#middle-left ended up being the best with the lowest average panels revealed and the lowest chance of worst-case-scenario

[dravidious]

You're really cool :)

Okay so I started playing the hit game Wario Land II For The Nintendo Gameboy Color a while ago and I got to a minigame where there's 9 panels that each hide part of a number and you have to reveal panels one at a time until you can guess the number and it costs coins to reveal a panel so I wanted to find an optimal strategy for which panels to reveal to figure out the number while spending as little as possible. So I spent like an hour doing that. And then I started the game. And found out that which panels get revealed is random.

Anyway, here's my potentially-incomprehensible notes from that

Wario Land 2 Panel Minigame Analysis

Top Left (Average tries required = 2.2, chance of 3 tries = 40%): 0,5,6,8,9 1 2,3,7 4 0->Middle Left: 0 5,9 6,8 2->Bottom Left: 2 3 7

Top Right (Average tries required = 2.2, chance of 3 tries = 20%): 0,2,3,7,8,9 1,4 5,6 0->Middle Left: 0 2 3,7 8 9

Middle Left (Average tries = 2, chance of x3 = 20%): 0 1,3,7 2 4,5,9 6,8 1->Center: 1,7 3 4->Top Right: 4 5 9

Middle Right (worse than middle left so idc): 0,1,7 2 3,4,8,9 5,6 0->Top Left: 0 1 7 3->Bad

#asks #the positions like “top left” are which panel to revel and the numbers are grouped by whether you can tell them apart #like if you reveal the top left panel then you can tell 1 apart from 2 but you can't tell 2 apart from 3 or 7 #so if it's 2/3/7 then you'll have to reveal another panel #the “2->Bottom Left” means that if it looks like 2 (or 3 or 7) than you should reveal the bottom left next #because if you then check bottom left you'll be able to tell if it's 2 or 3 or 7 #if there's only 1 number in a group then there's no need for more reveals #and if there's only 2 numbers then it's trivial to figure out a panel that will tell them apart #so i only made those “->” follow-ups for groups of 3 or more #i checked through a whole bunch of options (mostly the corners and middle-left/middle-right) and found the best one for each follow-up #middle-left ended up being the best with the lowest average panels revealed and the lowest chance of worst-case-scenario #so i just gave up halfway through middle-right once i realized it would be worse lol #in the end i just used save states to cheat and guess the number instantly because if the game is going to cheat then so will i #i could've just done that in the first place but honestly this was fun to do