I remembered having probably the weirdest feeling of sadness and excitement when I was playing this part. I have been struggling with sudoku puzzles for a while when I was in my elementary years (I don't know which grade.) As the days passed, with a few peeks at solutions, I have been mastering at answering sudoku puzzles without peeking. So when I finally reached at this moment I have this strange feeling that this was what I've been training for. To save this girl and to finish this game...
It's because everything that's happening on the upper screen is the present time, the Nonary Game Junpei is participating in, and everything happening on the lower screen is also what June had experienced nine years before. The sudoku is the only thing June couldn't do by herself so it should be on the upper screen, but only the lower screen of NDS is a touch screen. When you flip it, sudoku is on the upper screen and June is on the lower one. I freaking love this game, every little piece of it makes sense.
@@goddess5487 Upper screen = the present, Junpei's experience Lower screen = the past, little June's experience Only the lower screen in Nintendo DS is a touch screen Junpei is the one doing the Sudoku but his experience is supposed to be on the upper screen You flip the Nintendo DS upside down to do the Sudoku so that Junpei is on the upper screen and June is on the lower screen
It's incredible how much the simple image of Akane crying on the 'lower' screen enriches this puzzle when playing on the DS. You're using your stylus on the 'top' screen so most of the lower screen is obstructed by your hand, yet you periodically spot glimpses of Akane's desperate face while moving your hand around. It makes it feel transcendental, like we can only see her in flickers. Because it’s visually suppressed, it's subtle and not in-your-face but still exerting this constant emotional pressure. It really makes you want to finish the puzzle as quickly as humanly possible to save her (even though there is no timer). I say this because it wouldn't have worked the other way around. If there wasn't this trick of inverting the DS, Akane would be displayed on the top screen and constantly visible. That would be too blatant and ruin most of the subtle elements I described.
I have just played the pc version. Having played 999 a few year ago on the ds this puzzle was very weird. The original one was a straight forward suduko. And in the pc version? Wtf? I think I skipped the hint for that solution. I had the 9 as the digital root for every square because that seemed pretty obvious but noooope. You had to spell password on the bottom line as well? Just... just why? I only got to this solution after looking in the steam forum.
@@xMasterSparku and I just saw the letters as base 36 numbers (like they were used multiple times throughout the whole game!) to make the digital roots = 9 xd I really liked the ds version better. An the usage of the two screens fit a lot better in that scene.
@@NeViKble i got all 9's 1st without password.. Then i got password without all 9's.. Then finally i managed to get both. My friend told there was a timelimit on that last puzzle but i didn't trigger the countdown. He was surprised about that (me solving it on 1st try and even with my long complicated way)
@@NeViKble Using base-36 I could accept, and it is actually the facade of the puzzle. However, the real solution is to mindlessly do the scrabble thing. If you don't do the word correctly and still get the base-36 stuff right, it does NOT work!!
Also, the original experiment by Ace immediately shut down the incinerator once the puzzle was solved. In the one created by Akane/Santa, the countdown kept going! So...Akane and Santa went out of their way to make the experiment MORE dangerous!
Or at the very least a dick move. It was implied that the deadly aspects of the game were removed with no actual bombs (except for the four Cradle people) or sinking ship. And you never actually saw the incinerator fire up. So it was just there to pointlessly scare them after Akane was saved? (although, they concluded there was never any bomb because there was no explosives in the bracelets when they opened. But that's not what Zero said. He said the bomb was inside them, and that the bracelet was just a remote detonator. Oops!)
maybe that part was delayed in shipping and the game had to start soon. So perhaps they saw the setup even without the part to be in acceptable parameters. I like the cast,(Even ace) but at the end of the day santa and June are not good people. (After all these games I’m with tenmyouji on not even seeing June as person)
BrokenBananaBud it's not require password and it's not sudoku.But i think devs did it because no everyone can play sudoku and for my opinion it was good choice but puzzle was really dimple because nonary game has hint function
I played the DS version first and then the Pc version and I was like: WHERE THE HELL IS MY SUDOKU?! (Also I thought the Sudoku was easier.. you knew at least what you had to do..)
@@BrokenBananaBud it's a super easy Sudoku- ish puzzle. You pretty much had a sudoku board that had some letters mixed in with numbers, but if you swap out the letters with the numbers that aren't on the board but instead are on a separate tile similar to Akane's tile on the top screen, you just spell out the word 'Password' while at the same time fixing the board.
There should have been a time limit to further illustrate the dire mood. Otherwise you could take an hour and the game's story somehow believes its been 5 minutes.
This is one part they really botched in the PC Nonary Games remake. They didn't have the DS double screen, so they lost the revelation of finally figuring out the two screens were in different time periods (they tried to substitute by having this final part play out with the captions "Junpei vision" and "Akane vision" but it was so lame). But then they went and changed the puzzle. Not that Sodoku was riveting, but the one they changed it so was a huge pain, but it was extremely stupid. But on top of all that, they changed it so that Junpei and Akane were looking at the exact same puzzle. The whole point of the experiment was them seeing different things, and Akane's end being impossible to solve unless the Sodoku screen was transmitted to her. In the remake, Akane can see and enter the same things Junpei can, so she could have solved it entirely on her own. I get that they couldn't do the DS double screen trick, but why change the puzzle into something that defeats the whole point of the story? (unless I'm mistaken that she did have the same Sodoku screen in the original DS game?)
I kind of just assumed that the puzzle somehow needed two people working on it to solve it. Sure the puzzle was brain dead easy once you realized the trick but ... in game you could maybe make the argument it needed both. Or just she couldn't figure it out as a kid.
There's not much of a trick to Sodoku. But Akane and Aoi had NINE YEARS to prepare. Time to build enough of a financial fortune to recreate the game. Like...why didn't you use that time to become a Sodoku expert? At least have Aoi/Santa become an expert, then just tell Junpei the answer. o_O Would have been extremely easy to just design the puzzle so that one person lacked a part of it that the other had to transmit. Just have Junpei get the Sodoku part, while Akane has the bottom equarion part that needs the numbers from certain Sodoku spaces to fill in, numbers that only Junpei can see. Also, if those kids couldn't figure out Sodoku, how in the world did they figure out all the other room puzzles? Especially the laboratory, where it was only possible to solve because the present day adults just happened to have a computer expert who could "cheat" the password that didn't have any apparent legit clue to it.
@@dorpthbut it's a bootstrap timeloop. it had to happen the way akane saw it in the past, so the conditions would be met and fulfilled. akane might understand the constructs behind sudoku already and how it should be solved, but the time loop must be completed the way it was witnessed by her twelve year old self in the past the way she knew it happened in the future. everything that she saw must happen in order to save her life in the future. it's not as simple as knowing how to do sudoku. if it were, akane simply would've done it herself despite the toll on her body, but it's junpei who needs to do it on order to save the akane of both the past and future. it's absolutely necessary. there are some aspects of the game that were rendered obsolete for the sake of keeping people safe, like the fact that that no one besides those involved in cradle had bombs inside them, but it was necessary to believe it. but these aspects are important. also, there was another way to solve the computer puzzle, i believe, but lotus simply found it easier to break it down by force using code. it was never the question about whether or not the children or junpei, even, could solve the puzzles, but whether or not akane could solve the sudoku puzzle and for junpei to get there in time to help her through it. the puzzles themselves were never the true issue.
@@dorpth Also, at the time the first Nonary Game occurred, sudoku wasn’t very popular yet, so barely any ADULTS knew how to solve sudoku puzzles, never mind a 12-year-old. To young Akane, she was looking at a bunch of boxes with random numbers in them instead of an simple number puzzle, especially since there were no hints in the incinerator unlike with the other puzzle rooms. It’s why Junpei explains how to solve them in his inner monologue, as he knows at this point that they can hear each other’s thoughts through their mindlink; he’s telling her how to solve sudoku puzzles for future reference. It’s also how Akane knew how to escape as well, as she heard him telling everyone else to verify their bracelets.
![Zero Escape: The Nonary Games - 999 Playthrough Part 21 [BAD END: Ax]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mCqoCWVzf1A/mqdefault.jpg)
I remembered having probably the weirdest feeling of sadness and excitement when I was playing this part. I have been struggling with sudoku puzzles for a while when I was in my elementary years (I don't know which grade.) As the days passed, with a few peeks at solutions, I have been mastering at answering sudoku puzzles without peeking. So when I finally reached at this moment I have this strange feeling that this was what I've been training for. To save this girl and to finish this game...
It's because everything that's happening on the upper screen is the present time, the Nonary Game Junpei is participating in, and everything happening on the lower screen is also what June had experienced nine years before. The sudoku is the only thing June couldn't do by herself so it should be on the upper screen, but only the lower screen of NDS is a touch screen. When you flip it, sudoku is on the upper screen and June is on the lower one. I freaking love this game, every little piece of it makes sense.
I read your comments several times and I didn’t get the point...💔
@@goddess5487
Upper screen = the present, Junpei's experience
Lower screen = the past, little June's experience
Only the lower screen in Nintendo DS is a touch screen
Junpei is the one doing the Sudoku but his experience is supposed to be on the upper screen
You flip the Nintendo DS upside down to do the Sudoku so that Junpei is on the upper screen and June is on the lower screen
Kasia Mleczarska Yeah now i get it, thanks 😂
@@kasiamleczarska9078 dude really came back after 5 years to explain, damn
@@Anikinoro I respect the hell outta that lol
It's incredible how much the simple image of Akane crying on the 'lower' screen enriches this puzzle when playing on the DS. You're using your stylus on the 'top' screen so most of the lower screen is obstructed by your hand, yet you periodically spot glimpses of Akane's desperate face while moving your hand around. It makes it feel transcendental, like we can only see her in flickers. Because it’s visually suppressed, it's subtle and not in-your-face but still exerting this constant emotional pressure. It really makes you want to finish the puzzle as quickly as humanly possible to save her (even though there is no timer).
I say this because it wouldn't have worked the other way around. If there wasn't this trick of inverting the DS, Akane would be displayed on the top screen and constantly visible. That would be too blatant and ruin most of the subtle elements I described.
The true ending is full of plot holes though. Still, someone said to me that it is explained on the two sequels. I hope so.
@@gazzgaspay4841 oh damn; prepare yourself for one hell of time paradoxes, complex motives, greek letters and latin proverbs
@@gazzgaspay4841 It's not, though.
When an upside down screen is somehow the most heart-wrenching, memorable and mind-blowing moment of a game.
I played this on the Vita so I had no idea about the significance of the upper and lower screens... very cool!
I don't know why, but I cried in this part.
Same
The remastered puzzle is so bad compared to this god damn
I have just played the pc version. Having played 999 a few year ago on the ds this puzzle was very weird. The original one was a straight forward suduko. And in the pc version? Wtf? I think I skipped the hint for that solution. I had the 9 as the digital root for every square because that seemed pretty obvious but noooope. You had to spell password on the bottom line as well? Just... just why? I only got to this solution after looking in the steam forum.
@@NeViKble I saw a few letters at the bottom and then just filled in the rest and then I got confused in the next page.
@@xMasterSparku and I just saw the letters as base 36 numbers (like they were used multiple times throughout the whole game!) to make the digital roots = 9
xd
I really liked the ds version better. An the usage of the two screens fit a lot better in that scene.
@@NeViKble i got all 9's 1st without password.. Then i got password without all 9's.. Then finally i managed to get both. My friend told there was a timelimit on that last puzzle but i didn't trigger the countdown. He was surprised about that (me solving it on 1st try and even with my long complicated way)
@@NeViKble Using base-36 I could accept, and it is actually the facade of the puzzle. However, the real solution is to mindlessly do the scrabble thing. If you don't do the word correctly and still get the base-36 stuff right, it does NOT work!!
Imo one of the best instance of combining storytelling and gameplay.
Also, the original experiment by Ace immediately shut down the incinerator once the puzzle was solved. In the one created by Akane/Santa, the countdown kept going! So...Akane and Santa went out of their way to make the experiment MORE dangerous!
Yeah that was weird. Unless we're meant to assume they fucked up and the shut off simply failed.
Or at the very least a dick move. It was implied that the deadly aspects of the game were removed with no actual bombs (except for the four Cradle people) or sinking ship. And you never actually saw the incinerator fire up. So it was just there to pointlessly scare them after Akane was saved?
(although, they concluded there was never any bomb because there was no explosives in the bracelets when they opened. But that's not what Zero said. He said the bomb was inside them, and that the bracelet was just a remote detonator. Oops!)
maybe that part was delayed in shipping and the game had to start soon. So perhaps they saw the setup even without the part to be in acceptable parameters.
I like the cast,(Even ace) but at the end of the day santa and June are not good people.
(After all these games I’m with tenmyouji on not even seeing June as person)
No, it's okay that you made me go through all this shit for a game of Sudoku....
I activated my morphogenetic field in this puzzle
When I was playing this part, I keep saying to myself "AKANE! I'LL SAVE YOU NO MATTER WHAT!"
Very underrated game, glad I had the chance to play it
Underrated? Its well recieved both in japan and the west release of the game.
Oh wow I had no idea the original puzzle was a straight forward sudoku.
Boy does it make the remake puzzle feel lackluster.
Wow. This is a lot better than the "remake". I guess I will play it on my DS if I replay it.
Yeah but they really couldn't do much about it in the remake. But non the less this is a cool find. I finished the game and it's absolutely amazing 😁
What a shame i played The Nonary Games' PC Version in which the puzzle is way different (and kinda easier).
oh really? What is it like? I don't have that version of the game
BrokenBananaBud it's not require password and it's not sudoku.But i think devs did it because no everyone can play sudoku and for my opinion it was good choice but puzzle was really dimple because nonary game has hint function
I played the DS version first and then the Pc version and I was like: WHERE THE HELL IS MY SUDOKU?!
(Also I thought the Sudoku was easier.. you knew at least what you had to do..)
@@BrokenBananaBud it's a super easy Sudoku- ish puzzle. You pretty much had a sudoku board that had some letters mixed in with numbers, but if you swap out the letters with the numbers that aren't on the board but instead are on a separate tile similar to Akane's tile on the top screen, you just spell out the word 'Password' while at the same time fixing the board.
TRY
NOT
TO
CRY
IMPOSSIBLE!!
FAIL!
So I see this video was uploaded 9 years ago...
Uh oh...
There should have been a time limit to further illustrate the dire mood. Otherwise you could take an hour and the game's story somehow believes its been 5 minutes.
If there was a time limit I would’ve failed so many times😭😭 sudoku is NOT my forte
This is one part they really botched in the PC Nonary Games remake. They didn't have the DS double screen, so they lost the revelation of finally figuring out the two screens were in different time periods (they tried to substitute by having this final part play out with the captions "Junpei vision" and "Akane vision" but it was so lame). But then they went and changed the puzzle. Not that Sodoku was riveting, but the one they changed it so was a huge pain, but it was extremely stupid.
But on top of all that, they changed it so that Junpei and Akane were looking at the exact same puzzle. The whole point of the experiment was them seeing different things, and Akane's end being impossible to solve unless the Sodoku screen was transmitted to her. In the remake, Akane can see and enter the same things Junpei can, so she could have solved it entirely on her own.
I get that they couldn't do the DS double screen trick, but why change the puzzle into something that defeats the whole point of the story?
(unless I'm mistaken that she did have the same Sodoku screen in the original DS game?)
I kind of just assumed that the puzzle somehow needed two people working on it to solve it. Sure the puzzle was brain dead easy once you realized the trick but ... in game you could maybe make the argument it needed both. Or just she couldn't figure it out as a kid.
There's not much of a trick to Sodoku.
But Akane and Aoi had NINE YEARS to prepare. Time to build enough of a financial fortune to recreate the game. Like...why didn't you use that time to become a Sodoku expert? At least have Aoi/Santa become an expert, then just tell Junpei the answer. o_O
Would have been extremely easy to just design the puzzle so that one person lacked a part of it that the other had to transmit. Just have Junpei get the Sodoku part, while Akane has the bottom equarion part that needs the numbers from certain Sodoku spaces to fill in, numbers that only Junpei can see.
Also, if those kids couldn't figure out Sodoku, how in the world did they figure out all the other room puzzles? Especially the laboratory, where it was only possible to solve because the present day adults just happened to have a computer expert who could "cheat" the password that didn't have any apparent legit clue to it.
@@dorpthbut it's a bootstrap timeloop. it had to happen the way akane saw it in the past, so the conditions would be met and fulfilled. akane might understand the constructs behind sudoku already and how it should be solved, but the time loop must be completed the way it was witnessed by her twelve year old self in the past the way she knew it happened in the future. everything that she saw must happen in order to save her life in the future. it's not as simple as knowing how to do sudoku. if it were, akane simply would've done it herself despite the toll on her body, but it's junpei who needs to do it on order to save the akane of both the past and future. it's absolutely necessary. there are some aspects of the game that were rendered obsolete for the sake of keeping people safe, like the fact that that no one besides those involved in cradle had bombs inside them, but it was necessary to believe it. but these aspects are important. also, there was another way to solve the computer puzzle, i believe, but lotus simply found it easier to break it down by force using code. it was never the question about whether or not the children or junpei, even, could solve the puzzles, but whether or not akane could solve the sudoku puzzle and for junpei to get there in time to help her through it. the puzzles themselves were never the true issue.
@@dorpth Also, at the time the first Nonary Game occurred, sudoku wasn’t very popular yet, so barely any ADULTS knew how to solve sudoku puzzles, never mind a 12-year-old. To young Akane, she was looking at a bunch of boxes with random numbers in them instead of an simple number puzzle, especially since there were no hints in the incinerator unlike with the other puzzle rooms. It’s why Junpei explains how to solve them in his inner monologue, as he knows at this point that they can hear each other’s thoughts through their mindlink; he’s telling her how to solve sudoku puzzles for future reference. It’s also how Akane knew how to escape as well, as she heard him telling everyone else to verify their bracelets.
This just makes me so sad...
honestly? me too. I cried during this
I like sudoku and all, but solving this upside-down was a bitch.
LMAO im just imagining someone frustrated and not thinking of turning the DS upside down
In Zero Time Dilemma,Phi has the same fate,unlike the goal is the bullet for killing Sigma in the torture chair.
I couldnt let my baby burn first I had to do it after I shot at sigma twice tho
imagine if C Team is the one got trapped in the incinerator room and akane once again gonna be incinerate
This game is so good!!! ♡♡♡ I think snk copied this idea about time plot
no doubt, "from you, 2000 years from now" type shit
Avis Lane
Thx for the video, I cant solve this. I don't understand sudoku
Holy shit, Akane? That you?