I always love reading about/watching people dedicate a huge amount of time to something like that. It's really fascinating.

Thanks for this @jeff. It's fun to remember the heady emulation days back in the 90's. I still remember the first time I ever Bleem! for PC on store shelves at an Electronics Boutique (and then subsequent Bleemcast! discs for Dreamcast), and simply being blown away as if the long-time franchise was suddenly selling something incredibly illegal or something..

For those who maybe don't remember:

What a strange and wonderful world video games are.

I could read shit like this for hours. Keep it comin', if possible.

I enjoy your writing on things you obviously care a whole lot about, thanks.

I wouldn't mind a Gizmondo Emulator either. I really enjoyed my time with Chicane: Jenson Button Street Racing once it leaked out following the company's demise - which is a good thing since it's basically the reason I bought the damn thing (And now you begin to understand where my handle came from back in the day).

Jeff should write a book about video games.

Great read. Would read more on the topic in this style of feature!

The whole time watching the 0.5 A presses video, I'm saying to myself: "or you can just play the game". This is fun to people? How much time do you spend to find these exploits? Does your boss not care if you don't show up to work? smh

@zorak: -I suspect that if the reason people pay for virtual console and psn games isn't solely because of cognizance but also because of convenience and comfort of location.

-You could almost look at the relationship emulator piracy and rereleased games have as similar to the relationship between paying and non paying customers in free to play games.

a lot of the people who do this kind of stuff are programmers by trade. Its fun for them to see how the games work, plus its almost like research into programming.

Let me being by saying that Jeff is a great writer.

Also, can we please talk about how the Mario video was science. I would feel confident asking that guy to put a rocket into space.

There is always the argument why go to the moon when when these smart people could be curing cancer? Technological advances come from curiosity too, plus he probably has just as much fun doing this as playing the game. I know I enjoyed watching it.

I'm just starting Final Fantasy X with hopes of finishing it and I'm stunned that the World Record of that is sub-ten hours. Its really cool when runners get an engine figured out, mind. I bet they secretly rub their hands with glee when Bethesda roll something out on old tech. Just find the right wall to clip through and you're golden.

This. I'm glad no one walked by my office while I was watching, because I'm sure my slack-jawed expression would've drawn some concerned looks. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have brain to clean out of my ears.

I really enjoyed the article, @jeff. The "working on actual hardware" part is actually a bit of a sticky point - they are currently running tests to figure out the causes of some working-in-emulator-but-not-on-console crashes when using "parallel universe" techniques.

The narrator in that video is also responsible for the $1000 sm64 bug bounty, which led me to join his group of merry hackers - a really interesting, dedicated bunch.

I started reading and watched that entire mario 64 video. I can't even attempt to read the rest of the article now because my head is killing me

It's really fascinating that things like this exist and people are willing to dedicate the time and effort to cracking games open in crazy ways.

For me though I'm more impressed by more 'traditional' speed runs. I can relate far easier to someone being able to execute on the known mechanics of a game than to someone breaking down the code behind the game. As someone with zero programming or code knowledge I simply can't appreciate how difficult it must be to achieve the results they do through ROM manipulation and as such I'm inherently less impressed.

I don't agree, I think it interferes with the author's intention and that is not right. How would you like it if someone went back on GameSpot and changed your Zelda scores to 1.0 for OoT and 10.0 for TP?

i'm appreciative of the fact that emulators make it easier to archive/preserve games and for you guys [Giant Bomb] to have old game shows much easier than hooking up these ancient consoles to your modern video gear. fascinating to see some of these older games that still hold up.

We know those things weren't in there already because the person who put them there basically said so. For instance, he said (emphasis mine):

If for whatever reason someone doubts this claim, it would be possible to look at the stream of controller inputs used to make the video and figure out how it encodes the "backdoor message" etc. This is all out in the open. Of course, if all we had was a Youtube video, it'd be harder to tell. Which is one of the reasons why it's good that someone is able to dig so deeply, to find out what's really there as opposed to the result of a few minutes/hours of video editing, and that the tools to do so are available to everyone. Even if only a few people will ever have the skill required to do so!

I'm not @jeff, but we don't have to speculate. Here, go look at the GameSpot review for OoT, open up a Javascript console (eg. ctrl-shift-i in non-Mac Firefox or Chrome will open the developer tools; from there select the console tab; Mac versions likely have different keyboard shortcuts; the F12 developer tools in IE offers something similar but I can't be bothered to confirm the exact steps right now), and paste in

document.querySelector("[itemprop=ratingValue]").innerHTML = "1.0";

Edit: <PSA>In general, you should avoid pasting arbitrary Javascript into a developer console if you don't understand it, as Bad Things could potentially happen. There's a reason Firefox no longer allows pasting Javascript into the URL bar by default any more, and instead makes you jump through the hoop of opening the developer tools. Be careful!</PSA>

There, I "changed" the review score. But, somewhat similar to ROM hacks or these newer total-control tool-assisted videos, it's easy to find out what the original was and therefore what the author's intent was. Sure, it's possible to trick someone who doesn't know better (eg. apply the "change", bring someone over and try to claim Jeff gave OoT 1.0), but also really easy to call bullshit (eg. reload the page, the "change" goes away). It'd be lousy if I tried to pass this off as the original author's intent, but I'm not, just like Lord Tom on TASVideos isn't trying to claim that the additions to SMB3 were in the original game. (As per the above quote, he did "pretend" it was in the original, but also admitted to doing so, so it's all in good fun.)

But maybe I misinterpret you, and instead of determining what the author's intention was, you're more concerned about preventing changes to the author's intent. In which case we're going to have to agree to disagree, because I'd rather be able to stand on the shoulders of giants (properly attributed, ideally!) than be forever locked into whatever someone happened to come up with years ago. (Not that fudging a review score is in any way standing on the shoulders of giants, so my analogy isn't perfect, but whatever!)

Edit: upon rereading this, perhaps the previous paragraph had too harsh a tone. Your opinion is of course valid!

@shybry: Cool, thanks for the clarification.

Isn't the whole "parallel Mario 64 universe" just a partially applied coordinate offset?

That SMB3 thing was super crazy though, especially if you read the makers comments.

Speedrunners almost seem like the archaeologists and historians of video games. It's such a new medium that not many people can major in "Video Game History" or "Video Game Museum Curator," but the fans have joined together to dedicate themselves to the games they love in order to push the game's boundaries and discover things that would never be found without thousands of hours of failure and restarting.

I think the speedrunner philosophy in general is very similar to the concept of a growth mindset (from Mindset). They run these video games because they know you have to fail over and over before you get it right and learn from your mistakes. The dedicated speedrunners don't stop streaming when they fail or when someone beats their world record. They play every day because to them it's like exercise for an athlete. You might not always make a breakthrough or feel stronger at the end of it, but it all adds up toward progress and growing a community.

Shameless @jeff Praise: To be honest, you are the main reason I still visit Giant Bomb. Yes, Vinny and Drew and everyone else is great, but its your knowledge and passion for video games that I connect with. You also seem to not have many implicit biases (sexism, racism, ageism) which is a breath of fresh air after listening to similarly themed podcasts where it runs rampant. I hope you will someday write a book or blog about your experiences in video game journalism because I find those stories fascinating.

Also, Dave Lang or John Drake should be on every episode of the Bombcast. But I realize people have schedules and those guys probably already have a fan club chasing them around.

Dedicating your life to a sport or hobby isn't madness, so why would speedrunning be considered that? If anything, they're defining a new hobby.

Nice article. I've been looking into trying out glitches in old games I own since seeing the TASbot and the N64 Mario video.

Last night I managed to glitch through the Door of Time in LoZ:OoT and get the Master Sword without doing all young Link dungeons. When I got through I had such a Jeff On.

That Super Mario 3 video kinda melted my brain.

@blister Oh my god, did you make this? I'm not a math guy, so I have no idea how legitimate this is, but I lost it at "Given fixed x ∈ R, ε > 0, the collection of Scuttlebugs <math> is called a jamboree"

Am i misunderstanding something? If a button press has 3 states when pressed and you remove one of them then its 2/3 not 1/2.

The bit when he includes the step to let go of the button then says that its not important kind of irritated me. But i suppose it depends if you class a complete press includes letting go of the button as well. Much like to say that youve been on holiday you have to come home after, otherwise your still on holiday.

I have no idea.

Very dope article. I do some of these things and usually catch on to stuff like this early. It's always weird seeing this blow up, but you really did represent it well. Thank you very much Jeff.

That Mario video is fucking crazy. Parallel universe, qpu grids, T1-T6 triangles, de facto speeds, syncing... And I thought the game was just about coins and stars.

Hell of a read Jeff, that Mario video was ridiculous.

I like when TAS stuff is more for accuracy, and the stuff could theoretically be done by a person. I remember watching the Mario 64 TAS run at AGDQ and going "I've done that shortcut before", except it was one completion out of hundreds of tries, and only 1 step out of about 50 or so. But still, it just felt good seeing the robot do something and going "I've done that."

@peetabix: You're confusing stages with states. There are 3 stages to pressing a button, press, hold, release, but only two states, pressed and not pressed. Some games have a use for the release stage of a button press. He was simply saying that sm64 doesn't. That's the regard in which he was discounting it. Not in it's value as a portion of an individual button press.

PS3 emulation? thats crazy.

Momma can I mow the lawn looks like fun. The Gizmondo could have been HUGE. But why is there an insane guy on gamefaqs posting updates to this thread every few days?

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/926575-momma-can-i-mow-the-lawn/63144516

I think I would also like to see a Jeff book one day. He's got the history, the resume, and an interesting perspective. He could write about something; I'd read it.

The author's intention is still there for those that want to play it as-is. This is reverse-engineering to see how and why certain parts of the game are present in that creation. Nothing particularly wrong with that.

Great to see more writing on the site! Would like to hear more from you Jeff!

This is great stuff Jeff

good read. thanks for taking the time to write this article. I still have some of the old tendencies in me and tend to add a disclaimer to any emulator comment I make along the lines of "emulators are meant to be used with games you own a legal copy of blah blah blah".

Oh my god, The Grid. I have been trying for ages to think of that one game I played 10+ years ago in a corner of an amusement park with a keypad, joystick, and an aesthetic that reminded me of Unreal Tournament, and I have finally found it.

Jeff Gerstmann, you are a GIFT.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

3:15 on the arbitrary code TAS.

@danbri: If you've never been to California Extreme, it's somewhere that will chain up The Grid cabinets. (Photo by me)

Watching that 0.5x video reminded me of the day I gave up A level chemistry.

Finally decided to read this article and I'm glad I did. I've rediscovered my fascination with speed runs lately and I especially look for runs with commentary. That SM64 video was the coolest shit and possibly the most in-depth explanation of a glitch I've seen yet. And I thought everything there was to do in SM64 had been done already.

I'd love a regular feature/series related to speed runs and TAS stuff!

@brackynews said:

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

3:15 on the arbitrary code TAS.

I thought the same thing, but it's not real. They hacked that in. http://tasvideos.org/4961S.html

Very cool article. A bit late, but I really like these kind of write ups. Not super into speed runs myself, but more interested into the work that goes into them!

@turambar said:

That's an awesome image. If that's your work, very nice job.