Hi, my name is Shannon and I’m an altoholic. I’m also completely addicted to Guild Wars 2 at the moment. So I’m taking over! A huge thank you to Merry who previously wrote the Guild Wars 2 coverage for OnRPG called Tyrian Times. If you’re a fan of Merry you can still catch her weekly WoW articles every Wednesday. I’ve decided to make the transformation complete with a name change! I just haven’t thought of a name yet. What would you call a weekly article about GW2?
Anyway, enough about all that lets get to the topic on everyone’s mind right now. The Super Adventure Box!
Now I don’t know about anyone else but I have been logging in and playing through it at least once every day since it came out. And I’m pretty sure that is going to continue all month.
What’s that? You’ve been on Mars all week and not had internet access so you have no idea what I’m talking about? Well let me get you up to speed. On April Fools Day Guild Wars 2 went retro. Complete with a rendition of the Guild Wars 2 theme that sounds like it came straight off an NES. Along with it for 24 hours (give or take some) 8-bit style chests littered the word which when opened unleashed little 8-bit creatures. Why were the chests there? A little Asura in Rata Sum named Moto. Who is named after Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, and you know just about every other awesome old school game out there. They even made Moto look like him! Well, sort of.
He invented a new educational tool called the Super Adventure Box. Best of all he’s asking you to test it out! Ok, that may not actually be the best part. The 80s style commercial really…well, it’s totally righteous!
Ok, so the point is the Super Adventure Box is a limited time dungeon which takes place in a 3d 8-bit style world where you have to save the Princess. It is available to play in Rata Sum but only for the month of April. In it you collect baubles which can be used to buy tools in the Super Adventure Box, or if you take them outside the box with you and talk to Moto you can get anything from Obsidian Shards to awesome weapon skins. But, I warn you now. The skins aren’t cheap. It costs 250 baubles to make a bauble bubble. And the weapon skins cost 50 bubbles! Thankfully we have all month to get them.
Now, I have seen a few people complaining on various forums about the Super Adventure Box. I have a theory about them. They were most likely a child of the 90s. So for them its “ghetto” instead of the awesome nostalgia trip for anyone older. This theory is mostly supported by the amounts of times I’ve heard/read someone saying the SAB is based off Minecraft. It reminds me of all the Twilight fangirls who freaked out when The Wolfman came out. They screamed that it was ruining what “real” werewolves were like, pointing to Jacob Black as a real werewolf. (Though amusingly wiki doesn’t list Twilight as a movie with werewolves in it.) Then on the other side of the coin there are those of us, of which there are many more, who love it! I would love to see the Super Adventure Box become something like the Fractals that is left in all year and becomes a regular part of Tyria. Of course, if that happened it would kill the potential uses for it in future April Fools Day jokes. But you know, I’d be ok with that.
Have you found all the secrets yet? I haven’t! I only found out about the warp worm yesterday. And I’ve only seen one of the Queen Bee Dogs though I’ve read that there are more. I also haven’t completed world 2-1, Rapids yet. I have been digging up a ton of the secret digging spots though to get those baubles. And I plan on investing in the bombs this weekend to get at the secret caves.
How about those rumors that the next levels will be coming in the next month?
Sadly, ArenaNet’s Josh Foreman has shot those rumors down. They will be coming though! But there are no promises on when. And it has been said that they would like to do more weapon skins for when they are released because not every weapon type has a skin. And this is something that annoyed quite a lot of players, especially anyone who plays an Engineer. They get enough hate already don’t they? But that’s a subject for a future article.
Have fun in the Super Adventure Box. But keep in mind there is more going on in Tyria. Centaurs are still marching into Human lands, the danger from the Molten Alliance is growing into what may turn into an all out war, and the Risen are always a danger. You may leave Rata Sum on May 1st to see that Tyria has been handed over to the forces of evil because all the heroes were trying to save a digital Princess.
But don’t let that deter you. Enjoy the SAB while you can. It is a great trip down memory lane with many jokes and nods to games gone by that only someone who played them would know. And don’t let the naysayers get you down. Every party has a pooper.
