| Title | How a Robot Got Super Mario 64 and Portal “Running” on an SNES | |
| Date | Thursday January 19 2017, @11:15PM | |
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| from the on-the-next-episode-of-super-hackers dept. | ||
For years now, AGDQ [Awesome Games Done Quick] has featured a block where TASBot (the Tool-Assisted Speedrun Robot) performs literally superhuman feats on classic consoles simply by sending data through the controller ports thousands of times per second. This year's block (viewable above) started off simply enough, with some show-offy perfect play of Galaga and Gradius on the new NES Classic hardware using a device made by TASBot team member Peter Greenwood (who goes by the name micro500). TASBot organizer dwangoAC Allan Cecil (dwangoAC) described the NES Classic as "absolutely horrible" when it comes to automation.
After that, TASBot moved on to a few "total control runs," exploiting known glitches in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mega Man to insert arbitrary code on the NES. This is nothing new for the computer-driven TASBot—the basics of the tricks vary by game, but they generally involve using buffer overflows to get into memory, then bootstrapping a loader that starts reading and executing a stream of controller inputs as raw assembly level opcodes. The method was taken to ridiculous extremes last year, when TASbot managed to "beat" Super Mario Bros. 3 in less than a second with a very specific total control glitch.
With those out of the way, TASBot moved on to a similar total control run of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. After a few minutes of setup, the Zelda screen faded out, then faded back in on a bordered window with an ersatz logo for the "Super N64." Without any forthcoming explanation from the runners on stage, TASBot started apparently playing through a glitch-filled speedrun of Super Mario 64 on the Super NES, following it up with a similar glitch-filled speedrun through Valve's PC classic Portal. After that, the scene somehow transitioned to a Skype video call with a number of speedrunners speaking live from the AGDQ event through the SNES.
No one on the AGDQ stage acknowledged how weird this all was, leaving hundreds in the Herndon, VA ballroom and nearly 200,000 people watching live on Twitch temporarily guessing at what, exactly, was going on.
Very geeky but very cool. And totally impractical.
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printed from SoylentNews, How a Robot Got Super Mario 64 and Portal “Running” on an SNES on 2024-04-18 17:35:20