Introduction
100 percenting a game is kind of like flossing every day, everyone says they’ll do it, but only a few sickos actually follow through. Anyways, unlike flossing, games often reward your commitment, they toss you a juicy little secret, a little hidden reward that makes all that blood, sweat, and rage quits… Worth it.
Hi, folks, it’s Zaid, and today on “Aura Riot”, 10 hidden rewards you only get from 100 percenting games.
10. A Golden Poop and the Ancient Hero – Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Starting off with number 10, a golden poop in the Ancient Hero from “Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.” There’s two big rewards for 100% completion in “Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.” One of them is completely ridiculous, and the other is actually really cool. And not many people know about it compared to the rewards from “Breath of the Wild,” the first game in the Zelda, I guess, subseries.
Everyone knows about the weird mask and the armor you’ll earn for doing everything in “Breath of the Wild.” But even after doing everything, we didn’t know about the Ancient Hero’s aspect. Before getting into that awesome unlockable, let’s talk about the much, much worse reward.
In “Tears of the Kingdom” and the “Breath of the Wild,” there’s hidden creatures called Koroks. Link finds them by solving little puzzles in the environment. There’s a lot of versions of these puzzles, so many, that the idea of finding them all fills us with existential dread. But there are psychos that have actually done that, they’ve hunted these things out. A-an unbelievable task, the “Arkham Knight” Riddler trophies have nothing on Koroks, it’s 900 fricking Koroks. An absolutely grueling number, I will never see all 900 of them, I promise you this, because each and every one of them is a pain in the ass.
Getting them all though earns you a reward from resident big Korok creature, Hestu. Normally, he gives you carrying capacity upgrades for trading Korok seeds, but here, he gives you a different sort of prize for getting them all. You’ll earn Hestu’s gift for finding all of them, which is literally a coiled piece of golden poop. Yes, it smells pretty bad, no, you can’t do anything with it.
But something you can do that I would appreciate greatly is clicking Subscribe, because a ton of people watching this have not. That’s not a judgment, it’s just the truth. So Subscribe, thank you, the golden poop stinks.
But the other 100% reward in “Tears of the Kingdom,” woo, it’s better. For completing all the shrines in the game, the mini puzzle dungeons, you unlock a chess that contains the Ancient Hero’s aspect. The armor item appears in the Temple of Time on the Great Sky Island. And unlike any other set in the game, it completely changes how Link looks.
It’s not just a special set of clothes, it transforms Link completely into a Zonai-Hylian hybrid creature. This is the hero that was described from ancient times that saved the world so long ago, and here, you get to play as that. The armor boosts the damage from the master sword beam, and it can be upgraded for some impressive defense, making this a worthwhile reward for a fun challenge, maybe skip searching for the Koroks and focus more on this.
9. Johnny’s Seaside Hotel – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
One of the most important things to know about 100 percenting video games is that the reward is rarely worth all the effort. The best prizes in “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” aren’t earned by finding every possible to get trophy. Instead, they’re all part of major side quests, earning the all-powerful Gilgamesh Summon, or the powerful Genji Gloves, it’s about completing quests and defeating every difficult combat simulator battle.
Doing absolutely everything in the game doesn’t give you really good items, but it does give you something. Earning absolutely everything in “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” is one of the most grueling challenges in video games. You’ll need to complete the brutal Hard Mode difficulty, complete every mini game, track down all the collectibles, which betwixt the game ring, staves, we did, all of them, most of them earned by doing basic stuff like beating the game on Hard Mode. Others are totally missable and don’t make any sense, like, failing big parade performance.
It’s an insane grind, and for doing it all, you get two very basic rewards. First, you’ll fully upgrade and complete Johnny’s Seaside Hotel in Costa Del Sol. The dump is enhanced into a high-level hangout that’s decorated with all your weapons and gear, making it the best rest spot in the game.
You’ll also get something that’s insulting, a piano music sheet. That’s right, for hundreds of hours of struggles, you earn the “One-Winged Angel” music sheet for the piano mini game, which is one of the cruelest slaps in the face for video games. The piano mini game is already a big pain in the butt, so how about earning the most difficult track on a very difficult rhythm game that nobody likes? Yay, just watch us completely botch one of the best tracks in the game, one of the ones that it’s known for. At least you won’t need to do well on this last piano sheet music for 100%, the journey’s already over by then.
8. Cat Ears – Resident Evil 4 Remake
Somehow, the “Resident Evil 4” remake is a game even more over-stuffed with extras than the original, like, there’s a whole arsenal of optional weapons you can unlock by completing these specialized difficult runs for collecting like all the hidden Castellan statues, for instance, Leon will be able to use the powerful Primal Knife, which could be upgraded to never break, making it the perfect replica of your knife in the original game, which also never breaks.
But our favorite unlockable weapons are the Chicago Sweeper and the Handcannon. The Sweeper’s a really powerful Tommy gun, while the Handcannon is a truly enormous magnum revolver that kills almost everything in one hit. It’s like a rocket-launcher pistol, devastating everything in its path and making future speed runs a little bit easier.
Both of these weapons can only be unlocked by completing difficult runs. The Handcannon is earned by beating the professional difficulty with no bonus weapons or gear. The Sweeper is earned by finishing the game in under seven hours. A typical run takes well over 20, so this extra long challenge isn’t even remotely easy.
But while the weapons are a great addition to your arsenal, they’re not the best pieces of gear that you can get. Leon can now equip accessories that unlock additional bonus effects, and some of these accessories’ easily the most difficult items to get in the game.
Best of the bunch is the Cat Ears, which gives Leon infinite ammo for almost every weapon, and also give extreme pervert energy to this man in a funny way, not like a bad way, in a funny way. It doesn’t work on the one and done RPG, but everything else gets an infinite supply of ammo, which is super useful for any challenge run.
Too bad, it’s an extremely difficult bonus item to get. You’ll need to complete a professional difficulty run with an S+ ranking, which, “What does that mean?” Well, you’ll have to beat a very long game on the hardest difficulty level in less than five and a half hours. Oh, and you can only save your game a maximum of 15 times. It’s all worth it to give Leon his… I-I-I don’t know how you wanna describe this. It’s deadly, it’s deadly.
7. Coral Oscillator – Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
In “Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon,” the Coral Oscillator, an unbeatable weapon that wrecks everything in the game, and it’s only available by collecting 15 Battle Logs. It’s a melee weapon that basically turns your mech into an end boss. It unleashes a red energy that just rips through everything in the game very easily.
Pair this weapon with like an unlockable Coral Shield and Coral Missile Launcher, you become a true beast. Both the Coral Shield and the Coral Missile Launcher also require replaying the game at least three times, and are only available in the penultimate level in the secret third ending path, we didn’t even know there was a second ending.
But if you wanna earn all these weapons, you gotta do everything. Those 15 Battle Logs, way harder than they sound. They’re alternate versions of levels that only become available on the second or third playthroughs, and some levels only unlock by making specific choices as you play. A complicated mess of cause and effect that leads to the most challenging content in the game.
The true final boss available only on your third playthrough, and only if you make all the right decisions, is an unbelievably powerful beast, and one of the most insane bosses from any FromSoft game. We assume nobody talks about this thing in the same breath as Malenia, because, uh, nobody knew it existed, it’s that time consuming to reach. The weapons transform your character into quasi-mythical undead monster.
You’ve already beat everything, but your fourth play-through is gonna be a hell of a lot easier using this stuff. Whatever they did, you’re in danger. We have to defend ourselves.
6. A Statue in Your Honor – LEGO City Undercover
These games are usually really good about 100% completion. Like, there are games that are designed for collecting and unlocking, but “LEGO City” has one of our favorite 100% completion rewards, probably our favorite out of the “LEGO” games.
For doing everything in the game, that means getting all the Red Bricks, 290 characters, a hundred vehicles, 450 Gold Bricks, you get two rewards, and they really are big.
The first and most fun is the Super Mini-Figure mode. This cheat allows your tiny Mini-Fig Man to be a walking bulldozer. You’re not Kaiju’s size, but you’re amazingly big. You can stomp around, smash up all the little cars, or just look in awe at the majesty of your Mini-Figure Man. Whoever you pick, they’re taking up mini sizes, too big to fit indoors, too big to drive a car, just big enough to fill that hole in our hearts.
The second reward isn’t as fun, but it’s a good ego boost. Look at it in the King’s Court in Downtown LEGO City, there’s a new statue of Hero Chase McCain. If you look closely, you see it’s the biggest Mini-Fig in the world and covered in gold. The best cop in LEGO City earned legendary status after destroying a space station and falling from orbit back to the city. And for cleaning up the streets completely, you get a permanent gold statue fixture to enjoy.
The fountain below also spawns an infinite supply of blue studs, which gives you a thousand bucks per pickup. So you got infinite money, and you don’t really have anything left to spend it on, so I guess it doesn’t matter, but a lot of these LEGO games have like a stud fountain as your 100% reward, but this one comes as a big gold statue of your guy, so that makes it clearly better than the rest.
5. Sound Off Badge – Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Earning 100% completion in “Wonder” isn’t too bad, it’s actually pretty fun searching for every collectible and completing everything there is to do in this fast-paced side-scroller.
At least it’s all fun and games until the final challenge. For doing everything, you’ll unlock the Final-Final Test Badge Marathon. Yes, there are two final tests, and the Final-Final Test is one of the cruelest levels in Mario history, official levels.
Each section of the level tests you with a different badge ability, forcing you to really understand every single optional power in the game, and conquer difficult challenges with very few checkpoints. Even experienced Mario players can lose literally all their lives trying to complete this gauntlet of challenges.
And it all ends with one of the meanest tests in video games. Right at the end, Mario is forced to use the Invisibility Badge, which essentially removes his character model. You’re stuck trying to make difficult jumps, jumps that would be a challenge even for a visible Mario, moving across balloons and reaching the goal. It’s borderline masochistic, and if we didn’t figure out a method to cheese it, we’d probably never finish it.
Luckily, you’ll get more than a little postcard for beating everything in the “Super Mario Bros. Wonder.” For all your hard work, you earn the secret Sound Off badge.
This badge removes all the sound effects, which replaces the level noises with developers imitating the noises with their voices. It’s one of the weirdest unlockables we’ve seen in a video game. It’s cute, it’s funny, and it makes every level way, way dumber. But after the sadistic Final-Final Trial, we deserved something fun, and this will do.
4. Secret Endings and Strange Photos – Silent Hill 2 Remake
The “Silent Hill 2” remake has a totally different type of unlockable reward. Instead of giving you new weapons or cheats, “Silent Hill 2” offers cryptic answers to its famously obtuse story.
After finishing the main story, you unlock the powerful chainsaw weapon, which makes replays a breeze. Chainsawing through enemies is a good way to make a second or third or fourth run through the story, easier to stomach and just kind of different in a way that’s fun.
There are a lot of innings that you can only unlock in new game plus two. The remake includes all the previous endings and the Easter egg endings like the UFO and the dog ending. That’s all here.
But most surprising are the totally new endings, the Stillness ending and the Bliss ending. Stillness expands on the in water ending, and can only be unlocked if you get that ending first. While Bliss is earned by finding a very specific secret item and using it before learning the truth in the story’s big twist late in the game.
Both pretty heavy subjects, and you glean more as to what the hell’s actually going on in “Silent Hill.” – [Mary] James, honey? Did something happen? – Oh. No, it’s fine.
The most eye-opening secret for 100% completion appears after collecting the strange photos. There’s 26 of them in “Silent Hill 2,” and they’re exclusive to the remake. Each photo has a word, you unscramble the order, you discover that the photos are hiding a message.
The message is “You’ve been here for two decades,” it’s either a cheeky ending to the 20 years since “Silent Hill 2” in the remake, or an explanation for the new ending. Is James repeating the same horror over and over again? Is this his personal hell? That is up to interpretation. I think it’s certainly a clever idea if it’s not canon.
3. Green Hill Zone – Sonic Adventure 2
This game sends us back to the past with a nostalgic secret, which is saying a lot, ’cause “Sonic Adventure 2” is, you know, nostalgic for a lot of us at this point.
The first level of the entire Sonic franchise is Green Hill Zone though, and it just keeps coming back whenever the series needs to remind us of the good times. To unlock a 3D version of Sonic’s starting level, you need 180 emblems, and you need to get the A rank on every stage, which means speed running the levels as fast as possible in a game where going fast isn’t always the best way to succeed.
The mini recreation of Green Hill Zone as the checkerboard patterns and loop-de-loops we all remember, weirdly, it’s almost an exact copy of the original game’s level in 3D form. It twists and turns instead of going straight, but everything is essentially the same.
The level was made as a celebration of Sonic’s 10th anniversary, which is crazy to say, ’cause we’re past three decades of Sonic content at this point. And it’s not as special seeing another version of Green Hill Zone, but this one might be the most unique, because it’s… I mean, it is obviously, the jankiest version imaginable, like, it genuinely looks like a fan level.
2. The Secret Squad – Into the Breach
This is a strange, rogue-like, and basically you command a team of giant robots and you defend cities from alien bugs. You’ll always know what the bugs are gonna do next, so every battle is a puzzle where your heroes have all the knowledge they need to win.
But on higher difficulties, you’ll have to make impossible choices to survive, like sacrificing mechs or letting certain cities get destroyed for the slim chance you’ll make it to the end and stop the Vek invasion.
It’s a tough strategy game, but if you manage to earn all the achievements, there’s a pretty good bonus waiting for you. The Secret Squad are a trio of cybernetically enhanced Vek that you control. Yes, you’re able to use the big bugs to fight back.
The three mechs are based on powerful alpha Vek enemies that you encounter in the game, but they’ve been remixed and enhanced with totally random abilities. They start off weak, but they become stronger depending on the RNG. It’s the ultimate challenge for anyone who just wants to keep playing “Into the Breach,” and is a pretty cruel reward for doing everything in the game. They’re arguably the worst squad to choose, so, I mean, it sounds like a good challenge run at least.
1. Unite Big and Wonder-Bayonetta – The Wonderful 101
This game throws so much at the player, there’s a lot of unlockables in it. And if you’re willing to grind to rank 400 by defeating enemies over and over and over again, there’s stuff to get, there’s stuff to get.
Rank’s basically your level-up system, right? You earn rank by completing levels and beating aliens. And in a normal play-through, that doesn’t really get you anywhere close to 400. That requires a lot of playthroughs on different difficulties, and a lot of grinding.
But the rewards are worth it. Our favorite is probably a new special attack called Unite Big. By spelling out a B with your army of tiny little hero guys, you unite the army into one gargantuan, building-sized hero. Now the giant version doesn’t look that big in gameplay, he’s four stories tall, and he fights kaiju-sized space aliens on the regular. Rest assured, you can live out your Ultraman dreams with a single super-sized hero that absolutely decimates everything.
And it’s not the only ridiculous power you can unlock. The developers of “The Wonderful 101” are PlatinumGames, the creators of “Bayonetta,” and you can add the Umbrian Witch to your army with an unlockable Wonder-Bayonetta, and she comes with a special ability. Instead of uniting the team into one big gun, the more teammates she has at her disposal, the more guns that are at everyone’s disposal, I guess is the way to put it.
There’s a hundred tiny heroes and she forms four guns with the rapid fire faster than anything in the game. She can be unlocked by earning every Bottle-Cap, which is a kind of in-game achievement system. Naturally, that’s hard, really hard.
It basically means you need to earn the Platinum Trophy to get “Bayonetta,” but for big fans, it’s a worthy trade-off. The most ridiculous secret character in the game is Wonder-Director, based on the director of the game and infamous developer, Hideki Kamiya. He’s the slowest and weakest hero in the game with the amazing ability to die instantly to any normal attack.
Platinum Games are the masters of sticking weird, secret stuff in games, and this is some of our favorite 100% stuff.
And that’s all for today. Leave us a comment, let us know what you think. And, as always, we thank you very much for reading this blog. We’ll see you next time right here on “Aura Riot”.
