Ok, I want to throw in my 2 cents on this since there's a project I've been working on that entirely relies on SRAM to make it possible.
In Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force, there is a feature where you could download free additional content through the now defunct Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
Along with newsletters, the player could download 2 new missions and play through them. That's right, a Club Penguin Nintendo DS game had DLC capabilities.
The missions are called "A special message from Aunt Artic" and "The Puffle Pranksters". I'm currently making a TAS for The Puffle Pranksters.
The DLC itself is stored as a "download.arc" file inside of the save file itself, so if you delete your save data and start a new save, the DLC is deleted with it.
This is a DS game after all, it's not a modern game where the DLC is a separate thing from the base game.
Thankfully, both DLC missions have been preserved and archived and can be played on emulators.
Not to mention a tool called EPFExplorer lets you inject these missions onto any save file making them widely accessible.
In the context of making a TAS and submitting it to the site however...
All of this means is that making a verification file for a TAS for these missions is basically IMPOSSIBLE.
Since NWC is dead, and Club Penguin is also dead, and even if they weren't, it would still be impossible since it would require emulating the wi-fi features and making a movie out of it that has to consistently sync just to download a single mission from the menu and that is just not happening anytime soon.
So I'm basically stuck in a rather interesting position. It is actually one of the reasons why I haven't worked on this TAS for a long while.
That and some personal life stuff but that's besides the point.
I had already made a TAS for "A special message from Aunt Artic" and submitted it for April Fools, since you can barely call that a mission:
#7062: dekutony's DS Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force "A special message from Aunt Artic" in 00:16.78
The Puffle Pranksters is the only real DLC mission that was ever released for the game, and a TAS for this mission has been greatly anticipated by the Club Penguin speedrunning community. So the thought of it being rejected just for the SRAM situation is kind of underwhelming for me. Some of you may say: "Oh, then this movie would be a perfect fit for the Playground!"
Uh, here's the thing: ...No. I don't want that to happen either. I don't want this movie to end up in the
Purgatory Playground, it just doesn't sit right with me...
At the end of the day, I really hope this save data issue can be sorted out eventually, I do however want to hear your thoughts about this very specific, weird situation.
