How People Reprogram Games...with a CONTROLLER

Game glitches can be a lot of fun, but some have taken it so far that they're able to fully control the game...and even make something new out of it!
Check out my Twitter, where I post stuff: / glitchphd
Timestamps:
Credits: Produced, Edited, Scripted and Commentated by GlitchDoctor.
FURiOUS - SMW 0 Exit WR: • Super Mario World - 0 ...
AGDQ 2014 "Total Control": • AGDQ 2014 - TASBot pla...
AGDQ 2015 "Mystery Game": • TASbot plays a mystery...
SGDQ 2022 Ocarina of Time TAS: • Ocarina of Time TAS by...
Ocarina of Time ACE Setup (RTA Viable): • Ocarina of Time - Koki...
Kokiri Forest ACE Setup Explained: • Reach the Credits from...
Special Thanks:
FURiOUS
Glitchesandstuff
JPN100NSR
Masterjun
MrCheeze
NatalyaHasDied
nathanisbored
p4plus2
Retro Game Mechanics Explained

[@WhaIHuhWhatDoYouMean]

Something I used to think about as a kid was "I bet if I mash enough buttons fast enough I'll eventually find some obscure exploit that will let me do literally anything" and i am OVERJOYED that that is in fact true.

[@Micha-Hil]

yeah but you had to mash em like really REALLY fuckin fast...

[@yohhh6715]

Funny enough that's how I found out a bunch of bugs in a Sonic fangame today lol

[@thiesenf]

I had such thoughts about arcade games

[@ashtonvalentine7496]

I do that to this day Hmm this wall seems glitchy let my ram, jump, and crouch randomly into it!

[@dylanwhite123]

Who here spammed A when catching a pokemon cuz they felt like it would give you a better chance? 😂

[@alexstuf3]

"Whats your game engine?" super mario world

[@kab43]

"What's your game engine?" Godot "Ok"

[@alexstuf3]

@@kab43 anti-humor

[@RendumLiptang]

@@kab43Godot is pretty bad ngl

[@CyanDumBell_MC]

​@@RendumLiptangfor 3D, yes but 2D games, it is perfect.

[@kab43]

@@RendumLiptang Nuh uh

[@Micha-Hil]

Super Mario World was really the first Maker-type game, they just really needed to step it up with accessibility

[@randomgamer-te8op]

super mario bros 3 for the NES was up there too kinda

[@Jarran2R]

@@randomgamer-te8opeven smb1

[@randomgamer-te8op]

@@Jarran2R not a lot of ACE in smb1 but yea

[@NullScar]

I used arbitrary code to move Mario forwards in smb1 by closing my eyes and holding my controller upside down. ​@@randomgamer-te8op

[@Sauraen]

Thanks for featuring Triforce%! And yeah, the other comments about the editing quality are right. For example, you have a two-second zoom-out from the room transition in Kokiri Forest. You had to set up the OoT decomp on your computer to get the assets, learn enough fast64 to import the scene into Blender, hide the collision mesh, fix the Z fighting on the paths, set up some basic lighting, animate the camera fly, and render it. And that's for a random two second shot!

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Haha thank you! 😄 Actually it wasn't quite that complicated, I used the no clip site and lined it up with the shot from the recording. Thank you for watching! 😁

[@Sauraen]

@@OfficialGlitchDoctor I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone made a website with level viewers for popular 3D games... Oh well!

[@ZeroFanfare]

Lmfao at the 90+ people that agreed with this.

[@kab43]

@@ZeroFanfare ?

[@SegmentW]

​@@OfficialGlitchDoctor + 2 for honesty This video still has great editing. Thank you for all of your work creating the video.

[@shloobington]

9:13 love how recognizable Carl is, i can practically hear him laughing lol

[@isaiahisaiahisaiah1]

so glad I wasn't the only one who noticed him lmaoo

[@Patralgan]

I did too. He's a treasure.

[@blakegriplingph]

The lengths fans take with Nintendo's games is beyond fascinating. Unfortunately, all the Big N did is to view such passion projects as utter heresy and unfairly tar them as "piracy".

[@JDJG3493]

And so called "true nintendo fans like when these are removed". The real fans critique the bad and good of nintendo. Making their own things to take the games to the extreme.

[@pyromancer3028]

@@JDJG3493 spit yo fax my brotha

[@blakegriplingph]

@@JDJG3493 If you're a real fan of something, you have to learn how to criticise it for all its faults.

[@BurgerKingHarkinian]

The big N-word

[@KeinNiemand]

If a modern game had an arbitary code execution bug it would be called a security vunarablity.

[@ZeroFanfare]

Well, you can play these games on emulators and play co-op, so that’s still a true statement.

[@zekiz774]

Well yeah. Because it is. That's also basically how the 3DS and WII U got hacked. It's actually pretty cool

[@eggsbox]

ACE has _always_ been considered a security vulnerability by infosec and has a _long_ history of being used maliciously

[@wibs0n68]

Because it is lol

[@charliepie1212]

God forbid we find out we're in the matrix, these folk would turn reality to Dig Dug.

[@jtown2909]

15:41 ayyyy it’s me! extremely good video. the explanations, visuals and examples were all spot on. nice job!

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Thank you!! 😄 I'm grateful to have the help from MrCheeze and p4plus2 among many others who helped me understand all of this. Been wanting to understand this process for a while.

[@antiRuka]

I think youtube algorithm was heavily improved in 2024, best time to start having a KZbin channel with just good content.

[@LongueQueueChat3]

youtube algorithm? you mean the thing that puts shitty recommendations in *search* pages of channels that i have blocked?

[@hossammoah]

I'm actually surprised at how well edited this is for a small channel!

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Thank you very much! 😄

[@americachinapee]

yeah good job! i thought this was from a big youtube channel. keep it up! as long as you dont get burnt out...

[@Stormyyyy...]

well how do you think the big channels started?

[@G_Game_MII]

"small"

[@G_Game_MII]

"small"☠️☠️☠️

[@catfree]

Thank you for not ruining this video by turning it into a 30+ minute long circle talking session with per-word subtitles

[@polocatfan]

why are we being dicks to disabled people?

[@lonelystarslibrary9326]

What do you mean?

[@DGFTardin]

​@@lonelystarslibrary9326 I think they meant "30 seconds to a minute long" I.E. a shorts, otherwise I don't understand either

[@stunnerr]

​@@DGFTardinI think op meant 30+ videos that are minute long, so yeah, 30+ shorts

[@cst1229]

@@stunnerr I think op meant a single over 30 minutes long video.

[@ElectricDiamond360]

“1000 points to GlitchDoctor” - Drew Carey, probably

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

I've been binge watching Whose Line clips because of this. Hadn't seen the show in so long. 😂

[@professorparabeetle]

I've been a fan of ACE for a long time so I'm happy to see someone cover this.

[@dietpebsi]

I'll never be able to escape Ocarina of time ACE

[@LiEnby]

What do you MEAN the n64 can remder that..? And like WELL??

[@Dwarg91]

OOT Ace even affects games on later consoles!

[@LottolDoYt]

they made mario maker in 1990 and no one noticed

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Funny how literally one of the ACE showcases I didn't mention in this video is actually like Mario Maker but in SMW. 😅

[@Patralgan]

The Triforce% segment was so incredibly well done that it hit all the right notes in me as a Zelda fan so I was left helplessly emotional and I had rarely cried so much. It was truly a work of art.

[@davidsensei8672]

The speedrunning and TAS community never cease to amaze me

[@Supersayainpikmin]

I saw the Triforce% a few days after it happened online, and had no idea what was happening or the significance, now that I know I'm honestly pretty amazed.

[@legofan431]

This is a very well researched and documented video, I really enjoyed it. Bonus thanks for including the original GDQ videos in your description!

[@Adam-lk2lp]

Man this is well edited, hope you'll make it!

[@furiousbr]

Really awesome video about ACE, I love it! Great job GlitchDoctor

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Thank you!! 😁

[@JamesR624]

It's so surreal hearing about raocow outside of his community or the talkhaus.

[@CreeperShorts]

That was a really good video man! I really liked the in-depth explanation about SMW!

[@FirstLast-oe2jm]

actually taught me a fair bit about this, I knew this kind of stuff was possible but never knew much about it. Great video!

[@boredyoutubeuser]

Nah but to be honest this video was very bittersweet, especially the ending with all the messages and custom models and music playing....

[@HOWLWOLF]

I'm highly impressed with the quality of your videos for such a small channel. I have a feeling you're gonna blow up. Remember us when you're thousands of subscribers into your KZbin career :)

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Thank you very much! 😄 I really do appreciate it. I'm just enjoying the ride talking about stuff I find cool, and I'm grateful for everyone watching. 🙂

[@SysOpQueen]

very nice video, really good information laid out in a easy to understand way. good work!

[@jovin3514]

Your editing skills have gotten so good. Enjoyed the video!

[@WolfayBlackmoon]

This my style of videos. I'm pleased that it showd up!

[@StropusDeveloper]

Time to port my games to ocarina of time

[@not-a-hardcore-gamer2555]

That stuff at the end was ABSOLUTELY bonkers!

[@ecernosoft3096]

"Program a video game?? Pfft. That's too easy. I programmed a video game IN A VIDEOGAME." - these absolute legends

[@CosyConnoisseur]

Fascinating. Thanks for making this video!

[@jennasloan396]

Some people think computers are smart, but really they're just rocks that humans tricked into doing math. As such computers only do exactly what they're told to, regardless if what they do is what the developers intended. That said, computers were much more limited back in the day, in both processing power and memory, so developers often had to cut corners to get it to work adequately, neglecting checks, causing potential for unintended behavior. Conversely, including a lot of checks to make sure those unintended behaviors don't happen requires more computing power and more memory, which were both very limited back in the day. All that said, ACE is considered a major security vulnerability, so be very careful when attempting it yourself, as one wrong move could brick your system, or worse.

[@dishwater63]

Thanks, algorithm. These type of videos are my kinda jam.

[@itryen7632]

1:31 CAT PLANEEEEEET

[@glitchy_weasel]

ACE on the NES: 😎 ☀️ ACE on Windows: ☠️ 🔥

[@damiencouturee6240]

Awesome video! I kinda already understood ACE but Ill still watch any video about it cause its so damn cool lol. It doesnt take much to make me happy lol, give me any kind of speedrun breakdown and Ill be there. Only thing I could say about this video is I wish it was longer lol, this could have been 4-5 hours and I just woulda thought "hell yeah this is what Im doing today" lol.

[@idnxme]

Realy Nice good video! Keep the quality up and you make it one day

[@avalonstudios171]

i never even thought about if ACE would we a thing in old games, but man that is the coolest thing I've ever seen

[@ChristOurLife89]

This is a seriously underrated video!

[@Rilch]

Wow great video dude! Earned yourself a new sub :) 10k soon! :D

[@BraxtonMeyer]

Hi @glitchdoctor. TAS is a recurisve acronym. it stands for TAS assisted speedrun.

[@fatalwaffle1715]

Awesome Video Bro!!

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Thank you! 😄 Hope it was understandable. 😅

[@fatalwaffle1715]

No problem. It was.

[@bloodmoonangel8925]

This is by far beyond jaw dropping. Just imagine, in the future, with better tools and more understanding of technology, what future generations will be able to accomplish using similar methods with current day games? Like turning Ace Combat 7 into a text-based dungeon crawler, or turning Cyberpunk into a flight simulator. Damn.

[@rompevuevitos222]

Nowadays we can just mod the game. Cartridges where not really moddable without electrical engineering knowledge and the actual physical tools to modify it. New games have many anti-cheat techniques built in by default as well, that make ACE unreliable. A SNES game would always behave the exact same way with the same exact inputs down to the memory level, newer games are constantly swapping values around at random for the sake of it, making achieving an ACE be near impossible to reproduce.

[@true_]

I created the "TASBot" hardware for SNES shown at AGDQ 2014 and in this video. The original NES / SNES "TASBot" was not a Raspberry Pi. It could be hooked up to one, but was not dependent on one. The board contained a PIC32MX microcontroller and some diode level shifting to interface with the SNES. The MCU controlled the 4 data lines in response to clock and latch signals. A computer connected to and powered the board with USB, and fed the MCU an input stream. The MCU would buffer several inputs (don't remember exactly how many) for 8 total controllers - this run was dual multitap so we could say we did it with 8 controllers, though for technical reasons it's actually faster with just 4... The white PCB that ROB is holding with the flashing LED is the device I designed and made. Masterjun had to modify the run shown at the event due to buffering and timing limitations with my device. This was new territory for us and I was new to embedded hardware at the time. It was fun debugging this, and cool to be the first person other than Masterjun to see this run =) I received no credit nor mention at the event despite doing the hardware, firmware, and loader software. If you have questions about the device, I can try to remember and answer them.

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Wow! Right, it's weird though cause during the research for the video the Raspberry Pi thing was something that was mentioned online, and how the early model was nicknamed a "ROBberry Pi". I suppose a lot of that could have been wrong. Interesting though! Thank you for the info! 🙂

[@true_]

@@OfficialGlitchDoctorYou aren’t wrong. That name was discussed but I thought it was pretty bad, lol. Not only does it sound bad, as stated before a Raspberry Pi wasn’t necessary. That name was disregarded fairly quickly. TASBot was used in the end to refer to any replay board mounted on ROB.

[@proxyhasnosleep]

amazing video!

[@Kat21]

Got recommended this right after watching Hunter R's video on ACE yesterday. Pretty cool to see another video just like it

[@howardfairbanks8337]

you deserve more subs. subscribed!

[@LucasLealDev]

You summoned the Brazil guys. Brace yourself.

[@Lamentomori]

The reason why controller input is read is because when you move your character or interact with anything hexadecimal addresses are modified, when you overflow these buffers you can cause it to read bad code but if you do specific things the code is different. That's how they write the pay load they by doing specific actions and then trigger it by overloading a buffer and having it read the payload that was created by doing the weird things it was slowly storing that data in a place in memory that you can read to later.

[@robuxyyyyyyyyyy4708]

9:53 Also, killing the fake bowsers spawned a living enemy

[@dukemagus]

I'd love to see how people that did bug testing and QA for the game react to these feats

[@Zeitfuchs]

I didnt understand most stuff but nice video! these people are insane

[@jaim3_mm]

you got one new fan

[@BloodDragooner]

great video!!

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Thank you! 🙂

[@bpw]

Still holding my hope for you recreating the old glitch videos, but I still like these new ones.

[@brokovnik]

The Super Snake Bros and Pongio are just awesome

[@MossTGF]

Some peoples brains just work differently, I cannot fathom how they were able to come up with these methods.

[@gamingwithahandicapreviews]

Glitch doctor can you do a video on Wind Waker or Tak and the Power of Juju both on GameCube? Both those games have awesome glitches/speed run strategies

[@OfficialGlitchDoctor]

Hmmm so I will admit, I haven't really played either of those. (I have Wind Waker HD on Wii U and didn't play much of it.) Probably should go through the Zelda games I got and figure something out from there. 🤔

[@gamingwithahandicapreviews]

@@OfficialGlitchDoctor you should! Zelda is great! And for the Tak and the Power of Juju trilogy on GameCube (Tak and the Power of Juju Tak 2 the Staff of Dreams and Tak the Great Juju Challenge) all three are amazing 3D platformers! And the third game was built for speed running so it’s incredible to see in action! Give them a shot man! :) your awesome!

[@sanstheyoutuber]

I find it funny how most speed run tactic is "do 30 pointless things to make those pointless things make you spontaneously win because code did a goofy"

[@bon7029]

My brain melted trying to comprehend this.

[@reimuhakurei3311]

Raocow mentioned!

[@BigBadRanch]

groovy dude!

[@Jorasaurus]

Similar to how I found out you can have (basically) infinite slow motion time in Skyrim with the shield perk that slows down time during enemy power attacks. Simply mash the shield button as it's happening and sometimes it works. Entering a building, waiting, doing anything that loads something deactivates it. I didn't explore it much because I was 15

[@polygon121]

I like to imagine that the SMW Snake Glitch was actually an easter egg left from a dev working on the orginal game.

[@a3jan]

Minecraft has a lot of this with wierd chunk loading and stuff. People have been able to exploit the rng from the fortune enchant and like what mobs come out of a portal to get insane levels of loot.

[@greenerell484]

9:09 'at the time' this is still amazing

[@dinosaurmusic12]

Keep it up!

[@ad8012]

This is insane

[@FMGT97]

That's insane. Great.

[@davpro1792]

5:20 me understands everything perfectly 5:29 the video creator saying otherwise lol

[@AntiJewluminatiDwarf]

this will never not fascinate me, closest thing to real magic to me

[@lonely_0fficial]

dude, image waking up in a virtual world where you're trapped in it, and you find a glitch where you can hack the whole world from it, and eventually get out from it.

[@Toleich]

This is how I know we're not living in a simulation. Someone would have broken it already.

[@UltimatePerfection]

I always wanted to break open joycons or the pro controller, solder some wires into the button contacts and use it as a TAS tool. But I don't have enough skill to do it without breaking Switch, the controller or the rasppi/arduino I'd be using for the TAS. And I don't have $$$ to experiment.

[@MrRorosao]

What these guys do with old consoles make Nintendo be in shame, they would never achieve something like this

[@Nixitur]

Wait, what the heck, raocow is the source of the SMW glitch that allows ACE? Been watching that guy for over a decade, that is _wild._

[@boredyoutubeuser]

My reaction to that information: 5:30 😟

[@FennecTECH]

It’s not similar to how a hacker would break into a system. It is the exact process by which hackers break into computers. It is literally the same thing as standard exploitation / hacking.

[@gdplayer1035]

underrated

[@Fifi-Shackleford]

who need romhacking when we can have romhacking 2

[@someoneelse1534]

"It wouldn't run the same code that an active Rock would" Bro, why are you rocks running code? 😂

[@ribbonduckling1314]

A.C.E. is one of my favorite things of all time.

[@deathbob091]

colin mockery as the controller and ryan styles as the cartridge was well played youtube editor person

[@tonelemoan]

Genius!

[@TheFusionWarrior]

All this was accelerated ahead of schedule because raocow played the VIP series.

[@spencerfunk6697]

so, in theory, this is possible with, anything...

[@spencerfunk6697]

I keep thinking what if causally glitch into god mode irl

[@RoxanneClimber]

Now, every game is a sandbox

[@arlwiss5110]

nice. and naturally it has a sethbling clip c:

[@greenerell484]

good video

[@dOuPdMe]

I love this kind of shit with gaming

[@eiadithecoder620]

7:58 this was the first ace i discovered, and i dindn't belive it. no seriously, this was too crazy to me and i was feeling suspicious but as a programmer and decompiler i belive it... some how

[@fluf201playz]

belive

[@Larry1631]

Even with TAS this is some incredible work, Like how TF is someone playing Snake or Pong in SMW, honestly i wish i had the iq to do that😢

[@sm2d114]

This is the first video I've ever watched from you and I'm mildly disappointed that you didn't use SiivaGunner's version of the athletic theme. Because you're named Glitch Doctor.

[@So1]

Wait masterjun was into this stuff too? i knew him because he made sparta remixes back then

[@I-did-September-11th]

If you want a good example of ACE, I'ld recomend Bismuth's "SMB3 Wrong Warp Explained".

[@ChaoDee]

"Running Doom in Super Mario World"

[@notsocuteslime2297]

Shout-outs to 2 years ago me for playing Kirby superstar and randomly execute some arbitrary code to warp to marx randomly