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Speedrunners make Super Mario World reprogram itself to play Pong, Snake
A programming loophole in the Super NES platformer Super Mario World has given speedrunners the ability to build and execute arbitrary code during gameplay, leading to the creation of fully playable minigames built on top of existing cartridge assets. An in-game hack takes advantage of a convoluted glitch that was previously exploited in order to finish the game in an impossibly quick span of time using software emulators. Starting at the 1:40 mark in the video above, the hack is deployed, and new code is written using an array of eight emulated Super NES controllers -- no keyboard input or explicit programming language is used to create these new minigames. The discovery follows up on a similar hack for Pokemon Yellow that allows players to overwrite the game's code using only the Game Boy's controller input. Fans have since used tool-assisted speedrun tech in order to produce in-game art and other unexpected results. If the videos above left you confused and maybe even a little frightened, that's normal; the Super Mario World hack made its debut during last week's Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon to a crowd of stunned onlookers. Have speedrunners gone too far this time? Is there anything we can do to stop them?
Tool-assisted speedrun shows Super Mario 64 beaten in five minutes
A group of five speedrunners has beaten Super Mario 64 with no stars in just five minutes. To do so, they used a whole bag of tricks, including glitches, weird jumping macros, and shortcuts. It's not pretty, but if you have 18274 frames of time to spare, you can see the whole video below.
Mega Man X & X2 ... at the same time
TASvideos has posted a clip of Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 being played simultaneously (using one controller). But there's a catch...The TAS community -- that's "Tool-Assisted Speedruns" -- is not about showing off, but rather, creating "movies that are beautiful to watch." Know that this clip was recorded using a controller wired into two SNES emulators and that the player used features like slow-motion and savestates to cast the illusion of a seamless playthrough in real time. So while it's not proof that an 'unassisted' gamer could play two different games with one controller, by exploiting emulation tools, the creator does show that two games can be played successfully using one set of button inputs, and without modifying the games.Do you find these sorts of projects fascinating? Is this games avant-garde movement? Or just a "silly idea"?[Via Digg]
