Crow 64 2023-2024 Info Recap

                       Click here to go to the main document.

                             Click here to go to the puzzle document.

Catastrophe Crow is an ARG from Adam Butcher . On December 5th, 2020, a final solution was discovered to it, but August this year we got new information and possible confirmation of it returning.

    ! All findings and leads all go in order starting from August !

Opus Letter

On August 16th, 2023, Adam Butcher uploaded a tweet and a community post on his YouTube with an opus letter.

Quote:

“Got this letter today (!). Surprised Opus exists in any shape or form tbh, but they seem to have some future plans… Watch this space!

#CatastropheCrow"

On the note it thanks Adam for bringing Opus’s title Catastrophe Crow! to a wider audience via his youtube channel. It seems like Opus is aware of Adam’s documentary video, as proven by the letter. We dont know the full contents of the letter, but it could be that opus legacy is employing adam.

It’s interesting to note that the youtube post and the twitter one differ, on youtube one instead of “Watch this space!” it’s “Will keep you posted!”.

GET READY…!

September 7th, 2023, Adam Butcher uploaded a video on his channel called “GET READY…!”. The video features a distorted main theme of Crow 64, with what seems to be Mr. Crow spinning to face the viewer.

Description:

“It’s more than just a toy, it’s the beginning of an adventure!”

Video credit: Opus Legacy Co.

If you paid close attention to the left part of the screen, you could see some weird pixel column pattern. Extracting the image you get this:

Date

The date says 05.10.23 (5th of october, 2023), Which we now know is The Makeship Campaigns date.

However, do notice that there is a weird pattern of dots on the right side of the picture, this pattern of dots actually translates to the numbers (051023) which relates to the same date seen in the picture. You can obtain that information by labelling the Y-Axis of the dots.

Opus Legacy

Under Adam’s video of “GET READY…!” The description states “Video credit: Opus Legacy Co.” Looking on YouTube for channels that match this, you can find one.

It’s official, because it was created back in July of 2023. You can also find Opus Legacy on Twitter.

They have uploaded the exact same video on their channel. they do follow Ulrich Aderman, Ultra 64 Forever and Adam Butcher on twitter, so it’s possible that they are other former/current employees.

— WHERE ARE THEY…? (Catastrophe Crow Toy Advert)

September 21st, 2023, Opus Legacy uploads a video on their channel called “WHERE ARE THEY…? (Catastrophe Crow Toy Advert)”, a minute after, the video also lands on Adam Butcher’s channel.

The video promotes a new Makeship plushie featuring Mr. Crow. The date 05.10.23 is when the funding launches, and production starts on October 27th, 2023. Estimated shipment date is January 20, 2024.

Differences

Opus Legacy video and Adams video features a few differences.

-In Adams video, a silhouette of the plushie appears. However we do not see that in OPUS Legacy’s video

-For a split second, OPUS Legacy's video shows a weird corrupted image (Which is an image of the Jigsaw puzzle)

Cartridge

 At 0:05 the cartridge zooms in.

Important to note that the serial number on the cartridge is very different from Nintendo ones. The part below seems to spell NWTC-OPHAC, which from Crow Language translates to “CANT-EXIST”.

Jigsaw First Appearance

At 0:06 you can see a weird code, similar to one seen in WHAT HAPPENED TO CROW 64? when Adam launches the game.

See image below:

Work Building

At 0:07, for a brief moment (few frames), right after the jigsaw puzzle, you can see that some of the work building windows are blacked out.

See image below:

It’s important to consider that blacked out windows have already been used for solving one of the puzzles in ARG. This is very similar.

Members of the community were able to put out numbers from the blacked out windows: 38, 51, 31, 35, 4 or 385131354 (put together). These numbers will be used on The binary64 Puzzle that reveals the cartridge image

Reference to game #`1

For a split second, the key turns into a wind up key. This is a hint towards the fact that in the Catastrophe 64 game The key does in fact change into a wind up key.

Makeship

Makeship is a company that makes marketable plushies. On the official link to the Crow plushie

If you look closely, some of the letters are not what they seem.

they spell out “resurrection” or taken from the website “ɾẹṣụɾɾẹċṫİᴑṅ”. This phrase will be used as the passcode for the itch.io link.

On October 5th, the Makeship plushie finally got revealed and the funding has started.

You can also see a cartridge accessory that you can stick to Mr. Crow’s wing.

— CATASTROPHE CROW! PLUSH - Available now!

On October 5th, 2023, two new videos got posted again. One by Adam and one by Opus. They are almost identical, and the Opus one only has one difference.

We’ve got some new looks at the Catastrophe Crow plushie. This is probably just an advertisement to advertise the plushie.

Resurrection is back

Around 0:06 an odd sound appears. Reversing it you can hear the word “Resurrection” being spoken.

Coins UI and Controller Pattern puzzle

Starting from 0:07 the controller appears on the screen. Looking in the right bottom corner you can see the coins ui. This current frame says 00.

Around a second later, an almost identical thing appears, but now with 01 in there.

Another second later, we can now see this.

Here are all the numbers listed here, in order of appearance:

00 00 01 06 00 02 04 00 01 00 06 05 02 03

Now come the controllers. There seems to be a pattern in the way the buttons are pressed, too.

First Frame: A

Second Frame: R-button

Third Frame: D-pad

Top Left: START + A + D-pad

Top Right: Control Stick (Circular Motion) + START + D-pad

Bottom Right: START + C-button + D-pad

Bottom Left: START + B

The chronological order of buttons pressed is as follows:

A-button → R-button → D-pad → START → Control Stick (Circular Motion) → START → START → A-button → START → C-button → B-button → D-pad → L-button → D-pad

Let’s use the method used in “Controller cipher / Crow Language #6” in the entire Crow64 Known Info document in order to translate these buttons into letters.

• Analog stick ➡ Follow the motions, they draw a letter
• D-pad ➡ D
• Start button ➡ S
• A/B buttons ➡ A/B
• Analog C buttons ➡ C
• Left shoulder button ➡ L
• Right shoulder button ➡ R

The sequence of letters is as follows: A R D S O S S A S C B D L D

The coin count is used to move letters forward by their assigned number.

E.G: Let's take the number 1 and letter X, this means you have to move X by one in alphabetical order, thus making it Y.

Now, let's take the coin count and connect them with the letters. There are enough numbers for each letter.

A - 0

R - 0

D - 1

S - 6

O - 0

S - 2

S - 4

A - 0

S - 1

C - 0

B - 6

D - 5

L - 2

D - 3

The end result becomes:

AREYOUWATCHING

with spaces = ARE YOU WATCHING

The narrator says “Try to fly” at 0:11, which is a reference to the player falling from toyland and the way to reach the key on top of the building in the game.

New gameplay

Around 0:18-0:20, new gameplay can be seen. Mr. Crow is walking into a tunnel next to the computer. This is a level from the video Catastrophe Crow! – Underground Level. This tunnel never appears in the unity project, or even in any of the videos.

Differences

Jigsaw Second Appearance

Unlike in previous videos from Opus Legacy’s version, a lot was changed. In this video’s case though, there's only one major difference, and that is the second half of the Jigsaw puzzle.

The Return of Ulrich Aderman

On October 8th, the Twitter account of Ulrich Aderman retweeted the second Opus Legacy Co. plush ad that contained editing differences compared to the original YouTube advertisement.

“I suppose they secured the rights. I may get one after all!”

It has been confirmed through a reply to ParadoxFactor that Ulrich doesn’t know who bought the rights to Opus, nor is he connected to anyone involved in the company’s comeback.

It is worth noting in his reply to Miles that he is retired. He spends most of his time with his family and dogs.

These replies are possible confirmation that Ulrich Aderman is not a sockpuppet account of Manfred’s, as previously theorized.

 — Catastrophe Crow - Huggable, squishable!

On October 12th, 2023, we got another new video. As always, one by Opus and Adam. The differences aren’t major again, everything is partially the same. Though there are some interesting things in both of them.

Butterfly pattern

From 0:05 to 0:07, butterflies can be seen flying. They are shaped in a form of a letter, and there are 11 frames with butterflies, so 11 letters.

This is the end result as for what it is:

WEAREINHELL

Reference to game #3

Here we can see crow being chased by the knight, as is present in the game at toyland.

Spying eye

At 0:08 Mr. Crow is about to enter the WORK building. At the last remaining frames an eye can be seen looking out.

Worth to note Adam’s and Opus Legacy versions have different versions of that eye.

(which is most likely due to compression errors, and not some other hint.)

Left is from Adam Butcher                              Right is from Opus Legacy

New gameplay #2

The new video features once more new gameplay.

This looks like a desert level, with a weird figure that Mr. Crow is approaching.

This is likely a scarecrow, since the head fits the money bag form, and is also t-posing.

Reference:

Differences

Instead of Opus Legacy just adding new stuff into the already existing video of Adam, Adams version also has a weird shot. Both do though actually have minor differences.

Jigsaw Third Appearance — OPUS LEGACY

Manfred is back — Adam Butcher

At 0:16 plushie version of Manfred is seen standing in what appears to be an attic.

It’s worth noting that Manfred’s plushie doesn’t have a bandage, unlike the original Crow does, suggesting that someone had to manually remove the bandage off of the plush.

More videos

This video went live exactly a week later from the previous one.

Jigsaw puzzle — Solved!

On October 17th, 2023, Opus Legacy tweeted

an embedded version of the huggable squishable video, which had easier pieces for the jigsaw puzzle. Almost an hour later, we were able to crack it.

It’s worth noting that we have SOME words to work along with, that were deciphered over the course of each video being released, those being:

RESURRECTION - 12 letters

WEAREINHELL - 11 letters

AREYOUWATCHING - 14 letters

However We now know that the words in the video have no relation to the jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw puzzle is mainly used in The Game, so if you want more information check the game doc out.

— "FINAL DAYS!" (official catastrophe crow advert)

On October 19th, 2023, Adam Butcher and Opus Legacy uploaded another advert to promote the plush. For the first time both versions are IDENTICAL and there is not any differences in it spotted at ALL.

Reference to game #4

here we can see the narrator wind up the plushie, which is a reference to the way you need to wind up one of the plushies in the factory room (In game).

Reference to game #5

Some shots of an odd forest appear in the video, which is what the player needs to do in game at the forest level.

Controller pak

At 0:34 we are shown what appears to be a controller pak of Crow 64. Purpose is unknown.

Crawler

Right before the Base64 image appears, there are weird pixels seen all in a random order. A few frames later, a scattered image of Base64 also appears, which actually is a hint that we need to place them all in place again. This is technically a jigsaw puzzle #2.

Final result is:

What appears to be Crawler from CC64 crawling up to the camera. Crawler always represents Nils in the original run, so take that in mind.

Base64 Image

For a few frames, a weird shot of what appears to be an image encoded into Base 64.

Closer look:

There are a lot of weird red looking things. These are ankh images we got from the previous arg run. In the subtitles of the TikTok video and YouTube video on the Opus Legacy pages, the ankhs are represented by @ signs. There are 9 ankhs in the images, and there are also 9 numbers found from the new building binary puzzle. Thus, inserting each of building numbers into the ankhs in order results in:

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

From Base 64 to image:

Up-scaled:

The background of this image has weird colors. If we refer back to WHERE ARE THEY? advert, the colors match those seen in that video.

Using this, we were able to discover….

Catastrophe Crow! Official Game on itch.io

Using the Base64 image and colors that matched to letters in the WHERE ARE THEY? video, we were able to find a link to the official CATASTROPHE CROW! game on itch.io. It used to be password locked, however a few weeks prior to the release of the game it was unlocked.

Password is:

RESURRECTION 

(This was the old instructions image)

Release date

In the old 05.10.23 image, weird dots are seen.

If you take the row of each pixel treading the bottom row as zero and counting upwards, they decode to 051023, the same release date shown on the image, 05/10/23 (October 5, 2023).

Oddly enough, these dots are also seen in the newest base 64 image.

If you do the same thing with the new cartridge image you get 260424, or 26/04/24 (April 26, 2024).

This is the official release date of the Catastrophe Crow! game.

The plushie is – funded!

On October 23-24th, 2023, the plush finally gets funded (reaches 332 sold), which means everyone is getting their own plush now!

— A final message from Opus Legacy Co.

On November 3rd, 2023, a new video was uploaded both to AdamButcher’s and Opus Legacy’s channel.

Teddy bear toy returns

From timestamp 0:00 to 0:05, and 0:07, a teddy bear plushie can be seen transforming into the Mr. Crow

Wind-up key puzzle (Keyboard puzzle)

At the timestamp 0:05 to 0:07, you can see a spinning wind up key.

Opus Legacy’s video has the same clip, but the noise is different. The noises in the background are the keyboard noises that were seen in Catastrophe Crow! – Underground Level video.

Turning the noise from the audio into letters, we get a phrase:

I W A I T E D

High-res look at the Base64 cartridge

In Opus Legacy’s video version, around from 0:13 to 0:14, a cartridge image faintly appears. It’s the same cartridge image we got from the Base64 image puzzle, but high resolution. It’s unknown if there’s any emphasis on it.

                                            !! WARNING !!

From now on all the new game discovery will be posted here: Catastrophe Crow! (Game, 2024)

The doc has officially ended. Thank you.

Credits

Document editors

• vandercool8
• Lamechial
• Chip

if you want to be a document editor let me know on discord: vandercool8

People who helped research

• Paradox Factor - First one to find out about work building windows numbers (also them going into the missing ankhs), figuring out the hidden message in the "FINAL DAYS" audio
• wintyr - Extracting “resurrection” from the Makeship website, for being the first person to write the Base64 code and work on multiple revisions
• Mr. Chair -  Extracting the date from GET READY…!, actively working on solving the jigsaw puzzle, extracted the numbers from controllers from CATASTROPHE CROW! PLUSH - Available Now!
• Miles - Extracting the reversed resurrection audio from CATASTROPHE CROW! PLUSH - Available Now!
• Misael.K - Trying to decipher the jigsaw puzzle, extracting the date from GET READY…!
• kyle. - Managed to guess the NWTC-OPHAC.
• Lamechial - Deciphered the jigsaw puzzle, extracted the numbers from controllers from CATASTROPHE CROW! PLUSH - Available Now!, also found something in the controllers pattern, finding the font used in the Base64 Puzzle (VCR OSD Mono) and help write a big chunk of the base64 code
• Titan29 - Made the puzzle doc, Obtaining the Opus Itch.io Page and deciphering the black dots in the cartridge image revealing a release date. (Makeship Video Puzzle), solved the controllers puzzle from CATASTROPHE CROW! PLUSH - Available Now!
• chip - Getting the uncorrupted Base64 Code that Gave us the uncorrupted Cartridge Image (prior to Opus tiktok video)
•  Ralsestial - Being the first person to know that the itch.io password is "Resurrection"
• Atterid Desteney - AD. - Crawler puzzle
• Teddy-O - Coloring the upscaled picture to give us a more clear view on the top 3 line colors and unwrapping the scrolling text in the makeship video. (ALSO BUYING 21 CROW PLUSHIES)
• El Stephono - upscaling the cartridge image

And also:

• Maddy and MMillion for being the owners of the CC64 Discord Server, and also significant researchers!