been altered.
So using the same decoder ring as above, we get (Thanks Moo!):
1: 59543E3 0534552 4A54594 F317663
2: 6D656 46961 66697 2653F 73726 F6964 62386 F6375 30613 46B69
3: 6D656 46961 66697 2653F 6F6A3 87379 33343 63564 6C6E6 46C38
Which are straight-up hex (no shenanigans) for: YT>0SERJTYO1vc mediafire?sroidb8ocu0a4ki mediafire?oj8sy3465dlndl8
Leading us to:
https://youtu.be/0SERJTYO1vc
Titled 'forever,’ this is a seventeen and a half minute conclusion to the story. Alyssa brings the 54 lockers online (or something like that), and feeds all of Lottie’s social media history into Cube Rachel, restoring some of her memories. Cube Eric and Cube Rachel then discuss what will happen now- Determining who and what they will be going forward into the future, and possibly resolving some of their issues from the past. Then it’s the end. Roll Credits, fade to black. Applause. Curtains. The End? (Forever)
Wow. I can’t believe it’s over. Such a journey. A little over five years this project/experiment/endeavor/journey has been happening, and now it’s reached its conclusion. A satisfying one I would say. Enjoy the video yourself, it’s worth it if you’ve made it this far.
https://mediafire.com/?sroidb8ocu0a4ki This is the 'forever’ video from the YouTube upload.
https://mediafire.com/?oj8sy3465dlndl8
Titled Signal and Noise Master File B, this is the second half of the story in text form, the first half of which we obtained way back in the Signal and Noise Master File Solve In August of 2017













