How Castlevania Became a Broken Speedrun

[@SBDWolf]

I'm personally very happy that this game has an ACE that also happens to be RTA viable. It's not the kind of thing that's generally particularly interesting to grind runs for, but I don't think that's the point of this kind of exploit. I just find it extremely cool that something like this is possible, that the game has developed to such a point that this exists. To me, that's wonderful. I had a lot of fun finding this exploit. It was a very difficult puzzle to piece together and it took a few days to get it to even work after beginning my recent investigation, but seeing it become possible and then human-viable was gratifying in a very unique way. Thanks for taking up interesting in this neat little development to Castlevania, Storster! You were fantastic to work with.

[@furiousbr]

Congrats SBD! This is awesome, also made me feel like when it happened to SMW, it's so good...

[@SBDWolf]

​@@furiousbrThank you very much Furious!

[@ntma]

GG again, boss! just saw the Karl Jobst video on this and found this one. I knew you were a wizard, but damn this was complicated

[@SBDWolf]

@@ntma haha thank you!

[@ntma]

@@SBDWolf yw! thanks for the runs

[@universalperson]

This is like a weird sequel to Summoning Salt's video

[@paulnewton2284]

I don't get why so many people are hostile to the idea of a credits warp. As far as I know, every game that has an ACE credits warp basically immediately segregates that trick into a new category, so it's not like the former Any% routes vanish when an ACE credits warp is found. And for this one in particular, there's still a decent amount of standard gameplay.

[@anonymoose2474]

Credits warps can be annoying when people invalidate "slower" categories. Look at Pokemon "beatable in 0:00". They're also both really unfun to play and watch. Like you said, this one has a lot of standard gameplay though, I think this one is interesting

[@CassiusStelar]

​@@anonymoose2474huh? Where are you hanging out in the internet where people make fun of someone that doesn't do the credits warp?

[@anonymoose2474]

@@CassiusStelar everywhere. People generally are attracted to the faster category. People look at Pokemon and say it's beatable in 0:00

[@CassiusStelar]

@@anonymoose2474 i have never heard anyone ever say that, only the opposite. "You shouldn't be using glitches in a speedrun, oh it's disrespectful to beat Ocarina of Time in 4 minutes through the Smash Bros Demo, you aren't taking your time and having fun and playing the right way"

[@anonymoose2474]

@@CassiusStelar yeah I have heard that too. Everyone either wants fastest or 100% though. It's the middle categories which get no attention

[@dr4gonblitz]

Fantastic vid and I am so happy that there are people documenting huge gaming achievements like this

[@twipplo]

you’re one of those people who are able to make interesting videos on any game, including games i have no interest in, and i love that, if there’s a video and it’s by you, then i know it’s gonna be fun to watch

[@mageius]

Most likely this will become its own category. But it's amazing to see something like this be found in such a classic game.

[@Matthew6418]

Was about to comment this. The old speedruns wont be obsolete.

[@piratebear3126]

Pokemon glitch explanations were my gateway into following speedrunning, so I always am excited when another game gets the ability to just write code that says you win. Reminds me a lot of the Pokemon Gold and Silver’s coin case ACE glitch.

[@LunaticJ]

I bet Jeremy can pull this off

[@SpitefulAZ]

I bet Todd Rodgers will do it first. 😅😂

[@Opry99er]

Silly. Todd Rogers accomplished this feat in 1983

[@gameglitchguyg3559]

I was essentially gonna comment the same thing 😂

[@Redhotsmasher]

By starting the game in second gear. :P

[@potassiumfeldspar]

Lovely video. The way you explain things is very clear, and after your videos I end up understanding more about game code.

[@n1t_]

Another completely nerdy speed run explained? Heck yeah

[@k.s.nichols4060]

I know precious little about programming and I am old, so I love NES games, but I love watching these kinds of videos. Sadly, I'll never play Castlevania again.

[@fahkyew7776]

@@k.s.nichols4060 Why not?

[@BananaGatorProds]

2:25 Absolutely missed opportunity for the creators to call it NESQuick

[@SerranoSalazar]

Underrated comment

[@grandmastermario3695]

I just beat soul caliber 2 well blindfolded in under 1 minute IGT

[@StandUpino]

beautiful commentary video!! I really enjoyed it thanks!!

[@Bowowze]

i think this needed more proper in depth explanations as to what was happening and how it was performed. i couldnt really understand how anything was actually executed.

[@OvercookedOctopusFeet]

I am always in awe at the genius levels of dedication and ingenuity 'speedrunners' possess. I'm a player that gets extremely irritated when a game throws a 'timed section' at me, so the idea of trying to play quickly makes absolutely no sense to me. But still, the superhuman skills of speedrunners blows my mind 🤯

[@1stCallipostle]

I'm gonna be honest chief. I'm walking out of this still very much unsure of how it's actually performed

[@charlottecorday8494]

Oh he doesn't play for the Kansas City Chiefs

[@headman82]

This kinda reminds me of Metroid, where you use door jumping to get in glitchy rooms.

[@universalperson]

@@headman82 A lot of old games were made with duct tape, chewing gum, and little to no error checking...because there just wasn't the memory for it. Therefore a lot of these old games have glitches where you go out of bounds in some way and then the game reads some piece of code as level data, producing bizarre effects.

[@Hau5test]

Speedrunning is insanely cool

[@FatalVisionTV]

I think the best I've ever done in castlevania is like 14 minutes and change without using glitching but once I started seeing 10 minute times, I kinda fell down the whole speedrunning rabbit hole. It's seriously fascinating that this stuff exists and how much has been discovered. Makes you wonder what HASN"T been found yet.

[@troyheymanwhatsup2996]

Somehow, Palpatine has returned

[@pi20p]

i was not ready for that voice change

[@AxelAlexK]

Super interesting. This is probably my favorite NES game and it's crazy interesting how deep people have dove into the game.

[@kohl1999]

I was in grade school when the NES came out and have really fond memories of Castlevania, Metroid and Kid Icarus. I have to hand it to these speed runners; none of us kids back then would have thought to do such odd things in the game; we basically played them in a very straightforward manner. I think the fanciest I ever got was using the hit bump in Castlevania to get knocked up and skip areas.

[@FatalVisionTV]

That's about the extent of all I know how to do myself. I get people telling me all the time to do critical hits and bat bumps and it'll knock my time down by minutes. I'm pushing old fart territory, so I'm just... WTF are you talking about? lol

[@Typical.Anomaly]

Save data on Castlevania? Is that an FDS thing only?

[@bigbangbot-SuperSqank]

Yes. It was removed in other versions to cut costs.

[@2ndBreakfassst]

Interesting video, well done! You quickly glossed over "using a modified file name to trick the game into thinking the player is perform up + down inputs". Im curious if you can elaborate on that, as it seems to be a cornerstone of the setup.

[@grandmastermario3695]

Sbd wolf is awesome hes ran so many games

[@gamesmasteruploader4863]

Storster your videos are always fantastic, thank you

[@gamevidsnstuff5805]

That is seriously crazy.

[@kfin45]

Nice job

[@thesuperjacobshow8151]

The travesty is that this video is twice as long as the speedrun.

[@shawnio]

I have to say, sometimes I feel like alot of the time I spent online was a waste, videos like this sustain me. this was cool

[@floating__eye]

Jokes on you - I never take off my thinking cap

[@hitmangfx7162]

Cookie Monster approves this run

[@kilroy987]

Here's a really long video explaining how the speedrun was cut down so far.

[@Akuretaki_Nikolay]

Gg's !

[@fzig16]

Does anyone knows what kind of filter/palette was used on the snes lion's king gameplay at 7:06 ? It looks awesome, even better than original hardware on a good crt.

[@SBDWolf]

I don't recall using a particular filter or palette. This was on an original Super Famicom using S-Video, through a Retrotink 2x, and into a $20 hdmi capture card. Might've messed around with the saturation/contrast/brightness/gamma etc. slightly.

[@navyman4]

YAY i found another speedrun channel

[@Scrimsion]

I love warping all space time and reality in my speedruns

[@sylleryum]

Very good

[@ijhtw]

I'm a simple gal, Storster posts and I watch ❤

[@marinamoraes6174]

I bet next someone can do a Battletoads ACE /j

[@daveyjones7391]

I’d be here for it! Loved that game as a kid!

[@eessndjd]

It already existed before this comment lol

[@jsbmx2039]

I kinda understood this

[@NotBroihon]

5:55 🤓 that's actually still called an overflow. Underflows are issues with floating point precision. Nitpick over. Great and interesting video!

[@SBDWolf]

I was the one who called it that and that ultimately made that get into the script. Seems like wikipedia supports what you said. However I feel like I've generally heard the term underflow being used whenever a number wraps around from its minumum possible value to its maximum. I wonder if that usage is actually common or if it's just my impression. Well, TIL.

[@NotBroihon]

​@@SBDWolf again, no shade! It's a common "mistake". I'm just a 🤓 a**hole with a reverse engineering background. The term "integer underflow" is only incorrect from a technical point of view because an underflow by definition is just something different. However, everyone knows what you mean so it's really a non issue.

[@SBDWolf]

@@NotBroihon Yeah I get that. Thanks for the tidbit!

[@TheBeethooven]

Great video as always Sis ❤

[@jmtradbr]

Soon enough all any% games will be like this

[@Jma952]

Yeah, it’s kinda lame too :/

[@eessndjd]

Oh HECK yeah! I'm a sucker for credits warps

[@2funnyrockrs]

I love the videos ❤️

[@Controllerhead]

Castlevania credits warp! Amazing! Another classic goes down. Hats off to all of the people who hunted and performed this. Incredible work! If i had to guess, the Famicom Disk System runs games from RAM in the same address space that cartridges run code from ROM so it has alot more viable RAM area to work with.

[@LordOfCrabz]

Billy Mitchell did it faster! He is the Video Game Player of the Century after all!

[@johnbcardin]

Wait… is Tas pronounced “TAS” or is it pronounced “TAS”?

[@tylerwebb2495]

It’s pronounced gif

[@musicgardener2142]

the rACE is over. Great! :)

[@Nirakolov]

I wonder if the scroll glitch works in 8 Eyes

[@stormlord1984]

I hate major skips in speedruns. Bypassing part of the stage? Cool. Bypassing whole stages? It's not fancy and it's just boring. When a game speedrun moves to major skips, it's a dead speedrun for me. That said, the quest to find the hack, sbdwolf's research and attempts, and the video themselves are superb. Extremely interesting. Fantastic work and video from both!

[@wilthomas]

it sucks but they have no glitch/no warp categories.

[@iancormier7550]

There are multiple categories to all kinds of games. Just because the person you watch grind doesn't do it, doesn't mean it's not there.

[@songsan807]

Even as a Castlevania fan I don't think I would try this hack. I don't think the original programmers of this game foresee the Internet, TAS, and emulators to jump to the credits. This was a time where once you launch the game, there are no updates or bug fixes. Still a masterpiece after so many decades.

[@joepassineau240]

heck yeah

[@SpitefulAZ]

What are TAS again

[@SushiElemental]

Thanks for 111 videos! Here's to the next 111! 🥳🎉

[@dantedeloden]

why does it say rondo of blood on the Gaming tab part, at first i was like wait this isnt cv1? not that im opposed to rondo of blood, ive watched every speedrun and tas of every game probably from nes to n64. i was just more curious that CV1 was the ACE execution run. glad it was lol

[@Storster]

Think it may have flagged that title just cause of the music track from that title in the video, i’ll see if i can switch it lol. Thanks for pointing that out

[@dantedeloden]

@@Storster no problem thanks for the video. loved it lol

[@nat_cat2923]

fuck yeah

[@mightywhiskas3880]

Just use a game genie at this point lol

[@kiml4491]

Juicy speedrunning content to procrastinate to? Dont mind if I do!

[@shadorage31]

🦧

[@Storster]

🦧

[@eessndjd]

🦧

[@modestMismagius105]

🦧

[@KornPop96]

And I just got my PB down to 18 minutes 😢

[@robinswiththestuds]

Hell yeaaaa

[@HappyMealBieber]

*_:/_*

[@condorman6293]

1.25x playback speed for normal human speech speed.

[@TaylorSwiftSimp]

I think u have adhd bud

[@condorman6293]

@@TaylorSwiftSimp My doctor and I have been trying to figure it out. Appreciate your diagnosis. I'll let him know.

[@patritchie1317]

She's been working on her voice, talking slowly helps with that.

[@condorman6293]

@@patritchie1317 Thanks for the context. The videos would benefit greatly from editing the speech audio track to 125% before uploading.

[@katepuddings2]

wowie!

[@rabidwallaby84]

Credit Warp? ZZzzzzZzzzZ Kudos to those that figured it out...but man does it make for a boring watch.

[@yordansic]

Correction: TAS stands for “Tool Assisted Superplay”, *not* “Speedrun”. Way too many people get this wrong.

[@MishKoz]

It's both.

[@my_wheelhouse]

Comment number 69

[@EveryDooDarnDiddlyDay]

Meh, credits warp isnt actually playing the game. Wish this type of thing would die.

[@eessndjd]

The no major glitches category:

[@Krakorin]

"Wish they play the way I want 😭😭"

[@iancormier7550]

Watch other categories then you're doing it to yourself.

[@TaylorSwiftSimp]

Frick yea

[@SunsetBear]

no way is that taylor from mario 64 carpetless twitter posts

[@TaylorSwiftSimp]

Yuhh