from Hacker News

How a Game-Playing Robot Coded “Super Mario Maker” onto an SNES

by kevin_morrill on 1/12/16, 9:07 AM with 22 comments

  • by minimaxir on 1/13/16, 4:33 PM

    Another interesting run during the TASBot block of AGDQ was the Brain Age run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRc5RH4tR1E (you can see pictures of the setup in the article)

    In the run, the TASBot is hooked up to the DS's touch screen...and hilarity ensues. (it's a throwback to a Brain Age speedrun with a similar gimmick)

  • by phantarch on 1/13/16, 8:29 PM

    It's consistently amazing how ingenious some of these runners are in figuring out ways to break out of the apparent rules of a formal system and get creative with it. The TASbot guys have also done things like RAM manipulation of Pokemon games in order to rewrite the game code into displaying twitch chat.

    AGDQ and SGDQ are two of the coolest video game-related events held every year. They're always streamed on Twitch, and recordings are posted to youtube. Anyone who has even a mild interest in gaming should check them out. https://gamesdonequick.com/

  • by Zikes on 1/13/16, 4:31 PM

    I watched a few speed runs from last week's Awesome Games Done Quick marathon and several of the runners were able to perform some impressive game breaking exploits in real-time. They didn't always manage it, but for most of the finicky exploits they usually had 3-4 runners doing the same trick simultaneously and at least one of them got it.

  • by JonnieCache on 1/13/16, 7:22 PM

    You may also enjoy this speedrun of pokemon blue from last year's Summer Games Done Quick, where all 151 monsters are caught as quickly as possible. Essentially nothing is done correctly: menus are underflowed, pointers are gymnastically redirected, PRNGs are manipulated, various state machines are thrown out of alignment and fun is had by all.

    https://youtu.be/wtZ7CzbxBFM?t=576

  • by starshadowx2 on 1/13/16, 5:51 PM

    Ah, I posted this yesterday but it didn't catch. I'm glad it's popular now so more people can see it.

    TASBot is really great every year.

  • by saganus on 1/13/16, 6:51 PM

    Wow. Just wow.

    I never cease to be amazed at the amount of things a dedicated hacker (or team) can accomplish.

    Also, great write up. Full of details and pictures!

  • by vlunkr on 1/13/16, 9:40 PM

    The amazing thing is that this isn't a ROM hack, it's all done by exploiting glitches and completely hijacking the game. And it's done in real time on real hardware. The stream is worth watching.

  • by jordigh on 1/13/16, 7:48 PM

    A similar feat for Super Mario Bros 3. The guy used Excel to write NES assembly!

    http://tasvideos.org/4961S.html