Tag: Metriod

More NES Glitches Tested in Nintendo World Championships

We already linked to what turns out to be Part 1, back on Monday. This is Looygi Bros’ part two, nine minutes long:

Here’s our post on Part 1, and here’s a link to its video.

Looygi Bros. tends to make a series of videos on topics, so there will probably be a Part 3, and more. Instead of linking them all individually, I may wait for a bit and collect them all into one post, or maybe even add them to this post retroactively.

Here are the glitches in Part 2 listed out and explicated:

  1. Super Mario Bros, jump over the flagpole in World 1-1: Requires time-consuming setup, and useless for saving time, as the result is Mario can’t finish the level, but it does work.
  2. More invisible ladders in Donkey Kong’s Ramps level: There are more invisible ladders than the one demonstrated in Part 1, and these aren’t caught by traps! The current World Record recorded by the servers uses it, in fact, making it an essential strategy for anyone trying to beat it.
  3. Kirby Credits Warp: One of the levels in the game has a massive trick, where Kirby can get inside a wall, and if they have the Stone ability (possible to get with Mix), can crash the game, and if the Start button is pressed on the same frame as Stone activating, the NES cart jumps straight to the credits! The crash however takes the NWC software back to the selection menu, and the Start button is disabled, so this one’s impossible to do.
  4. Legend of Zelda moving through blocks: A frequently-used trick in speedruns, it’s not caught by the NWC software but there’s no place where it’s useful for saving time.
  5. Super Mario Bros. 4-2 Wrong Warp: This is an alternate way to get to the 8-7-6 Warp Zone without having to reveal the hidden blocks, then hit and climb the vine, by going down the coin pipe shortly after without scrolling the screen far enough to change the secret area destination. Seems to be impossible to make work in NWC, as the game rewinds when the vine block is scrolled off-screen.
  6. Super Mario Bros. 8-4 Wrong Warp: Done under similar conditions to the 4-2 wrong warp, this one is caught by the emulator and rewinds the trial.
  7. Surviving Timeout in Metroid’s Escape Sequence: If Samus uses the final elevator with the right timing at the end of the escape, the explosion happens, but she survives to complete her mission anyway. It’s possible in NWC, but results in the longest-possible time to complete the trial, so it’s only useful to show off.
  8. Super Mario Bros. 8-2 Bullet Bill Flagpole Animation Skip: If Mario bounces off of a low-flying Bullet Bill right at the end of 8-2, it’s possible to trigger the flagpole, but leave Mario before the block on which the pole rests. This results in him walking into it endlessly, but it triggers the level completion sequence, and means he doesn’t have to raise the flag or walk to the castle. It’s really only a slight time save, but it does work in the NWC version of the game.

Looygi Bros. Tests Glitches in Nintendo World Championships

Looygi Bros. obsessively plays various games and finds quirks, glitches and interesting facts about them. Their newest video tries out a bunch of known glitches in NES games and sees if they work in the new Nintendo World Championships speedrunning game. The result: in many, but not all, cases, Nintendo has put in code traps to make sure the games are operating as intended, and if they are set off, like if Mario goes through a wall or Link wraps around the screen, the emulator software declares Strategy Unavailable and resets the run. They tested 11 glitches in a ten-minute video, embedded here:

To summarize them:

  1. Minus World: the trap occurs when Mario tries to slide through the wall at the end of World 1-2.
  2. In Donkey Kong, it’s possible to climb down the first ladder, wrap around the screen, and end up on the girder right below the goal. They caught this one.
  3. Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) Fast Carpet: with two carpets spawned, you can travel extra fast. This one didn’t get caught, but the set-up time to use it makes its use in the challenge prohibitive.
  4. Wrapping the screen in The Legend of Zelda. This is one of my least favorite glitches honestly. Nintendo caught it, you can’t glitch around the screen horizontally nor get Link into the top-of-screen status area. (I also dislike the term “HUD” for these areas. Dammit Jim, it’s a video game not a jet fighter.)
  5. The “door jump” glitch in Metroid. This lets you use a door to get Samus inside the blocks that make up the edges of the screen, from there you can, depending on the situation, either wrap around the screen vertically or explore “secret worlds” created by interpreting random cartridge data as terrain. This one’s trapped.
  6. Super Mario 2 double jump. I didn’t know about this one! In some circumstances when you’re near an enemy, characters can jump in mid air. This one is both not trapped, and actually useful in the challenge!
  7. Super Mario 3 Fortress skip. In similar circumstances to passing through the wall in Super Mario Bros. to get to the Minus World, you can pass through a wall midway through the fortress to skip an area and go straight to the boss. This one’s trapped, probably checking for the same kind of situation as the Minus World trick.
  8. Super Mario Bros. wall jump. Not trapped, and conceivably useful in the World 8-4 completion challenge to get into the elevated pipe.
  9. Kid Icarus fortress 1 shortcut. There’s a way to glitch through a wall early in the route through the fortress that takes you almost to the end. This one is trapped, but it’s triggered, not when you get through the wall, but when you go through the room’s exit. It probably makes sure you go through all the essential rooms in order.
  10. Super Mario Bros. 2 cave skip. It’s a way to glitch through a wall so you don’t have to wait for a bomb to explode. It’s tricky but possible, you end up taking damage to get through it though.
  11. Super Mario Bros. 2 item attachment. A complex trick that lets you get items into areas where they aren’t intended to go. Technically this is untrapped and usable. In conjunction with the cave skip trick, it’s possible to kill Birdo with a Shy Guy, potentially with one throw instead of having to wait for three eggs to throw back at her. Looygi Bros was unable to get the whole trick to work in the World Championships software, but offers the possibility of it working to whoever can chain together all the necessary techniques.

I find it interesting that the tricks were disabled through traps instead of fixing their games, they seem to have enough technical know-how to know how the glitches work to check for them in the emulation layer, but maybe fixing them was deemed against the spirit of the game, or they didn’t want to risk changing the game’s essential behavior?