Looking Back at Gaming Disasters to Make the Ultimate Console Malware | Tech Rules

[@TechRules]

Thanks again to Morning Brew for sponsoring this video! Click the link to sign up now and get useful, interesting information delivered straight to you daily! cen.yt/mbtechrules Hey everyone! As you can probably tell, we're trying something different here! This is a format idea I've had for a while; it allows me to make videos on broad topics like the 3DS video without spending half a year editing it. Since it was my first time trying it, there are some hiccups here and there, particularly some motion tracking weirdness and audio oddities. (The audio popping in particular gets really bad for a sec about halfway through the video, but it clears pretty quickly.) These issues have already been fixed on my end for future installments. That is, if this format is received well by you all. Feedback would be highly appreciated! I almost always have to cut my videos down to make them a more reasonable length and less rambly, but this one probably received the most cuts of any video I've ever done. There were some parts I was sad to part with, so perhaps I'll share some of the cuts on my community tab. I'm almost certainly going to share the extended portion of the memory card bit, because its removal actually takes a bit of context away from the video. Watchability comes first, though. Hope you enjoy, looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say!! Also, if you hear the music jump for a second, it's because one of my visuals failed to render and created a terrifying image instead. I removed it last minute, I literally noticed it just now. Trims on KZbin take a bit to process, so if you're watching this just as it went up and saw something creepy looking around 33 minutes in...my bad. EDIT: To clarify for some concerned comments: This isn't the standard from now on! We're still doing the old formula for future videos, this was just a test for topics that are difficult to provide relevant footage for every once in a while. However, I see the remarks about more visuals and less of a static background. I agree, I'll make sure to work that out if we ever do this again!

[@GameFrostYT]

Nice sponsor!

[@blower5]

every copy of tech rules is personalized

[@lextatertotsfromhell7673]

Directors cut when???

[@relt_]

what was it

[@relt_]

oh, i saw it. couldnt you just blur it in the youtube editor?

[@ThereIsAnExtension2UndoHandles]

I'm sorry, Tech Rules, but trying to convince your particular audience that Chronotrigger & Knuckles wouldn't sell a million copies is a losing battle.

[@ohnohwgn]

i'd buy it.

[@viviaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan]

Anything & knuckles would be a smash hit.

[@RisingRevengeance]

I'd fucking love that

[@kilerkane]

Same for the hat tbf, FFXIV players would buy that up.

[@lostgem8225]

I would buy half million singlehandedly that's sounds fucking incredible

[@mistertwister3241]

An interesting example of the "wiping saves on early CD systems" style malware you mentioned actually, in a sense, did exist in a retail game. The Horde on 3DO needed a ton of room for its save files, and in order to get that, it was intentionally programmed to delete all other saves on your 3DO's internal memory without asking for your permission. This wasn't a homebrew or something an average, unsuspecting consumer wouldn't run the risk of encountering either, the game was published by EA.

[@hesterfranks9716]

Yes!! Thank you!! I wanted to say this as well but I couldn't remember the name of the game

[@renakunisaki]

Did EA also sell a premium storage device?

[@mailcs06]

Of course it was published by EA, What else did I expect?

[@sus6221]

Sigma EA doesn't care about your progress

[@epicninjacakez6716]

Who else but EA

[@sirpikapika1129]

My favorite part about the WoW corrupted blood incident is that it was studied by epidemiologists to learn how people react to a deadly disease

[@Misack8]

And some people like to spread it! Who would have thought!

[@222o-u3t]

@@Misack8 Well well, if it isn't the "if I'm going down, you're all coming with me" mindset

[@isaacargesmith8217]

Its a little scary how weirdly similar some of the stuff that happened are to like what happened now. Like its very not 1 to 1 but still its interesting how there were some similarities.

[@MGlBlaze]

​@@isaacargesmith8217 It might not be 1:1 but it was surprisingly close. It helped predict a lot of things, including people intentionally seeking out the illness or people maliciously choosing to spread the illness to others. One would think humanity as a whole would act quite differently from a game without real consequences to real life in which there are no respawns and real people suffer real consequences, and yet here we are in that very world. The majority of people would generally try to be sensible, but it's that unhinged 0.1%(-ish) that ruins everything for everyone.

[@snintendog]

@@Misack8 ...aids epidemic circa Fauci 1.0 a perfect implementation of what will go wrong is planned to go wrong.

[@PhirePhlame]

The FDS overwriting thing has actually become a bit of a bane of collectors. I saw a video talking about what I think was Zelda, which featured an anecdote of how they bought a disk for that game...and when they booted it, the were instead met with Wrecking Crew. They did eventually get the game...on a Castlevania disk.

[@TheFedzOohNoo]

i remember famicom dojo too

[@ZipplyZane]

If you get the actual disk, I think it would justified to then copy a ROM onto it--assuming you had the hardware to do so.

[@PosthumanHeresy]

There’s something you’re missing. Back in the late 2000s, you could brick an Xbox 360 via hacked files in Halo 3. The official Halo 3 file share was meant to share files for the game, but some folks found exploits to get other files up. Usually used for sharing non-screenshot images, but I remember people using the map sharing to trigger malicious code by embedding it in a Halo 3 map.

[@Zeddikins]

Never heard of it outside of the screenshot replacement with porn/memes. maybe a crash if you're lucky but a brick sounds pretty improbable.

[@InkyGhoul]

@@Zeddikins You could probably red ring an old 360 by making it over heat by loading Halo 3's map files with junk tag data, forcing the gake into over loading, but yeeaaah unlikely.

[@Chrischi3TutorialLPs]

Heres some more: You could (I believe this was on the OG XBox) cause a console to crash by sending a message that was longer than what the devs intended. Now, normally, this wasn't possible, as there was a hard limit on the length. However, in programming it, the devs forgot to include the possibility of someone plugging a USB keyboard into their system. Not exactly malware, but still. Another good one is Engage Ridley Mother Fucker, though this is technically also not malware. In the original Metroid for NES, instead of having a battery based save system, the developers opted for a password instead. Now normally, a password was just garbled letters, which the system could interpret as a save file (Though some games got more creative, like the Mega Man games, which used a grid in which you had to place several dots, in fact, they were so proud of their passwords that it took Mega Man until the PS 2 era to stop using them) However, occasionally, you could enter actual words that would actually work out as a save file. One such combination was Engage Ridley Mother Fucker. The only problem with this is that the game also had an internal clock to display the time you needed to beat the game after defeating the final boss. With this particular save file, the time you played came out as some ridiculously high number (Like, several thousand years i believe), which, for obvious reasons, noone ever considered expecting. This could have the side effect of frying your cartridge. However, it gets worse. When Metroid received a rerelease on the 3DS via virtual console, they appearantly never tested the password feature, since the virtual console comes with save states, thus rendering passwords completely obsolete. Thus, some players, for old times sake, typed in Engage Ridley Mother Fucker. The result? Your 3DS would turn into a very expensive paper weight. Later patches did however fix the issue.

[@BazZx]

@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs Sending a message one was from Tony Hawk from PS2/PC, But the crash only happened on the ps2 online

[@PosthumanHeresy]

@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs Killing a console by calling it a motherfucker is either really bad luck or hilariously awesome and idk which it is.

[@JCog]

Yo, thanks for the shoutout for the Paper Mario Stop 'n' Swop run! I always enjoy seeing what people think about it 😄

[@jewels3846]

I have seen another channel cover the discovery and didnt realise you had done a GDQ run of it! I am excited to check that out now and see your own commentary over it!

[@iggnifyre6333]

"Hopefully it can read the room" proceeds to pelvic thrust the entire video.

[@dimitar4y]

that was a lot of action in this video ;)

[@Rebateman]

JP crash bandicoot fans: WOAH!

[@Marqrk]

Another kinda cool abuse of online play I know about is the inventory hacks that exist in Dark Souls 3. For those who don’t know, Dark Souls has a pvp/co-op system that allows players to essentially enter each other’s save files and either help them beat the area boss or kill them to get rewards for ruining somebody’s day. This seems like it should be fine and not cause issues, but hackers found a way to weaponize it. Much like any other online game, the servers in Dark Souls 3 has cheat protection, and in this case you can be completely banned from online play if you have illegal items in your inventory. This illegal item could be something like a weapon upgraded far beyond its normal limit or other items that have modifications they shouldn’t have. If it’s in your inventory, that character and your entire account can no longer play online. Now, you’d think your inventory would be a private or protected variable that wouldn’t be accessible from other players ends. And I think it might be, I haven’t seen the code, but that didn’t stop people playing Dark Souls 3 in 2021. It has become a recurring horror story in the community to simply be playing online either invading another player or being invaded, winning the fight and celebrating only to see 10 copies of a +20 stormruler sword be picked up against your will by your character, and getting a nice little notification that you can no longer play online on that account. Adding insult to injury is that the Stornruler is a mostly useless weapon that has no scaling and is only used as a gimmick for a singular boss fight so it’s not even like you got a cool weapon out of the ban. But it doesn’t even stop there either. I have no idea how they did this but the absolute madlads found a way to abuse the new game plus feature to get you banned. In Dark Souls after you beat the game you’re allowed to start over again with all your levels and items but this time everything is slightly stronger to compensate. The thing hackers managed to do is change the counter that tracks what new game plus you’re on to increment it by 1 without doing any of the necessary changes that would happen normally to move you to the next new game cycle, which makes the server read you as an illegally modified character and serving you a ban hot and fresh from the oven. I think I heard from others that only way to evade this would be to quickly alt f4 your game before the server runs its routine checks and to reload a backup of your character file from before you did that invasion, which sets everything right again and lets you keep playing. I haven’t done too much research into how this works but I think it’s super interesting and think it could make for some good content for the channel

[@distorted_heavy]

Illegal items "softban" your specific character, preventing that character from playing online. You're only getting an actual account-wide ban if you're messing with things like player stats

[@Myaso_Bulochki]

I personally feel like editing in a bit more images as the avatar is talking would give you a little bit more to look at and make the video more engaging, as well as allowing more visuals to explain what you're talking about. I like how he looks though

[@enyi_4873]

Yeah, it looks good but... *blue void* I like it, and its easier, but its too bland

[@dayvancubensis]

100% agree with this, was about to comment with this suggestion myself

[@zexal4974]

his first video was the one that blew him up, he advertised it on reddit, people clicked on it, it was engaging because the editing was good and stuff was popping in and out and you couldnt look away, thats how more people saw his content, now its 40 minute videos that will have no watchtime

[@zexal4974]

Tech Rulez if you are watching this, try studying the youtube algorithm a bit more, look up videos on how Dream and people like Beluga blew up in the first place, its all about Watchtime retention and Click through rate.

[@pimposki6232]

@@zexal4974 i prefer this format though, its far more interesting and indepth :/

[@CiromBreeze]

Man, looking into this video, I was WONDERING if Animal Crossing Wild World would pop up in there sometime. I was big in the online scene back when it was active, and "seeding" was very rampant. (Named as such because the items to spawn malicious buildings in your town were seed-shaped, also some of them were literally just called "seed" when you spawned them in) I actually ended up getting an AR device myself to help "rescue" players who had been seeded but hadn't restarted their game yet (so their game hadn't loaded the seed yet). I'll admit I also had ulterior motives too, because it was literally a device which gave me infinite bells, and any item I could want. I also remember it being quite scary when a new version of the "Text to Item" code emerged (which a lot of seeders used). Originally, players had to input and send a 4-digit hexadecimal code into the chat to recieve the item. Text-2-Item v2 took the input from the text entry screen instead, meaning players could silently summon items. Basically meant that someone randomly speaking a strange 4-letter word was no longer required, and thus there was no warning to when you were about to be seeded. However, one thing where the video is wrong: There IS a limit to how many seeds can be placed! Each tile of the town can only hold one item, which includes one seed. However, given how large the town is and how many tiles total you have to work with, the game will crash WAY sooner than filling up all the slots.

[@speedyhomo]

I would 100% buy the "fish want me, servers fear me" hat

[@petergao96]

same. it's hilarious. I mean, people would think you mean water without context so you have a little inside joke too lmao

[@ClownOwO]

same, i love it

[@miuboy4578]

same

[@タコニャキ]

A mug or a portable water bottle would be better.

[@1_Limbo]

saaaaaaame

[@SpriteDuel]

This reminds me of the the times when video games 'pretended' to delete your save data when I guess in actuallity it was genuinely possible.

[@thorgidogofthunder]

animal crossing?

[@thinkingComputer]

useless homebrew on the wii u says at one point that it'll wipe your nand

[@NotAdachiPeople]

@@thinkingComputerSome Wii U NANDS are actually built so shoddily that they’re starting to stop working

[@mpcrazyscience7097]

The avatar is fine for filling gaps, but you need to show the images/footage for longer

[@salamanderspeak4268]

I wholly agree. I enjoy VR Man but appearing between clips and shots, but being on screen for 35 of the 38 minutes makes it rather unengaging visually. That being said, the overall video was great and I was enthralled the whole time, even if I found myself looking around at other things instead of the video.

[@KetsubanSolo]

@@salamanderspeak4268 to be fair I do that anyway for like 90% of all videos I watch lmao

[@shreknskrubgaming7248]

@@KetsubanSolo I honestly don't understand how people can do this. If I'm not staring at the video, I end up subconsciously ignoring everything that gets said.

[@casualbird7671]

I agree, like his videos before the avatar

[@LordMegatherium]

Or maybe, as a starter. learn new hand movements. Hire some Italian coach to talk with your hands.

[@cantbehelped]

I got hit by that Viewtiful Joe demo memory wipe. I didn't even know what happened at first, but then I read about it online. Ended up only losing some GTA3, Crash Wrath of Cortex, Simpsons Hit and Run and other less important data. The memory card with hundreds of hours in FFX and Kingdom Hearts was spared. Last year I found out I could have reported it to Sony and received some free games as compensation. Oh well!

[@nogoat]

Ocrania of Time : A Game so broken it breaks another game. Great.

[@irritated_name]

wreck it ralph be like

[@yeehaw1181]

@@irritated_name More like Turbo, really

[@mor4439]

ocrania

[@want-diversecontent3887]

I think one of thr pokemon gen 1 games was the first to be broken that way

[@pardner8919]

Good game amirite

[@sumiosquirrel]

In the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo, you don't even have to play the full 20 minutes. Simply booting the demo wipes your card. I found that out myself.

[@sackfu7952]

The best part of this video was learning that the top Super Paper Mario speedrun tactic was throwing the game in the trash and doing a speedrun of OOT instead, just to swap in Paper Mario again when it's beneficial for you.

[@Aktimoose]

i know you meant the original paper mario, but the idea of Super Paper Mario (for the wii) being vulnerable to an n64 ram issue makes 0 sense and is hilarious

[@sackfu7952]

@@Aktimoose oh crap i legit thought the n64 game was called super paper mario cause it was the first one

[@randoman8654]

@@sackfu7952 i can understand the confusion since paper mario and super paper mario are the only P. mario games without an attachment at the end of the title that is about twice as long as the name of the series

[@Falkuzrules]

@@sackfu7952 Super Mario Kart is the first Mario Kart but Super Paper Mario isn't the first Paper Mario, what a franchise we have here!

[@renakunisaki]

@@Falkuzrules and Super Paper Mario isn't for the Super Nintendo!

[@The_asdfghjkl]

You should have talked about the octolings in Splatoon. I remember some people hacking their splatoon 1 games to be able to play as octolings which would end up soft locking the game if your game tried to load the octoling player in your plaza.

[@SykoMuffin]

OMG you just brought back memories I forgot I had. There was myths and urban legends about how if you encountered these players online it would destroy your console. Or if you encountered people who were hacking and using Splatfest colours in normal gameplay/in your plaza it would brick your console too. Me and my friends were so paranoid lol.

[@floweyseed]

I remember that! I remember being scared to play online for a while because I was scared it would happen and would softlock my game lol

[@stealthlock6634]

I like your VR character! I suggest not letting him linger by himself on screen too long at a time though. When he talks at the audience for too long with nothing happening, the gestures help but after like 40 seconds it got harder to pay attention.

[@ferdinandhansel3248]

I thin NakeyJakeys style would be perfect, keep the Avatar at all times but display pictures in Background, make him point at it eg.

[@ratflavoredtaffy]

yeah the heavy hand motion is also a little hard to watch

[@Brass319]

true, also the face is angled a bit too far up

[@ColaTai]

Bruh just be a furry

[@ali_m_]

@@Brass319 I think that's just the model itself, the chin of it is angeled correctly

[@alteredstates927]

Some PS games, like "Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge," had a format option in the game's menu settings. It was right next to 'Save' and 'Load,' offered no explanation and did not require confirmation. I erased my girl's 500 some hours of "Harvest Moon" data she had kept since childhood and it was a fiasco. When she brought it up recently I told her I like to think the farmer and his livestock were just doing their thing when a huge, empty void of entropy started eating everything away and as they screeched in 32 bit horror and pain. Kind of like the "Black Hole Sun" music video that terrified me as a child. It did not placate the situation. We are no longer together after almost a decade. Do not hit the format button.

[@JJAB91]

Was the Harvest Moon deletion the reason you broke up?

[@gum_thegod2637]

@@JJAB91 I feel sure it was a large part of why. I've had Xbox hard drives wiped (3 at the same time, 1tb a piece) and lost my fucking mind.

[@julesk1088]

She should not have blamed you for innocently hitting a button. Be with someone who can't stand to lose you, because you're one of the most important things to them, miles more important than a video game save file, an accident, or an insensitive phrase. Mightve dogded a bullet

[@gum_thegod2637]

@@julesk1088 That's not dodging a bullet, tbh. Some people's games (and their save files) have sentimental value, and Harvest Moon is one of those games that makes you feel almost connected to your people. I would be upset too. That's not any fault of hers.

[@mattler1154]

While the format button was funny, that was not the time for you to joke about anything.

[@kodakai727]

Gotta say, I'm a bit upset that you brought up swapping discs/carts that store data in the RAM... and DIDN'T bring up Vib-Ribbon!

[@markusTegelane]

he probably just never heard of this game for example I didn't know it existed until 2020

[@Mike-77-YT]

@@markusTegelane and anyway, sys128 already made a good video explaining the vib-ribbon score system.

[@grkb]

@Kadir G. guess you haven't been on twitter for a while

[@iamlorddems3859]

I'm kinda surprised monster rancher for ps and ps2

[@aman-ov2vz]

I'm not sure that there would be a way to compromise the PS1 using the Vib-Ribbon CD reading system though

[@Manabender]

I'm seven minutes in and I have a feeling you're overlooking a huge possibility. You could design a circuit inside a cartridge that takes the 5V supply from the console, amplifies it, and uses it to charge a much higher voltage capacitor, then once that's sufficiently charged, discharge it over random pins. That could very easily burn the crap out of all sorts of components connected to address and data bus lines. You'll wind up with a bricked console in no time.

[@s3aM0th17]

You see, if you tape a gun to the cartridge and have it trigger when the game boots up, you'll wind up with a bricked console in no time

[@Manabender]

@@s3aM0th17 OK, *sure* , but that's a lot less subtle and you aren't going to fool anyone that way.

[@first-last557]

@@s3aM0th17 bomb cartridge when

[@abbaszaffarkhan1872]

@@first-last557 everybody gangsta till they put in their pirated game and hear “bomb has been planted”

[@trayambakrai]

@@s3aM0th17 I have a better way. Somehow get Minecraft 1.8 running on the console. It will be bricked forever from the trauma of that spaghetti code mess.

[@MelodicaDude]

Introducing all these hypothetical ways to create malware feels like opening up Pandora's Xbox

[@johnnysaurus04]

Everyone knows Pandora was something of a gamer.

[@randombrit4504]

pandora as an egirl

[@ladyabaxa]

That box was opened a long time ago. Trying to pretend it wasn't does no one any good.

[@rainpooper7088]

Pandora was like the first griefer in history

[@trayambakrai]

@@randombrit4504 This comment is the reason why she willingly and knowingly opened the box.

[@DijaVlogsGames]

I am a bit surprised you didn’t at least mention The Horde on 3DO, which, if you don’t have enough storage space to save the game, simply makes room for itself by deleting other save files without telling you.

[@duttfisch]

Please actually make that "fish want me servers fear me" hat a thing? I'd absolutely buy it in a heartbeat 😆 This was super interesting, though! I'd definitely wanna see some of the outtakes if you'd like to share them ^^

[@felman87]

When you mentioned the memory format, it reminded me of that demo disk with Viewtiful Joe 2 and, sure enough, you mention it. The horror. I grabbed it from my friend to try and it erased the data. "Weird. Same thing happened to me." He didn't know it was the game. He just assumed that it was one of his siblings messing around. But since it happened to both of us, we knew it was the demo disk and never used it again.

[@fightr3]

Yeah as soon as memory cards came up I immediately remembered that damn disc. I lost so many hours of saves from that. As a side note I was able to contact a support line about that after and was told that while they couldn't do anything about the lost data I could be sent a game from a list that was very heavy on sports or racing games. Not being interested in those I went for one of the I think 2 rpgs that were on the list. Actually I don't think that game has anything to do with Capcom so it was probably Sony support. And thats how I ended up getting Wild Arms 3 for the price of my PS2 save data.

[@thepineappleyempireofsuper9612]

Other than constantly looking at the ceiling above the camera, the face looks good lol

[@LaironXD]

Yeah, he looks like he is giving a speech in a theater, like a Ted talk or something

[@Thenormal880]

yeah lol

[@LordDaret]

The ceiling must look very interesting 🤔

[@butterflydreamer9649]

@@L_Train god forbid doing something everyone does everyday and not being judged for it

[@dcr645]

@@L_Train what does that even mean

[@PhirePhlame]

DSBrick was also passed off as a doujin reader, and reportedly a pirate ROM of Mario Party DS had replaced its _download play executable_ with it (meaning single-cart multiplayer would just brick everyone else's systems).

[@kiritotheabridgedgod4178]

Of course Mario Party would, because that game doesn't already ruin enough friendships.

[@MelodicaDude]

Finally, being awake at 6:43am pays off

[@toastghost7340]

Same

[@seamino8329]

True poo

[@sonc_]

Indeed.

[@canadianlucifer8446]

Same

[@RancorSnp]

For me is 1pm. But by 6:43 am I'm already finishing breakfast and getting ready to live for work. The real pay off is waking up 5 am to have time to play a mobile gacha when you have the rest of your time eaten up by work or travel ^^'

[@ladyabaxa]

Everquest is an MMO that had mechanics from the start that made it possible for players to bring servers to their knees or at least crash zones on a server. One way was to exploit the fact that Area of Effect spells (AoEs) had no limit on the number of enemies (mobs) they could hit. If you were playing as intended you probably wouldn't notice this because mobs are spread out and aggroing a bunch of them at once is an extremely good way to die with death in early Everquest being nasty and punishing. (Seriously. You lost experience which could make you lose levels and everything you were carrying stayed on your corpse, which itself stayed wherever it was you died. Fail to get back to and loot your corpse in a few hours and it rotted, deleting everything on it permanently.) Enter power-leveling teams. These were groups of casters selling a service: they would nuke down huge contingents of mobs with AoEs, zone out, and let whoever it was getting power-leveled finish the train off in order to reap all the experience. This caused massive disruptions to whatever zone the team was pulling in. Because going to a zone-line was safer (otherwise you'd need a port or evac spell to get the nuking team out in time) if you zoned in you could have your client slow to a crawl or outright crash because of how many mobs the game had to track, plus spell effects. Combined with the strain on the server moving all those mobs, calculating spell effects, calculating damage, tallying up experience gains, generating drops, starting respawn timers, etc. this made for a server-killing recipe. Target limits on nukes were implemented. Then another patch had to do the same thing to bard dots because bard songs are spells but with a different code ruleset - first and foremost bards can cast their spells while on the move. This plus songs to increase movement speed plus AoE damage led to bard swarm kiting. It wasn't fast. It wasn't safe (any hiccup and the bard would be insta-dead) but it killed large numbers of enemies efficiently. It also caused zones and even entire servers to struggle or even crash. To put the cherry on this sundae along came Project 1999 which aimed to create an emulated server that only had classic Everquest: what was available at launch with the expansions Kunark and Velious added later. To do that the project worked backwards from the Titanium client and years of patch notes. In a move that proves that some people just do not learn unless an issue rears up and bites them, personally, in the ass those target limits I mentioned above were removed. Then they had to be patched back in for the very reasons (and probably more, my knowledge of early Everquest is limited) I laid out above. Way to go P99!

[@nogoat]

Gaming Historian mentioned that you can rewrite a FDS Disk. Apparently its common to find a cart that is branded with something like say, "Super Mario Bros." that had a completely different game. And that actually gives us an advantage. We could buy a cart that has a game, rewrite it and return the game. Now, our plan might just work.

[@batouttahell24]

So get any FDS game, rewrite the game to add a “hack” to the game, return it and then wait for some poor soul to erase the entire disk accidentally. That’s evil and I like it.

[@wasperine]

@@batouttahell24 Unmodifed FDS units can't write the entire disk, only a small section reserved for save data.

[@lior_haddad]

@@wasperine 34:16

[@BlueYoshi]

Yep, Japan had official FDS rewriter kiosks that worked until 2003!

[@wasperine]

@@lior_haddad What I meant is that you couldn't hack an FDS game to have the normal FDS unit itself erase the whole disk, because it's incapable of that. Without modding the disk drive it specifically cannot write most of the disk as an anti-piracy measure. A disk writer kiosk or other specialized hardware can rewrite entire disks, but unmodified, retail FDS units can only write to the savedata area. That's true of all the models, even the older ones, unless you install a modchip. Not that this anti-piracy measure ever did much at all to curb piracy! I own more bootleg FDS disks than legitimate ones. :P

[@jewels3846]

I enjoy this video format as someone who listens while driving! I am rewatching a second time and seeing I didnt miss too many visuals and having everything audibly explained is refreshing and the video both being watched and listened too I found super enjoyable

[@Xenunt1]

I like the VR thing but there's a bit too much looking at it with a blue screen in the video, the time balance is a bit off. There's not much to keep you engaged on screen - maybe overlay it?

[@skeuoo]

you should make the lighting fit the character or get a separate room so the character fits in more. im loving the physical version of you, cant wait to see more!

[@purplenanite]

I have trouble listening to the talk with the avatar moving against a plain background, and when I do, I always end up staring at the chest instead of the face. Also the face is too hard to make out I think always staying waist-up, using less-saturated green(for everything except the face), and making the face expressions solid instead of dotted, would work better. (hope that helps) Awesome content btw

[@VirtuaVirtue]

you used to looking at peoples chests? 🤨

[@purplenanite]

@@VirtuaVirtue maybe. What if I am?

[@MythicMachina]

I love how most of the Malware for consoles wasn't actual malicious malware, but instead some sort of bug or mistake on the developer's part.

[@sillymel]

(21:29) If Animal Crossing: Wild World is like most DS games, I believe you should be able to delete all of that game's save data by having L+R+A+B+X+Y+Start+Select (if I remember correctly) held when launching the game.

[@devalous8281]

In a Paper Mario 64 speedrun the Stop and Swop mechanic was used to pull off ACE(arbitrary code execution) for a credits warp which still amazes me about how it was done

[@cotyjackson7200]

Yes, that was shown in the video.

[@APerson-ws4cw]

there was a bug with the PMD games. They had a gimmick of using a PMD red with PMD blue in the cartridge slot. But a bug with the early copies caused it to delete save files. It got fixed, and the fix even came with a special shiny zigzagoon with E-speed.

[@mikuenjoyerXD]

I freaking LOVE Pokemon mystery dungeon, im surprised ive never heard of this before

[@burritoman2k]

It was early copies of japanese blue that were doing it, they would wipe the file of any game in the gba slot that wasnt japanese red

[@APerson-ws4cw]

@@burritoman2k ye

[@APerson-ws4cw]

@@mikuenjoyerXD PMD is amazing, and it was apparently in japan only so you probably didn't experience it

[@KiraSlith]

The Dumplin' terror pfp is glorious. 10/10

[@thatoneguywhoworksatjoespl9701]

I REALLY like the new format, specifically relating to the potential it has. At the moment I feel like it could certainly be a bit more in depth, specifically with a bit more images and videos of what you’re talking about, as well as a less bland background… love the character design though!

[@BackwardsPancake]

This all really depends on how narrow or broad you make the definition of "Malware". I mean, if we're willing to go so far as to manufacture fake cartridges for old systems, why not consider _mechanical_ malware? For a simple example, picture a NES cartridge that fries your console. For an extreme example, picture a NES cartridge filled with plastic explosive and nails, with a detonator circuit wired up to the interface points. Load it into a console, power on, kaboom.

[@LiEnby]

There were litterallt carts that just fried the 10NES chip to bypass copy protection

[@NotAdachiPeople]

Malware is malicious software. If the software on that cartridge blew up your NES, then yes, that would work.

[@canadianlucifer8446]

I will absolutely buy that "fish want me, servers fear me" hat, take all my money!

[@TsukentoX]

Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast had malicious cheat device codes that users could slap against other players that could either rewrite their character data, corrupt their entire VMU, or reset their system's internal memory which makes it impossible to be capable of logging back into the game as your system is no longer tied to the game's serial and access keys.

[@hackwrench5583]

I remember that. The character data rewrite swapped your character data out with the character data of an NPC partner, the most popular being Nol, a level 5 HUnewearl from one of the earlier quests. It got called Noling. There was another one too that attempted to brick a Dreamcast as well. It sent a signal to the GD-ROM drive that told it to spin faster than intended, resulting in a burned out motor if you didn't catch it and power off fast enough.

[@egon3705]

@@hackwrench5583 i wonder if you could do the same thing with a hacked version of vib ribbon and kill a cd

[@wildandbrey]

I hate to say it bud but this one DEFINITELY makes you a vutuber

[@Cashbans]

Well, Is that a bad thing

[@lpolarisl219]

I was waiting an anecdote about the minus worlds in Super Mario NES, when you were talking about swapping games while storing data in the RAM. It was exactly the method used to access bugged-out levels of Super Mario, thanks to a tennis game. Thing went pretty big in Japan.

[@GameFrostYT]

Techrules VR DLC looking great so far

[@neelarai971]

he turned into a vtuber

[@dasdasdaxzvea]

@@neelarai971 YAY!

[@Cyorg13]

@@dasdasdaxzvea pfp checks out

[@SyankaCreature]

Idk it was a bit weird to me, i prefer the original "slideshow" format, i can understand that using the avatar to fill the gaps is a cool ideia but it kinda just took all the images away, atleast 80% of the video is just the avatar

[@n646n]

@@SyankaCreature There's not really anything he can show in those parts though.

[@alexandrabond-johnson5243]

I’d get that “Fish Want Me, Servers Fear Me” for my FC’s fishers in a heartbeat!

[@reddashgames7550]

As a collector for the FDS (Famicom Disk System) i would 100% say Malware is not only possible that it actually happened, i dump most of my disks and noticed a few bootleg disks of mine (disk copier programs exist that you can copy the disks to blank disks) has some code that is added when booting the game, been looking into this but so far havent worked out what this code does apart from its exicuted, could just be a anti pirisy fix but if that's possible then its very possible that this method of code execution can be used for malicious intent.

[@ferociousfeind8538]

It could've been dummy code to get around complex checksums? Nintendo was paranoid as all heck, to get homebrew to work on pretty much any of their systems required a lot of simultaneous balancing acts But it's definitely an entry point for malicious code

[@LiEnby]

There is almost nothing you even could do (besides wipe games) tbh

[@vyor8837]

@@LiEnby ehh, if you could break out of the game RAM's bounds you could potentially interact with things like CPU voltage.

[@BurningApple]

@@vyor8837 that's not possible - the Famicom CPU is not responsible for its own power regulation

[@vyor8837]

@@BurningApple Correct, the BIOS is. And the CPU can interact with the BIOS.

[@blazefurystorm5762]

The fishing incident is like my experience with Milk in Terraria recently. I can handle 100s of bees but oh! 1 Carton of Milk and my Game crashes, twice

[@molotov666]

Milk? I don't remember that existing.

[@Kurtea00]

I like how you subtly hint at Nintendo and KZbin for censoring specific things like how to hack their consoles or mentions of Corona in Videos.

[@Sheevlord]

Yes, that was my thought too. Modern Vintage Gamer had a few of his videos removed because he talked about homebrew on the Switch. Sony also fits the bill, given how they mass copyright stroke videos even mentioning TLoU2 leaks. A blatant abuse of copyright takedowns that was conveniently ignored by the gaming press that later went on to praise TLoU2 as the best thing humanity has ever created. Not sure if Sony tries to get rid of videos talking about flashing custom ROMs on their consoles, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

[@thatonecookie242]

@@Sheevlord do you know which videos in specific/how many?

[@Kurtea00]

@@thatonecookie242 for example stacksmashings Videos about the Nintendo game and watch or the modern vintage gamers video on homebrewing the Switch. Videos that contain the word Corona can not be monetized.

[@nobodyinparticular9640]

Just makes you wanna mod their consoles and pirate their crap even more, eh

[@Kurtea00]

@@nobodyinparticular9640 are Wii gonna have a problem with Nintendo? Let's hope they Switch up that attitude.

[@renakunisaki]

You overlooked some important details with the DS. The whole reason the bricker trojan was so infamous is that you _didn't_ have to disable write protection. You just run it and poof, brick. See, the early DS units didn't use write protection properly. It only protected the first quarter of the firmware. Nintendo didn't have the foresight to put any sort of recovery code there, so any game could just decide to wipe out the remaining 3/4, and the console was bricked. (No game actually did, but there was nothing preventing them except Nintendo's QA checks.) FlashMe needed WP disabled because it needed to overwrite that first quarter too. (And it installed a recovery mode in that area, so you could repair a brick.) Later units fixed it so that WP covered everything except the last few sectors that store user settings, so all the bricker would do (if you weren't dumb enough to disable WP) is the equivalent of a factory reset. Your settings were lost, but that's all. (Saves were still stored on the cartridges, so they were safe.) However, this was not the only bricker. There were also Action Replay codes that claimed to allow you to cheat in online games, but actually bricked the system. Even worse was Metroid Prime Hunters, which featured online multiplayer and a boneheaded bug: they used the wrong function to display player names. If you put certain escape sequences like %d in your name, it would display as random numbers. If you used %s, the game would crash - and so would everyone else's. I don't know if they ever got anywhere with it, but I know at least one person was looking into this bug and theorized that a hacked game could abuse it to execute arbitrary code on other players' games, and remotely brick the consoles of everyone who connected. But wait, there's more! This game also had online leaderboards, which _also_ didn't handle names properly! At one point, someone broke the site by putting HTML tags in their name. Again, I don't think anyone ever actually did it, but in theory, if you hacked the game to enter longer names, you may have been able to perform a Cross Site Scripting attack and embed malware into the page, infecting those who viewed the leaderboard (especially as browsers were much less secure back then). Whether this would actually work depends whether the server would accept an abnormally long name, but there's a decent chance. (Or maybe if you spread it across several names?) Another often overlooked possiblity is to have one game put a trojan save on a memory card that causes another game to glitch. This might have enabled a type of worm, with the virus spreading from one game to the next. (Also: Nintendo 64 had memory cards, but they didn't get much use.) Speaking of worms, check out what MrCheeze did with Pokemon...

[@CherryCatGal]

I'm curious what you're referring to with regard to "N64 Memory Cards", are you referring to the N64DD?

[@_pancakes1734]

@@CherryCatGal probably the memory pak

[@lafiosca]

"Theoretical reverse theft": back in the day we used to call that Droplifting.

[@CreepyboomGamer]

Really?

[@Mariofan665]

One incident that I learned about actually occurred fairly recently. LittleBigPlanet had connected servers across all 3 games, including both PS3 and PS4 versions of LBP3, allowing players to enjoy levels uploaded all the way back to the first game. Apparently, someone abused that system, and found a way to upload thousands of levels per second, which overloaded the servers, and had them shut down for months. Eventually, the PS3 end of the servers had to be permanently shut down to resolve the issue, leaving only the PS4 servers for LBP3.

[@kroznick1011]

Wasn't that the plot for the metal gear solid dlc in LBP1?

[@TheShinyFeraligatr]

Oh god you actually brought up the madness that was Stop N Swop Percent. EDIT: Also, as someone who has family who used the Internet from before the Eternal September started, it's technically VERY late 80s, not early 90s.

[@usedcolouringbook8798]

You 6-8, I say 7 😁

[@EternallyEve]

@@usedcolouringbook8798 what

[@estherstreet4582]

That speedrun is mental, just trying to explain it to someone is a ride. "yeah so you play a bit of ocarina of time doing very specific things, then make it crash, take out the cartridge, put paper mario in, play some paper mario, and warp to the credits at a seemingly random point"

[@antiarmadillosociety]

@@usedcolouringbook8798 If you're talking about age, that is impossible as the account itself was created over 12 years ago. If you're not, what the hell are you talking about?

[@usedcolouringbook8798]

@@antiarmadillosociety I'm just saying 7

[@val_923]

man, i LOVE this video. i love the format, the humor, just-- everything. the whole package. i genuinely laughed out loud a few times. i will absolutely be that single purchase for that 'fish want me, servers fear me' hat.

[@Jack-vo7yf]

I think this video would do best in a slideshow format. Then again I've never been too fond of VR characters. Aside from that? Interesting topic! Accurate and well put together, lots of fun examples. I learned something!

[@casualbird7671]

I completely agree with your comment

[@monika004]

agree

[@modestMismagius105]

disagree

[@doc_sav]

I fondly remember poking around with a Game Boy Game Genie with my cousin and being shocked and dismayed when we found a code that would crash the game and corrupt the save. We looked at each other for a moment, them connected to every BBS we knew and posted them as awesome cheat codes.

[@Aeroslyer200]

dreams come true when you find a cheat that crashes games and breaks the save data

[@hiimemily]

chaotic evil

[@FlameLFH]

Just make an N64 cartridge that automatically tilts itself lmao

[@dimitar4y]

little solenoid in there. just occasionally activates

[@horseeatsdogfood5721]

I loved the History Of VR video so I'm really happy to get more in the same format! Either way, you're videos are always so interesting and fun! Keep it up!

[@yourk576]

Thank you for posting at 6am my time to entertain my insomnia, I always love your videos so much :)

[@joltganda]

I think we can both agree insomnia sucks.

[@kiaelinkx]

The avatar thing was engaging for about 3 minutes my man, then it gets a bit stale

[@gameygames135]

22:24 I think it's a nice brick wall. Thanks for finding it.

[@mikuenjoyerXD]

You remind me of that weird tile fetish guy

[@colin_curtin]

the captions wtf

[@georgespence6727]

13:12, 14:03, 15:30, 19:55, 21:02, 23:08, 31:50. Sometimes your face dots just do their own thing, lol wtf. There are tons more cases these are the semi unique cases I noticed. Do love what you're going for with your avatar though. The face thing might be time iterative actions and probably could be skipped over or bypassed if it is or even controlled

[@deez1883]

Tbh, I’m not a fan of the avatar. It’s not that visually engaging. But I still appreciated you experimenting with different formats, it really shows you care

[@RisingRevengeance]

_You could argue it's worse now_ I definitely would. Nintendos internet services are worse than the DS/Wii era and now you have to pay for it.

[@JetSetDman]

“Seems familiar, but KZbin’s ad suitability system has informed me that I’m not sure why.” This is why I love watching you.

[@jaymo1011]

I think the VR avatar is cool but I personally prefer the "words and images synced with speech" style. The audio directly is directly the content of the video whereas the visuals make it seem as if the avatar is the focus and the games have become b roll so it just seems a little off... It's not from a lack of effort though!

[@SynergyGaming112]

Possibly could just make the model smaller and/or images in the background

[@luigi7834]

this

[@swampdonkey1567]

I have to say I disagree personally and I have adhd where I take 60 mg pills, not the highest but only cause I have heart problems.

[@hanspeter24]

you’re a top notch youtuber it’s not that i’m particularly interested in such topics but i like the way you speak and explain the things in a unique and very bonding and interesting way a 40 min video from you seems like 10 minutes from another (rather boring) creator keep on going i’m sure you’re currently working on another masterpiece for us to watch ^^

[@gunma_shadow]

I love the avatar! I'd make the face more understandable and add a non-plain background or something in the back, so he isn't so alone! But the avatar is lovely and helps watching it! I love your arms movement, too! Helps generating some kind of link between you talking and the avatar moving.

[@georgespence6727]

Yeah feels like animation from bodysuit or whatever their called with the balls to track body motion. 8:36 possibly is.

[@Vee_Sheep]

not only is this video interesting and informative, despite my lack of knowledge about most things here, it also appeases my bias toward funky screen-face character designs, bc i kinda love the face circles just doing whatever at random lol

[@plant7371]

"Chrono Trigger & Knuckles" me, currently hyperfixating on Chrono Trigger: 👀

[@bosmer3836]

grow up

[@mikuenjoyerXD]

@@bosmer3836 the word hyperfixating is usually used for people with ADHD or autism. Just to educate you, maybe then you won't be so rude

[@bosmer3836]

@@mikuenjoyerXD yeah, i know that. only annoying kids say it like that tho

[@bosmer3836]

@@mikuenjoyerXD original commenter might not even have either of those and just be one of those annoying little shits who are into fandoms and whatnot

[@UnlimitedRun]

@@bosmer3836 Imagine being an annoying little shit that can't stand others having fun in ways that you don't personally approve of.

[@FlyingDeathBlanket]

I think it's absolutely criminal that you've managed multiple videos with over 3 million views, and yet have less the 400k subscribers. So here's a like, comment and sub from me, keep doing what you're doing!

[@OswaldAurelia]

Wasn't expecting a return of the vr avatar Edit: as requested, I would like to add: I enjoy it very much :D

[@typodoeseverything]

As requested? There are no other replies, who requested it

[@OswaldAurelia]

@@typodoeseverything tech rules, when they said to comment below about the new style of video (assuming he meant using the vr since it was the first time it's been used since the history of vr)

[@ronin4902]

It sucks

[@typodoeseverything]

@@OswaldAurelia ohh ok, thanks for clarifying

[@drexdqueen]

Always so much fun to listen to a nice long Tech Rules video. I actually got sad when it was over

[@zaten-p]

The king has returned

[@davide4731]

About the DS Bricker, it is in fact able to brick a stock DS without shorting making the bridge (for example booting it with an R4), because the upper portion of the firmware is accessible at all times and only the lower part needs to be unlocked, but even with that the DS Bricker overwrites enough stuff to cause a brick anyway. Interestingly, the 3ds is vulnerable too (it has something that resembles the DS firmware for storing DS settings, called by the modding scene NVRAM), as running the bricker on it causes the DS mode to break and you need to restore the NVRAM or format the console to restore it, meanwhile the DSi is invulnerable and only loses some WiFi settings if you run the bricker on it

[@xXxmlg_vacxXx]

Gateway also kills 3DS units by destroying the entire FW after the MSET attack If it thinks it is fake.

[@rasmusdegn9690]

Glad to see you back. Liking the return of VR you, little sad there wasn't a cameo from the giant skull with a VR headset.

[@theolabbate1611]

Absolutely fascinating, thank you ! Can't wait for you to tackle these speedrun strats though ;)

[@andrespiess820]

14:45 Thank you Tech Rules for that „Easter Egg“ 😂 Amazing Video! The quirky VR Dude fits your quirky videos :)

[@dreamer.4]

Omg!! So happy to see a new video of yours. Hope you've been doing well! And I really like that you're just putting out content when you want. Hope you don't feel pressured. Keep it up, you're doing great!!

[@duffertonshire]

I think the avatar is pretty cute and I enjoy it. Adds a bit of fun personality to the videos than just a voice over, however I feel like the colours could be different as currently the avatar kinda reminds of what an xbox mascot could be given the green and black colour scheme. I know black and green is code based, so I don't really know what to change with that aspect.

[@thetaaaa]

The fact that this video is interesting to me, who has never written a line of code and barely playes video games at all, is very impressive

[@ebridgewater]

Not keen on the 'virtual actor' thing. Prefer just things showing up on-screen (screenshots, footage etc.). I actually find it distracting and struggle to 'hear' the content as much.

[@NinjaPheonix26]

Same, I just like the old style

[@Nakia11798]

I just don't look at the screen

[@happythekatt8419]

I actually really like the virtual actor thing, I just want a few more pictures and/or visuals on what he’s saying alongside it.

[@n646n]

I like it, but it needs more pictures alongside it.

[@beardalaxy]

Sometimes, the console/game manufacturers themselves can permanently lock you out of a game due to poor decisions on their part. It was a couple months after Animal New Horizons came out that my Nintendo account got hacked and subsequently banned. It took me months to get in contact with Nintendo support in order to get my account back. During that time, an ACNH update had come out that I updated to. When I booted up the game, I was immediately met with a message saying I needed to log in to my Nintendo account in order to play the game. The horrible part was that it was a physical copy. I actually never played the game again because I literally couldn't for 2 months unless I wanted to go back to the original version of the game and disable updates. Basically, a person who hacked my account caused me to not be able to play a game I owned physically because Nintendo decided I couldn't play it without signing in to my account.

[@moast6943]

I genuinely think this is the best channel on KZbin.

[@wittynickname4870]

I would 100% buy a hat that says “Fish love me; Servers fear me.” Best money I would ever spend.

[@cashnelson2306]

I absolutely hate the robot it looks like it's gonna sell me car insurance in a 4pm tv ad but video still good

[@samanthap9420]

WRT the Famicom Disc System.... part of the marketing behind it was that you could Stop in to a store, go to one of those kiosks, and Swap the game on your card for another one. (This had the end result of making purchasing used games for it a gamble, because the game that's actually on the card can be completely different from the label - it worked with the discs specifically meant for this feature, AND with regular retail ones.) But using THAT could be an in point. If someone were to write a program onto their own disc, and bring it to the kiosk, they could, in very hypothetical and probably very difficult theory, infect *a game on the kiosk itself*, and *that* would go on to infect people's cartridges, and forward it on to other kiosks when they tried to fix the problem on those, and so on and on and on... Mind you, I'm not sure this would be physically possible, because they'd be working with 1980's file sizes and Famicom capabilities, but in theory... (Also, I love the VR avatar returning! I do agree with other commenters that having slightly more clips/pictures to break up the footage would help, just to vary what's being looked at. But also I get a kick out of seeing the eyes just go off and do their own thing every now and then, so it's win/win, really.)

[@DankRedditMemes]

Speaking of 'destroy the console itself', something that's noteworthy. So the GB allows games to shut down the screen. Allegedly if you do that rapidly enough and/or outside of VBLANK, you could damage the LCD.

[@GensHaze]

I think your earlier videos with more animation and footage are incredibly superb, well done and amazing, but even if we start to see more of the VR avatar, hell, even have whole videos with it just talking, I wouldn't mind it one bit. The topics themselves are so deeply interesting to me, I would love to listen to these as podcasts alone, and I'm not a podcast guy much. I just want to hear any and all of your crazy, pointless but insanely interesting ideas. Please never stop rambling.

[@karak962]

what a nice comment 😭

[@WereNegan]

Glad your still alive!!! Love you man hope all’s well

[@MegidolErin]

I like the avatar, and I also enjoyed when it was just a voice over. Really, I'm happy no matter I guess! Also, I personally think the face wildly flying around while you're talking is hilarious and I would miss it if it stopped happening

[@Neonyoshi150]

I remember there was this Age of Empires game on the DS, where if you named your character with 3 characters or less, it would crash and ended up bricking the cart. IIRC, this bug was so hard coded to the game, that it couldn't be fixed and they ended up just putting a warning piece of paper warning ppl not to do that.

[@juliawolf156]

I have a spontaneous idea for unbricking the cartridge: Create a save game in an emulator with a proper name (at least 4 characters). Then using a homebrewed 3DS and Checkpoint we can write this save game onto the Age of Empires cartridge. The cartridge should boot fine now.

[@blazethegame]

My man is back!!! Nice avatar btw.

[@obdalamfa4254]

Your videos seem to be getting better from time to time. The vr is amazingly clean

[@dovedozen]

also the avatar looks great!! seconding what some other people are saying about there being room for you to edit more visuals in next to it while you're talking and stuff like that, but this is absolutely my preferred way to see A Person in a youtube video about video games. also it's just kind of cool in and of itself!!

[@bread9276]

I like your vr avatar, and ironically the faces it makes line up perfectly

[@tech34756]

One thought I had when you mentioned the MD/Gen was "Mode 1", basically messing around with the Mega/Sega CD using a cartridge. You could even mess around with it such as random ejecting or randomly playing whatever CD may be in there or going so far as to use the PCM chip in the CD unit. The best part would be that I doubt many would suspect it was the game at fault, since I doubt many know about this feature.