Smudging the game disc to make speedrunning 'SpongeBob' faster

ppncnmnp about 18 hours ago 23 commentsRead Article on inverse.com

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Dwedit•about 4 hours ago

If you put tape on cartridge pin #14 of NES Platoon (or other bad connection), the game will boot to a glitched version of the ending, thus making it a zero-second speedrun.

Pin #14 is the CPU R/W pin, and if it's not properly connected, the game will be unable to write to the MMC1 mapper to perform bank switching. Platoon happens to be programmed in a way that address 0x8000 of every bank is an entry point that will run a particular level from the game. So you boot up the game, and it tries to switch to the Title Screen bank, then jumps to 0x8000. But the bank switch fails, and instead it runs code from the first bank. It just so happens that the first bank contains the program for the ending.

If the cartridge connection improves and mapper writes start to succeed, the graphics will return to normal as it continues to run the ending.

brayhite•about 3 hours ago

I love little facts like these. Thanks for sharing (and sounding convincing enough for me to trust it lol).

loganc2342•about 4 hours ago

I’ve been following this game’s speedrun for years; I never expected to see it on the front page of HN! This post could use a (2021), because this trick was discovered years ago. For anyone interested in speedrunning, this game has some of the most insane tech I’ve seen in any game and is definitely worth checking out.

PaulStatezny•about 4 hours ago

> this game has some of the most insane tech I’ve seen in any game and is definitely worth checking out

Given the context of this forum, I'd be interested to hear more about what's so interesting about the technology!

lesam•about 4 hours ago

'tech' in speed running is a reference to "technique" rather than "technology". https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Tech

aaroninsf•about 2 hours ago

Thank you TIL

glouwbug•about 4 hours ago

How close was it technically to Jak2? I consider that the defining technical mastery of that generation

uKVZe85V•about 1 hour ago

The diagram showing where to smudge the disc looks so incredible, a kind of flower shape, no rotational origin. Seeing the video it makes more sense. All this is highly artisanal, the diagram is just a hint.

This give me an idea. Here's my smudge pattern that works better: (shows a diagram with blotches in the shape of Rick Astley singing).

psygn89•about 3 hours ago

My copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops that I bought from a rental store was corrupted in that sniper scopes didn't have the black scope silhouette when zoomed in, so essentially the whole screen just zooms in.

autoexec•about 4 hours ago

> While SHiFT insists that the method of smudging your disc will give you enough time in a lag to beat the SpongeBob game, he adds a clear caveat that it's not worth the risk of permanently damaging your game or original Xbox console

How would reading a scratched/dirty disc permanently damage a console? That seems like a very bad issue for a device expected to read frequently swapped discs.

wk_end•about 2 hours ago

There's a belief in certain corners of the gaming community (and maybe other communities that deal with optical discs) that if the disc drive's laser has to "try hard" to read a disc it will eventually "burn out". Not sure if this is backed up by any actual data or facts - it sounds plausible to me that a laser might dynamically adjust its power level as needed, and that over time that might be bad for it; but it also sounds a bit like people might be anthropomorphizing the laser or something.

wildzzz•about 3 hours ago

This article is hard to read, it seems to repeat itself constantly and expands on nothing. The main point is that smudging the disc can help with performing certain glitches while the console is trying to run error correction but you could potentially scratch your disc to an unusable state if you are too liberal with the smudging. I'm pretty sure I've seen this same topic on HN before so this article isn't exactly reporting on anything new.

postexitus•about 3 hours ago

Well - ketchup on your disc may drip on the the laser diode - don't you think it's hard to defend against? maybe they need lens wipers against ketchup on the disc issue.

sidewndr46•about 2 hours ago

there are a bunch of videos on youtube explaining it. The belief is the game streams data from the disc. Smudges cause read errors on some laser passes that don't fail to read entirely. The effective throughput goes down. This causes the games overall processing of each iteration to somehow be impacted, leading to the behavior the speedrunners use to save time.

thatguy0900•about 3 hours ago

The disc's spin pretty fast, I could see someone smudging the disc too heavily with a substance that might fling off

sumtechguy•about 2 hours ago

On some systems/drives if it detects an error that is big enough it will reset the carriage. You can here it reading and rescrubbing over and over. That can cause the carriage motor to overwork and burn out. Not sure of this system does that or not. But that would be my guess.

Orangeair•about 2 hours ago

[2021]

bitwize•about 5 hours ago

I was telling a friend about a game I'm working on which has "hacking mechanics".

Him: So, have you ever thought about basing the hacking mechanics on Hyrum's Law?

Me: ...No, but I'm sure that if it ever develops a speedrunning community, they will do just that!

rtkwe•about 4 hours ago

I'm not clear on what that would even look like as a mechanic related to hacking?

wildzzz•about 3 hours ago

Intentionally sloppy code, like leaving exploits in the game. Like if perform some action in a very specific way, you trigger an overflow that unlocks an item that's otherwise very difficult or impossible to obtain. So rather than these exploits breaking you out of the intended flow of the game, it's a real game mechanic. Like having that unobtainable item unlocks a story path that changes the ending. I guess it's more like an Easter egg but it relies on typical game glitching techniques rather than extensive exploration.

In Halo 2, there was a level where if you damaged a banshee in a specific way and made it follow you down a tunnel, you could hijack it at the exact moment when a new level loaded at the end of the tunnel (otherwise you couldn't use it). Then you could fly up to the top of the level and find a modified weapon that was incredibly powerful (scarab gun). There was another secret weapon (energy sword) you could obtain by performing typical boundary breaking moves and walking on invisible walls. Normally, you'd be doing this to skip combat but the game was also rewarding you for it.

sumtechguy•about 2 hours ago

There is one game called 'hack n slash' on steam. You manipulate the 'global vars' to win the game. There is even one point where the game has you open up its data files and change things. Interesting mechanic.

rtkwe•about 3 hours ago

I was thinking more about how Hyrum's Law specifically would be an intentional mechanic in the hacking gameplay I guess rather than it being a way of labelling the glitchy behavior speed run categories run on I guess.