How to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 in less than a second

Step one: Get a robot that can mash buttons about 8,000 times a second.

Read the whole story

 

[Drizzt321]

Natural extension of hardware hackers. Same kind of drive to figure it out and circumvent things just for the technical achievement. Very cool though!

 

[mcmnky]

Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

 

[Kethinov]

"I'm not enthusiastic... There's an artistic value that is gone. The sportingness is gone, and the entertainment value is of course gone, after the first one... For me it ruins the fun."

I completely agree. This is a remarkable technical achievement, but it doesn't compare to something frankly beautiful, like Mario 64 beaten with 0 stars in five minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzs9bcNgMQ

 

[tigas]

Cool tech demo, cool bit of hacking, but about as entertaining as hitting Ctrl-W on "Secret of Monkey Island" ("Do you want to win? (Y/N)")

 

[Zak]

mcmnky[/url]":mfuka7nc]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

Indeed. It's a hardware hack, not a speedrun.

 

[takk825]

I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

 

[Kethinov]

takk825[/url]":2k8zxuv9]I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

Or at least TAS runs that do things that are technically possible for a human to do, even if ridiculously hard.

 

[ronnybrendel]

mcmnky[/url]":1i9hvhwe]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

Depending on the category, I think it is a valid any% run.
Many speed runs skip things.
So, why not skip everything?

 

[krimhorn]

How about giving the views to the actual GDQ channel?

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

mcmnky[/url]":2se188zn]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

No, but it's a perfectly valid TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun), which is a very well established thing that co-exists with "real" speedruns. No TAS creator ever presumes that what they do is in the same category as a human-executed speedrun (and if they do claim that, they would be shamed as a fraud).

 

[ackmondual]

mcmnky[/url]":3vqcklwa]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

Agreed as well. FWIW, this is still MUCH faster than just looking up the ending on YouTube. Well, sans the setup.

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

takk825[/url]":1pe7ukrr]I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

There are no-glitch categories for that.

In fact I just searched for SMB3 real quick on TASVideos and found "warpless", "warp", and "100%" runs:
http://tasvideos.org/3028M.html
http://tasvideos.org/1590M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2835M.html

Enjoy.

 

[Shadic]

Small correction - Zelda II is the ADVENTURE of Link, not Adventures.

 

[krimhorn]

IntergalacticWalrus[/url]":70fshjwm]

takk825[/url]":70fshjwm]I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

There are no-glitch categories for that.

In fact I just searched for SMB3 real quick on TASVideos and found "warpless", "warp", and "100%" runs:
http://tasvideos.org/3028M.html
http://tasvideos.org/1590M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2835M.html

Enjoy.

Also, always check out the Speedrun.com leaderboards for a game you're interested in. Current WR 100% speedrun

 

[DOOManiac]

Very interesting stuff, though I prefer non-TAS speedruns from an entertainment perspective.

 

[Danrarbc]

Kethinov[/url]":3qn6k6un]

"I'm not enthusiastic... There's an artistic value that is gone. The sportingness is gone, and the entertainment value is of course gone, after the first one... For me it ruins the fun."

I completely agree. This is a remarkable technical achievement, but it doesn't compare to something frankly beautiful, like Mario 64 beaten with 0 stars in five minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzs9bcNgMQ

That Mario 64 run is tool assisted. This SMB3 'run' is tool assisted. Both exploit glitches in code. Yes the Mario run is more interesting to watch but I see no meaningful difference between the two at their core. They are both tool assisted glitch exploits - one is just more effective than the other.

Zak[/url]":3qn6k6un]

mcmnky[/url]":3qn6k6un]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

Indeed. It's a hardware hack, not a speedrun.

What is the difference between an assisted run versus a hack? You can create a hardware unit to execute the assisted run commands that you feed in to an emulator - in that case what is the difference?

ronnybrendel[/url]":3qn6k6un]

mcmnky[/url]":3qn6k6un]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

Depending on the category, I think it is a valid any% run.
Many speed runs skip things.
So, why not skip everything?

Yeah I'm with you. This seems to be in exactly the same class as any other tool assisted run - just far more effective. In all cases you use a tool to reliably exploit glitches to get the game to give you an abnormal result.

 

[Aykernar]

takk825[/url]":1mbewruo]I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

Ask, and ye shall recieve: TASBot 'speedrunning' four Mario games at the same time, using the exact same inputs for each game (twitch VOD link since it isn't up on their Youtube channel yet). You can rewind it a bit to get more explanation of what exactly is going on. Not quite a true speedrun, since it is more of a gimmick, but very impressive nonetheless. And still fast!

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Aykernar[/url]":21yof37e]

takk825[/url]":21yof37e]I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

Ask, and ye shall recieve: TASBot 'speedrunning' four Mario games at the same time, using the exact same inputs for each game (twitch VOD link since it isn't up on their Youtube channel yet). You can rewind it a bit to get more explanation of what exactly is going on. Not quite a true speedrun, since it is more of a gimmick, but very impressive nonetheless. And still fast!

While technically impressive and definitely worth watching, that run did use the 7-1 glitch on SMB3 to skip to the end of the game though, which is kinda against what takk825 was asking for.

 

[takk825]

IntergalacticWalrus[/url]":3qildltx]

takk825[/url]":3qildltx]I want to see a TAS run that requires that the game is actually played. By this, I mean I want to watch each level run as fast as possible. Think actually human speed runs with perfect input.

There are no-glitch categories for that.

In fact I just searched for SMB3 real quick on TASVideos and found "warpless", "warp", and "100%" runs:
http://tasvideos.org/3028M.html
http://tasvideos.org/1590M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2835M.html

Enjoy.

Thanks for doing the leg work! So much for being a productive employee today.

 

[ackmondual]

While not the same thing as TAS... I wonder if a turbo/rapid-fire controller could reach anywhere near 8000 mashes per second?

 

[MeowMix64]

That's truly impressive, and I wonder what's going to be the long-term examples from this hardware bug. I don't know how long this thing has been out in the wild, but would love to see TASBOT use the bug to reprogram other NES games in the future.

For anyone else that's wondering, "any%" means "Just reach the point where the game takes away your input to show the end screen". Hacking to the last screen is legal in any% (assuming everything else from the hardware to the controllers is unmodded.) There are different types of runs, and even TASvideos.org have special categorizes for spectacular looking, (even if slower then the WR) runs since it's all about the spectral of it all.

 

[Shanrak]

There are degrees of glitch exploits and I think this falls outside of what I personally consider to be a speed run.

For example, there's a very famous exploit in the original Deus Ex game where you can skip the first mission entirely by throwing a gas grenade to get someone to run out of an office and unlock the door into the base. I consider this 100% legit.

What this is doing is more along the lines of figuring out a buffer overflow exploit on the character name input screen and then giving it instructions to play the end credits.

Heck, on some games I can do that as a human too, *click view credits*, I win?


*edit*

It's still very impressive though.

 

[MeowMix64]

Shanrak[/url]":2dxyvzk8]Heck, on some games I can do that as a human too, *click view credits*, I win?

Did the game have to take away your input to get to that point? :| That's not at all how it works, let alone the credits don't always count.

It's whatever screen that comes after the final "hit", be it a cut-scene, credits, or transition screen before the credits roll.

 

[EBone]

"You cheated."

"I didn't cheat. I simply changed the conditions of the test. Got a commendation for original thinking."

 

[Undefinition]

Lois: Why would they make you president?
Peter: Maybe it's because I can recite all 50 states in 1/4 of a second. "AAIGH!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbr3SU0pmqc

 

[fishbait]

ronnybrendel[/url]":2u888raw]

mcmnky[/url]":2u888raw]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

Depending on the category, I think it is a valid any% run.
Many speed runs skip things.
So, why not skip everything?

when a speedrun skips something its a shortcut built into the game this is basically pouring over the code and forcing it to play the end scene. your not playing the game at all then
playing the game fairly means not using any outside cheats but if a dev builds in a shortcut thats still a fair game because your not violating the gameplay.

edit: still an impressive hardware hack.

 

[simonbp]

EBone[/url]":1sefinsz]"You cheated."

"I didn't cheat. I simply changed the conditions of the test. Got a commendation for original thinking."

"I mean, how else was I going to finish my apple before lunch?"

 

[foxyshadis]

IntergalacticWalrus[/url]":5sjxdh1g]

mcmnky[/url]":5sjxdh1g]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

No, but it's a perfectly valid TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun), which is a very well established thing that co-exists with "real" speedruns. No TAS creator ever presumes that what they do is in the same category as a human-executed speedrun (and if they do claim that, they would be shamed as a fraud).

Mostly it just needs a new category. Maybe "Hardware Glitching" or "Bot Run" (since a normal gritchrun uses individual software glitches, rather than universal hardware glitches), since this is about as far off the "Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs" scale as it gets.

 

[Kyle Orland]

krimhorn[/url]":27k3e941]How about giving the views to the actual GDQ channel?

I do indeed link to that video in the text itself. For the embed, though, we can't embed at specific timestamps, to my knowledge, so I had to track one down that was not surrounded by hours and hours of unrelated stuff.

 

[Danrarbc]

foxyshadis[/url]":htdm3a0t]

IntergalacticWalrus[/url]":htdm3a0t]

mcmnky[/url]":htdm3a0t]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

No, but it's a perfectly valid TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun), which is a very well established thing that co-exists with "real" speedruns. No TAS creator ever presumes that what they do is in the same category as a human-executed speedrun (and if they do claim that, they would be shamed as a fraud).

Mostly it just needs a new category. Maybe "Hardware Glitching" or "Bot Run" (since a normal gritchrun uses individual software glitches, rather than universal hardware glitches), since this is about as far off the "Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs" scale as it gets.

What about game engine glitches? In those cases the same glitch can impact multiple titles. Is that materially different than a hardware glitch? After all, the hardware issue exploited here isn't actually universal.

There seems to be a lot of splitting hairs about this when it seems pretty simple to me. There isn't a material difference between different glitches when you start down the tool assisted rabbit hole.

 

[GreenMeters]

mcmnky[/url]":vekm9liq]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? ... IT IS A MADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEEDS DO IS TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF DELIBERATELY NOT KNOWING?

 

[foxyshadis]

Danrarbc[/url]":1wqmb4n5]

foxyshadis[/url]":1wqmb4n5]

IntergalacticWalrus[/url]":1wqmb4n5]

mcmnky[/url]":1wqmb4n5]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

No, but it's a perfectly valid TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun), which is a very well established thing that co-exists with "real" speedruns. No TAS creator ever presumes that what they do is in the same category as a human-executed speedrun (and if they do claim that, they would be shamed as a fraud).

Mostly it just needs a new category. Maybe "Hardware Glitching" or "Bot Run" (since a normal gritchrun uses individual software glitches, rather than universal hardware glitches), since this is about as far off the "Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs" scale as it gets.

What about game engine glitches? In those cases the same glitch can impact multiple titles. Is that materially different than a hardware glitch? After all, the hardware issue exploited here isn't actually universal.

There seems to be a lot of splitting hairs about this when it seems pretty simple to me. There isn't a material difference between different glitches when you start down the tool assisted rabbit hole.

Just curious, but you have seen how many categories the TASArchive site has, right? About 40 or 50, so that you can look for specific things you want to see. That's all I meant by "needs a new category," since there's no current bot or programmed-play category.

 

[Danrarbc]

foxyshadis[/url]":1oeako9g]

Danrarbc[/url]":1oeako9g]

foxyshadis[/url]":1oeako9g]

IntergalacticWalrus[/url]":1oeako9g]

mcmnky[/url]":1oeako9g]Very cool, and very interesting.

But not a speed run. I can pick up a book and flip directly to the last page. That doesn't make me a speed reader.

No, but it's a perfectly valid TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun), which is a very well established thing that co-exists with "real" speedruns. No TAS creator ever presumes that what they do is in the same category as a human-executed speedrun (and if they do claim that, they would be shamed as a fraud).

Mostly it just needs a new category. Maybe "Hardware Glitching" or "Bot Run" (since a normal gritchrun uses individual software glitches, rather than universal hardware glitches), since this is about as far off the "Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs" scale as it gets.

What about game engine glitches? In those cases the same glitch can impact multiple titles. Is that materially different than a hardware glitch? After all, the hardware issue exploited here isn't actually universal.

There seems to be a lot of splitting hairs about this when it seems pretty simple to me. There isn't a material difference between different glitches when you start down the tool assisted rabbit hole.

Just curious, but you have seen how many categories the TASArchive site has, right? About 40 or 50, so that you can look for specific things you want to see. That's all I meant by "needs a new category," since there's no current bot or programmed-play category.

I hadn't seen that. I had like 4 categories in mind - human 100%, human completion w/o glitches, human completion w/ glitches and tool-assisted (where anything goes).

By all means add this then if they're already splitting hairs.

 

[zarakon]

Danrarbc[/url]":2wwis9ll]
There seems to be a lot of splitting hairs about this when it seems pretty simple to me. There isn't a material difference between different glitches when you start down the tool assisted rabbit hole.

There are some lines that could be drawn here though.
- Subframe inputs versus frame-aligned inputs
- Writing machine code instructions

It doesn't have to be entirely black-or-white

 

[nonesuchluck]

This is an incredibly cool hack, but the distinction from normal TAS is obvious. A TAS plays the game--sometimes you can warp past an area, or confuse the physics engine, but it's interacting with rules established by the game's programmers. This hack plays the console. When you're writing instructions for the 6502 processor and injecting them into memory, you're no longer running the game, you're running a homebrew application.

The game itself is just a loader application for your homebrew. This is more closely related to softmodding an original Xbox by loading an exploited savegame in Splinter Cell than it is to speedrunning.

 

[marsilies]

nonesuchluck[/url]":d80wiy6x]This is an incredibly cool hack, but the distinction from normal TAS is obvious. A TAS plays the game--sometimes you can warp past an area, or confuse the physics engine, but it's interacting with rules established by the game's programmers. This hack plays the console.

Technically, it's still playing the game since while the console has the glitch, this TAS depended on how the game specifically compensated for the glitch.

 

[nonesuchluck]

marsilies[/url]":3gl5pjrl]

nonesuchluck[/url]":3gl5pjrl]This is an incredibly cool hack, but the distinction from normal TAS is obvious. A TAS plays the game--sometimes you can warp past an area, or confuse the physics engine, but it's interacting with rules established by the game's programmers. This hack plays the console.

Technically, it's still playing the game since while the console has the glitch, this TAS depended on how the game specifically compensated for the glitch.

That's 100% true, but I still say that once you jump outside the memory space of the game cartridge and start supplying your own instructions, you're no longer playing the game. The (cleverly hacked) game is just a loader for your homebrew.

 

[parasyte]

nonesuchluck[/url]":1h8qmq0e]This is an incredibly cool hack, but the distinction from normal TAS is obvious. A TAS plays the game--sometimes you can warp past an area, or confuse the physics engine, but it's interacting with rules established by the game's programmers. This hack plays the console. When you're writing instructions for the 6502 processor and injecting them into memory, you're no longer running the game, you're running a homebrew application.

The game itself is just a loader application for your homebrew. This is more closely related to softmodding an original Xbox by loading an exploited savegame in Splinter Cell than it is to speedrunning.

http://tasvideos.org/2913M.html
http://tasvideos.org/3050M.html & http://tasvideos.org/2588M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2609M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2926M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2449M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2651M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2601M.html
http://tasvideos.org/2565M.html

There's usually a different category for nonstandard wins like this, but all of those runs use some kind of arbitrary code execution whether that be from controller input or RAM manipulation.

 

[zarakon]

nonesuchluck[/url]":25en49du]When you're writing instructions for the 6502 processor and injecting them into memory, you're no longer running the game, you're running a homebrew application.

What if someone uses this to load in the code and assets for the ending scene of Zelda? It would be the ultimate speedrun, beating a game without even starting it!