zakiwana guide - secret

this is something that does not affect any route at all, but i still thought it would be worth mentioning. this game hides a deep secret in it, and in order to reveal that secret, you need to find 4 hidden rooms on Disc1. those rooms will serve as hints for the next step to this secret

there's a sign in the grasslands stage that tells you:

if you fall down here, you won't be able to go back. have you forgotten anything?

if that wasn't enough, a warp also appears on the top-left part of the screen and will move to the right. this is basically telling you that you're missing this secret, and this is your only chance to find it as it's the first step to this secret journey

hidden room in the grasslands

on this screen, get to the top-right part of the screen and proceed. when you reach a screen that seems to be a dead end, jump to enter the secret room. the room in question looks like the image on the right that's above this paragraph

here's a rough translation of the red text from what i've learned and researched:
this used to be a low-quality deepL translation but i'm getting further away from that

this fangame hides a secret
there are 3 keys to unlocking the secret
in the lands where your companion awaits
each will have an awakening
then you must go to the second territory
where all the pieces are in motion

the remaining hidden rooms are the 3 keys, so we'll be referring to them as keys. taking into account the companion, the location for these keys can be traced down to every stage with a boss that joins your team after defeating. finally, the second place refers to Disc2, which will play a big role on this secret guide later on

key 1: mario tileset stage

on this screen, get to the bottom-left part of the screen, below the arrow. then make your way to the apple juice factory, it's kinda luck based given how varied the speed of the apples on the corridor can be, but it's still possible

key 2: block-making stage

you can see this screen has a potential entrance on the bottom-right corner, so you'll need to use your super-shot gimmick to destroy all the spikes blocking it

key 3: luck stage

this one is kinda tricky. as soon as you reach this screen, jump to the right immediately as otherwise you'll fall down like on the image above. after doing that, make your way by shooting the fake blocks and birds

so what's the meaning behind the keys?

if you take a closer look into each screenshot, you will notice there's a pattern of numbers: 123. notice how the first key has japanese characters only filled in space 1. similar applications go for the other 2 keys as well

if we put all the japanese characters together, we get a hidden message:

which translates to:

on the hidden room in shogi, type sostasuketesos when the GO text shows up!

the text is very self-explanatory, so let's get around on how to get to the hidden room in shogi. note that shogi area is on Disc2, so if you're doing this before even making it halfway through the game as you should, you've still got a long way to go

hidden room in shogi

the hidden room is located in the second half of the shogi battle, at the top left. usually when you move around the screen you get killed, however you can avoid death by staying in the black lines across the screen

you will then reach a room with a HELP! text at the start and five spooky faces after. a rather convenient text saying GO will show up, you should know what to do by now

after typing the password, you will descend into a warp with an EXIT text above it. that warp takes you back to the shogi room, therefore you must avoid it. down the exit warp there will be another warp which you will want to take

you'll end on an invisible maze, if you go all the way to the left you'll return to shogi. there's a hidden trigger that unlocks a passage to the right path, so find that and then go right to proceed

after that you'll receive a long speech from chip. to summarize what's going on, basically chip is ranting about something he found out during work, of which he thought was "illegal". he kept it a secret to himself for months, but eventually he couldn't take it anymore, so he decided to make it public information

you're given a link to a secret exe that you can find here. the password for downloading the file is schoips. when opening that exe you will have to input another password that can be found on the creator's twitter bio:

which translates to: the password for THAT thing is チョコ

the hidden exe

now that you've made it all the way here, the secret this game has been hiding will finally be revealed

...or so it may seem, but turns out chip has been lying this whole time to get you into a secret that does absolutely nothing

and with that, the journey to the secret comes to an end. was it worth it?