10 Mind-Blowing Secret Multiplayer Modes In Games

Possess Enemies With Devil Bottles’s Ghost [Banjo-Tooie]

One of the weirdest secrets in any game was found in Banjo-Tooie. Using Gameshark or Emulation, it’s possible to access a really weird bit of cut-content, where the second player can control an evil version of Bottles’s Ghost. Devil Bottles, as he’s referred to on the Banjo wiki, would be a playable character that Player 2 can use to possess nearby enemies.

The goal was to use possessed enemies to defeat Banjo-Kazooie — doing so swapped the players, giving control of Banjo to Player 1, and giving Devil Bottles to Player 2. It’s just an endless tug-of-war. This mode helpfully takes away the inevitable battle between two young boys trying to get the controller away from each other. Now you can experience that in-game.

A similar mode was included in Perfect Dark — Counter-Operative, which was also one of my favorite modes growing up.

Beat Side-Quests To Unlock Versus [Star Ocean 3]

You don’t expect to find a fighting versus mode in a JRPG — but you can unlock one in Star Ocean 3. By completing a specific dungeon and returning the game board item to a specific character, you can unlock a special mode where two players can battle it out. It works on the same battle engine as the main game, you’ll just be fighting with your friends instead.

Just the idea of a mode like this in a JRPG is mind-blowing to me. Multiplayer features, even if it’s just couch co-op, don’t just happen — develops have to put some time to make these things work, and including weird experimental features in major games has kind of died out. We’ll have to look to indie games to include completely weird, useless, but still awesome features like this.

To keep this list under control, I left out a couple of my favorite multiplayer secrets — in Tenchu 2, you can use a cheat code that allows Player 2 to possess enemies and take direct control of them. There’s a similar cheat in the game Buffy The Vampire Slayer — or you can use a code to make all of Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams into a local coop experience. It’s crazy to think how many games have completely hidden multiplayer modes.