SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in SMW

I don't know about the run shown in the OP, but there are a fair number of memory-manipulation/ACE speedruns that are feasible in RTA ("real-time attack", a.k.a. something a human could pull off, as distinct from TAS). Off the top of my head I can think of such routes for Pokemon Red/Blue, Ocarina of Time, and Super Mario World. To answer your question of "how likely is one to pull this off" for those three, the Pokemon one requires no almost advanced execution, other than turning off the console at a precise point to corrupt the save data you otherwise just need to follow a simple (though long) series of steps. The Mario one requires some pixel-perfect precision, and runners often used hacked ROMs that display coordinates in order to train. The Zelda one requires exact angles to be held on the analog stick, and I've heard of people creating guides out of cardboard and rubber bands in order to help them achieve the angles more reliably. Sorry that I don't have any video links on hand, but you could almost certainly find examples of these in the GDQ archives. EDIT: Found a good video for the SMW example, by SethBling, which actually goes a step further and manually reprograms SMW into Flappy Bird: ▶ this video EDIT 2: Here's an excellent explanation of the Zelda ACE: [link]

in “Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3 Minutes – World Record Speedrun Explained [video]” · View on HN

super impressive stuff. I'm generally unfamiliar with speedrunning, but I am familiar with the billy mitchell controversies, so I'm surprised that people accept the legitimacy of streamed runs. wouldn't it be trivial-enough to fake? tangental: my personal favorite mario-related feat is sethbling injecting flappy bird into super mario world manually: ▶ this video

in “'Super Mario Bros.' speedrunner hits nearly inhuman 4:55 world record” · View on HN

Youtube is full of hidden gems, all a matter of taste. Meta-programming: [link] Math'n'music edutainment: [link] Science edutainment: [link] Feats of incredible gaming skill: [link] Tidbits of hacking ingenuity: ▶ this video Looking for heart in pop culture: [link] You can get lost in the maze of excess information. It's great - i think...

in “Crash Course – Educational course videos on YouTube” · View on HN

> using tools and rigorous methods Lots of speedrun strategies require surprisingly sophisticated tools. People will decompile/disassemble code to figure out what is going on. They'll run the game in an emulator and peek at memory values to figure out how the game works and how to manipulate it. They'll use these tools to set up their game state so that there's a sequence of bytes in RAM, then cause program execution to jump to these bytes, to run arbitrary code execution. Here's a video of a speedrunner explaining some of the things he did to get two arbitrary code executions working together to speedrun Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World: [link] (it's about 15 minutes) Here's the same runner using one of those arbitrary code executions to inject Flappy Bird into Super Mario World instead of just warping to end credits: ▶ this video (it's about 6 minutes) He didn't get to that point just by random pressing buttons until something interesting happened. He got to that point because he understands the Super Mario World memory layout well enough to manipulate it and execute the instructions that he chooses for it. That's vulnerability research any way you want to slice it.

in “Speedrunners are vulnerability researchers, they just don't know it yet” · View on HN

I love this kind of stuff. Reminds me of how they programmed Flappy Bird inside Super Mario World using glitches. Crazy stuff. ▶ this video

in “Hackers discover how to reprogram NES Tetris from within the game” · View on HN

Once I thought about this in the context of those code injection game hacks you sometimes see where people do strange, repetitive actions in-game that wind up writing instructions in RAM and eventually they can bootload Flappy Bird in Super Mario World[0], and how in reality that would look like an arcane ritual. But realistically even if the universe were a simulation of some kind, it would be absurd to think that it was anything akin to a modern computer running a Unity game or something, even though that's where everyone goes because of The Matrix. [0] ▶ this video

in “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation, and Can We Hack It?” · View on HN

Some highlights/historically significant examples of this: Super Mario World (TAS, 2014): [link] Super Mario Bros. 3 (TAS, 2014): [link] - The same run performed RTA (i.e. by a human using a real controller) at AGDQ 2015: [link] Super Mario World (RTA, 2015): [link] Super Mario World "total control" (RTA, 2015): ▶ this video Pokemon Yellow total control (TAS, 2017): [link] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (RTA, 2019-ish?): [link] Ocarina of Time total control/"Triforce%" (TAS, 2022): [link] (explanation: [link] )

in “Beating Super Mario Bros 3 in 19 frames (2021)” · View on HN

For example, this video ▶ this video by SethBling where he manually exploits SMW to rewrite some of its code and turn it into a Flappy Bird clone.

in “FizzBuzz Mario World: Learning Assembly Language and Having Some Fun” · View on HN

Agreed, I was first perplexed at what was going on, starting to not see where it was going at all with the low-level explanations, and then when the enemy positions turned out to be assembly instructions... mind blown. It also reminded me of this video which shows Flappy Bird being code injected into Super Mario World, by hand... ▶ this video

in “Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3 Minutes – World Record Speedrun Explained [video]” · View on HN

It's even harder to imagine how someone could rewrite the code to Super Mario World on an unmodified SNES to play Flappy Bird just using regular controllers, yet it's possible: ▶ this video

in “Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’” · View on HN

There's lots of examples, but a famous one is this video by Sethbling where he uses a controller as opposed to a TAS tool: ▶ this video

in “Don’t try to sanitize input – escape output” · View on HN

There are undoubtedly major benefits in the war against cheaters by completely removing user access to the underlying system. However I think there are two fundamental points to keep in mind on why it's not going to be an ultimate solution. 1) Unless cross-platform play is forbidden or the game is exclusively streamed-only, the cheaters will just use a different platform and will still ruin your game the same old way. It's the cheater's platform of choice that matters. 2) Games are some of the least security conscious pieces of software out there [1], primarily written in C++. There are bugs, lots of bugs. Process-takeover enabling bugs. I'm sure Google sandboxes the game to protect their systems, however cheaters only need access to the game process to enable most of their desires. Yes this would raise the bar in how easy it would be to cheat. Average Joe Cheat Engine users would be gone, but more skilled cheat makers will continue business as usual and their released cheats will do the exploits hidden from the actual people doing the cheating. Bonus: See this cute hack that injects flappy bird into Super Mario World. ▶ this video -- [1] Even AAA developers are clueless about threat models. Games like Tom Clancy's The Division [2] and Fallout 76 [3] are multiplayer games that put extreme trust into the client. Trust that nobody would modify their script files, trust that the client is always telling the honest truth. [2] [link] [3] [link]

in “Stadia Founder's Edition” · View on HN

"likely only possible in TAS" has this habit of becoming possible. SethBling turning Super Mario World into Super Flappy Birds on a console comes to mind. ▶ this video

in “'Super Mario Bros.' speedrunner hits nearly inhuman 4:55 world record” · View on HN

You definitely do need code execution from RAM for high-fidelity emulation. How else are people going to implement Flappy Bird in Super Mario World? :) ▶ this video

in “Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports” · View on HN