Autisticana

a gallery of autistic special/intense interests

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Category: Video Games

  • Our Trip to Spencer’s

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    By Christine Grimaldi

    This past week, the crew at Autisticana visited Spencer’s at the Smithtown Mall. The store is very interesting because it has shirts and clothing based on popular movies, anime, and musicians. It also has paraphernalia relating to weed, occultism, and magic, sex toys, and candy. They even sell manga and cookbooks. We all took pictures relating to our interests there.

    In 1947, Spencer’s started off in Easton, PA, as a mail-order catalog with tons of novelty merch by Max Adler and his brother Harry, the namesake being the former’s middle name Spencer. In 1963, three years after Harry left, Spencer evolved into a brick-and-mortar retail store with its first location in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, at the city’s mall. Since then, Spencer has grown to 650 locations in the US, and Canada within malls, especially on Long Island, such as Hicksville Broadway.

    In 2001, Spencer’s Gifts launched its e-commerce website, allowing customers to shop for its products online. The website has become important to the company’s sales and marketing strategy.

    Today, Spencer’s operates over 600 stores in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, offering a wide range of products, including clothing, accessories, home decor, and novelty items. The company is known for its edgy and irreverent products and is known for catering to a younger, more alternative demographic.

    Despite competing with other retailers in the same space, Spencer’s has continued to grow and expand its business. With a focus on innovation, creativity, and customer engagement, the company has stayed relevant and popular with its target audience.

    Spencer’s has been a must for the newest trends, tees, body jewelry, home décor and more that celebrate our slogan “life is a party”and we are making it fun. Known for being a pioneer in sexual wellness, call us what you want, but we are here for all communities to celebrate. We are committed to our guests’ uniqueness and their desire for rebellious, buzzworthy products that represent a unique lifestyle while offering an escape from the ordinary.

    Spencer’s had opened in 2003 under new management, raising the bar and continuing its untraditional retail journey. The stores have changed, but when they set out on the path of becoming an industry leader in a subtle shift from Spencer Gifts to Spencer’s, this will always be true to the roots of their love for the pride of the effort they put.

    They have done a new and better look, but never forgot the history because some of the trends are as old as time. Spencer’s, which continues to lead the market with one of the oldest continually operating stores in North America and nearly 670 locations throughout the United States and Canada, proudly enshrines the brand as cultural staples. Giving back is a key obligation of Spencer’s, and we have been increasing the commitment over the last few years.

    Since 2020, the whole partnership with the ACLU has generated nearly a million dollars to help protect civil rights for individuals. Additionally, since 2008 our associates have been fierce advocates, joining in on the battle against cancer by fundraising on behalf of three organizations focused on fighting youth cancer through the non-profit Boobies Make Me Smile. They’ve raised more than 10,5 million dollars to support the Young Survival Consortium, Stupid Cancer and Fxck Cancer that are working on prevention, education and help for young people with cancer and showing the reality of helping young women that could possibly have breast cancer and knowing the facts of the support they need when their going through tough times.

    Everyone takes on Spencer’s:

    Scott likes that Spencer’s has cool stuff, especially sex products.

    Danielle didn’t care for Spencer’s Costumes

    Jackson loved Spencer’s having been at that location and Hicksville’s multiple times. He loved taking the Stepbrothers photo with Scott:

  • Glitches in Pokémon Games: Celebi Egg Glitch

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    by Elliot Gavin Keenan

    In Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal (Generation 2) there was no legitimate way for players outside of Japan to obtain every Pokémon. The mythical Pokémon Celebi, who resides in a shrine in Ilex Forest, was only obtainable as the result of a special event distribution; at the time, these distributions required a physical setup and a link cable. Due to the declining popularity of Pokémon in the English-speaking world at the time, Celebi was never distributed. This meant that English-language players could not complete the Pokédex.

    Celebi, a mythical Pokémon and the spirit of the forests.

    However, this did not deter all English-language players from completing the game. Users of the fan-made English website Glitch City Laboratories found a specific exploit that allowed the player to generate a Celebi without the use of third-party cheating software such as a GameShark or Action Replay (neither of which were widely used yet).

    You may wonder how such a specific, targeted exploit of the game was possible. The important thing to understand about it mechanistically is that in the Generation 2 games, Pokémon and moves (and items) were coded in a single table defined by index numbers. That is to say, a single table encoded different types of information (and hence, the number of Pokémon was exactly equivalent to the number of moves ⁠— 251). See below for an example of an index number table:

    A table of different types of information associated with a single index number.

    Interestingly, there is one move in the game that no Pokémon could legitimately learn: Struggle, index number 165, shared with Ledyba. For this reason, Ledyba is actually the only Pokémon not obtainable using this exploit. You can see a list of Pokémon by index number in Gen 2 here.

    This exploit does not produce glitch Pokémon when performed correctly, although if there is no move in the correct slot it will produce a bad clone of the glitch⁠ Pokémon ?????. In theory, there are only 4 glitch Pokémon in Gen 2 because the index numbers are stored in one byte (8 bits) ⁠— meaning it can only hold exactly 255 entries, and the first 251 are valid. (Getting rid of these bad clones is very difficult; perhaps a future blog post!) Actually, incorrect performance of the exploit can cause widespread corruption of game data and affect the entire game, potentially making in unplayable.

    Some weird things can happen.

    Point is, though, that any valid Pokémon except for Ledyba can be produced using the Celebi Egg Glitch, despite its title. The move Splash (#150) will result in Mewtwo, for example. But the move Beat Up is what we are interested in, since it has #251 ⁠— Celebi.

    You must be wondering by now, how do I perform the glitch?! Well, there’s an article for that as the procedure requires a great deal of precision to get the Pokémon you want. Good luck!

    Dr. Grimaldi’s Takeaway:

    This post is excellent! It demonstrates the power and perseverance of the Pokémon community to problem-solve an issue that appeared to be an unsolvable problem through creative thinking and extensive knowledge of the game’s code.