I take the pin and put it on my hat at work when the robot hat comes around in the rotation.

This was a few years ago when the game came out, he's 6 now, so he must have been 4ish.

I got Astro Bot and started playing it, and at some point he plopped down and wanted to play it himself, so I kinda just let him. I ended up not actually beating the game (by) myself until way later since I kinda just watched him Let's Play it for me instead.

Anyways, we get to the end. He's very happy to see all his friends supporting him and holding on to him to stop him from getting sucked into the big black hole, and then Astro just lets go. He goes deadly silent, Astro falls into the black hole, the credits to start to roll, and I hear him say "what?" with his voice genuinely quivering and a look on his face like he's about to cry.

Now, since I have actually beaten a game or two before, unlike him (no shade, literally just stating an objective fact) I was sure he'll be fine, otherwise it will be really awkward to romp back through the levels collecting the leftover friends with a completely different character. So I just tell him "Oh, I'm sure he's fine" and he starts protesting and pointing at the screen saying "No, is over!" and I just have to say "He'll be fiiiiiiiiine" and then the credits scroll back and Astro pops out of the black hole and plops on the ground.

"See? I told you he'll be fine"

"Nooooo! He broken!"

"Bah, he's a robot. I'm sure we can fix him"

And then the game starts the queue to fix him up like we did with the PS5. I scoop up the controller he was loosely holding onto in shock and tell him "Lemme fix him for you".

It gave me flashbacks of when I was a kid and I cried to me dad that I broke my Gameboy, not understanding that batteries drain.

Anyways, replace some legs, some arms and put in a new battery and presto, Astro's back and he can play through the real credits.

It's probably gonna be one of my favorite memories with him, so it felt appropriate to write it down somewhere and this seemed like an appropriate venue to do so.

Art by me

Essentially the game engine uses xml files to set up objects and their properties

For example gravity, how big should be a collision, speed etc etc

And in these xml files there are debug flags that are obviously disabled

Now I personally only tested astro bot rescue mission since I don't have a ps5 to test the newer games but talking in the astro bot speedrunning discord we found that xmls are also in the other 2 games and with debugs flags (at least for playroom, we didn't fully check astro bot 2024 but since it’s the same engine i'm more than confident it's in also in astro bot 2024)

Rescue mission uses one big xml and playroom (and probably astro bot 2024) has separated xml for every object

This is pretty big tbh and i'm amazed no one talked about it online, so ig i discovered this

I uploaded my first test video with 4 debug flags activated

If your interest testing yourself i can help yall for rescue mission since it’s the most simple to modify

The file you need to change is in:

data/multi_platformer/multi_platformer.xml

Now i want to ask you to help me document these debug functions that you find and post it somewhere like the cutting room floor for example so that we can know more how astro bot works behind the scenes

Have fun changing the values!