Did Morrowind on the Original XBOX really reboot itself to free memory ? | MVG

The Elders Scroll III Morrowind is an open world action role playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios in 2002 for the Original Xbox. In a recent podcast Todd Howard claimed - "In Morrowind, If you're running low on memory you can reboot the Original Xbox and the user cant tell".
Of course I had to investigate these claims and see if its indeed true. In this episode we take a closer look at The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind and understand how it came with unique memory management.
► Consider supporting me - / modernvintagegamer
► Source - • Interview: Phil Spence...
► Music Credit : The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind/Composer - Jeremy Soule
Social Media Links :
► Facebook : / modernvintagegamer
► Twitter : / modernvintageg
► IG: / modernvintagegamer
► BandCamp : modernvintagegamer.bandcamp.com/
► The Real MVP Podcast : player.fm/series/the-real-mvp
#Morrowind #OGXbox #Reboot

[@MrMario2011]

Awesome detective work on this! A fun test might be setting those "No Reboot on New/Load Game" values to 1 to see how consistently the game crashes.

[@kurikuraconkuritas]

indeed. also love your vids. they have helped me a lot in softmoding and messing with hardware on various consoles ;)

[@dennisanderson8663]

Even on PC, vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion crashed like crazy.

[@hi_tech_reptiles]

Prob as consistently as unpatched Skyrim on PS3.

[@pejnismiggle]

I just recently discovered that PC Master Race reddit thread where that absolute doofus changed his Xbox Alpha Tower into a "Master Race" PC, and saw that you replied on there. I'm sorry to reawaken horrid memory's of that absolute blunder, But I MUST know if anything came of that. Were people able to recover anything from the 20 GB of data on the Hard Drive that the absolute Baboon wiped?

[@FrothingFanboy]

@@ATSNorthernMI Does the Xbox 360 have this reboot command (I don't see how it could, because the user can interact with the Guide at all times)? I ask because the 360 only has 512 MB of RAM, yet in my many hours of playing vanilla Oblivion on it, I've only had maybe 2 crashes, and one I recall was on a loading screen and could've been a disc read problem.

[@Zordiak]

"It's called memory management" That was a sick burn lol

[@CJ-rf9jm]

on himself.

[@Leonard_MT]

@Leanja He’s a male Ellen annoying and obnoxious

[@DeathBringer769]

It was called avoiding proper memory management and just soft rebooting the system instead, lol.

[@Ma1q444]

I don’t get it how was that a burn

[@ConeFlower-gx2qk]

@@Ma1q444he’s saying Bethesda doesn’t know how to make a game right

[@gabrieleriva651]

The launch PAL copy came with a sheet of paper which detailed two bugs and what the player had to do to go around them (one was the world map being totally black).

[@Darkdaej]

@Android's Let's plays Correction: This USED to be a very Bethesda thing to do. Nowadays the bug will still be there but they'll ban your profile if you report it on their forums...

[@catnip202xch.]

@@Darkdaej lol

[@WayStedYou]

@Android's Let's plays Now they just say "what do you mean nothing wrong with the game, would you like some MTX?"

[@marsil602the2nd]

I wanna see some footage please

[@markinius8866]

Remember in daggerfall 1.07.213 when bethesda enabled a hotkey to teleport you to your last coordinates? In case you actually drift off the map.

[@EnigmaticPenguin]

The most shocking part is Todd Howard telling the truth,

[@renewagain6956]

He was 16x more accurate in this statement than normal.

[@EnigmaticPenguin]

@@renewagain6956 16 times zero is still zero!

[@TVIDS123]

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

[@23Scadu]

Rebooting: it just works.

[@eFeXuy]

You only needed to wait 20 years. I 2026 he will admit how much of a scam the horse armor was.

[@MattPritchardOfficial]

I was working at Microsoft when OG Xbox was launched. A LOT of games reboot between levels. It provided a quick way to clean up memory, and let developers use PC code where PC memory management was more lenient which could be VERY fragmented and/or not free all allocations.

[@cyclops8238]

That is very interesting. As a kid a loved playing on the GameCube for its friendly carefree feeling but when it came to the Xbox it felt like a futuristic beast of a machine. Anytime I held the controller or played a game on the system I felt like I was doing something special. I can't describe it but the original Xbox gives off this strange aura. It felt futuristic powerful like it meant business but also wanted to have a good time.

[@Jason75913]

@@cyclops8238 to me, it was just a really cool system at the time, coming from N64 and SNES

[@shadowrage2593]

I thought you were doing Dirty Sanchez show on MTV 😁.

[@MattPritchardOfficial]

@@shadowrage2593 Nope, that was some cheap imposter :D I was busy making games like 'Age of Empires'

[@shadowrage2593]

@@MattPritchardOfficial What other OG Xbox titles you woked on?

[@robinrai4973]

Breath of the Wild forces a panic blood moon if the game runs out of memory/anything goes wrong too! Resets the state of the world.

[@robinrai4973]

@@aweigh1010 yeah, first time i've ever seen one of these failsafes! Interestingly keeping the switch/game on/slept increases the chances of it happening too!

[@armyofninjas9055]

It has memory bleed!

[@johnsimon8457]

Oh wow, it's an actual in-world error handler that follows lore. It's not like Sonic Blast's "You found the secret cheat menu!" error handler.

[@3dmarth]

You mean BotW actually runs out of memory sometimes? I would've thought it has lots of free RAM all the time, considering that the likes of GTA V could run on 512 MB. Although there could be some fancier stuff going on, which I didn't think of... I mean, the load times are fast enough that it must be holding the world inside and outside the shrines at the same time, for one.

[@tetsuo3k]

Hilarious, not to mention clever, if true. I always thought it was a little suspect that I was seeing blood moons in such wildly varying intervals when I played BotW on my Switch. Now I'm playing in Cemu with extended memory enabled, and I hardly ever see them.

[@G1itcher]

Soft rebooting a console rather than fixing their memory management is a very Bethesda thing to do. Edit: Gosh, this blew up

[@soraltt]

@Obsidian Rose lol

[@markusfenix74]

I mean yeah. But on the other hand, with how much memory Xbox had, I'm sure this big RPG game wouldn't be possible on the system otherwise...

[@JohnnyWednesday]

The problem wasn't so much running out of memory - but running out of continuous blocks of free space. Morrowind is a fragmentation nightmare.

[@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli]

Not necessarily. Xbox being essentially a modified Windows 98 PC with DirectX was critical to allowing PC ports that would have been insurmountable full ports. Half Life 2 for example. There'd be no way to get that game running on GCN/PS2. Since the game was likely patched and tuned for the Xbox from the Windows version, which has access to a lot more resources like swap files, things had to be done to deal with inevitable memory limitations. Plus, I think PC crashes were far more expected or culturally acceptable for games than on console, where a crash is unforgivable.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

​@@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli - Nope. the 'OS' on the xbox was nothing like Windows 98 (it was based on Windows 2000) - the ONLY reason you saw games like Half Life 2 on the OG XBOX? was because it was significantly more powerful than the other consoles at the time. 733MHz x86 processor with 64Mb of memory - PS2? 295MHz MIPS (RISC) with 32Mb and significantly less powerful GPU. It had nothing to do with similarity to the PC - the OG XBOX was simply the only console at the time powerful enough to run it.

[@VaterOrlaag]

"Todd Howard's information was correct." Now that's something you don't hear every day!

[@AlGhostZX]

It just works

[@roberte2945]

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies...

[@Krisztian5HUN]

16 times the reboot

[@Spiffo0]

He really hasnt lied as much as the internet claims he has. No clue why this meme is so popular.

[@matthewcb1970]

This *was* geeky and technical, but that's why we're here!

[@st0rmcat]

Also very vintage, yet modern!

[@Woodoosticka]

Is being geeky a problem MVG? :)

[@retropuffer2986]

MVG....Answering the questions we didn't even know needed answering!

[@cemsengul16]

I love this channel!

[@sabayonz]

Bruh i didn't even know about this but i glad he just show this and explain it very well

[@KryptsCorner]

Todd told us the answer months ago

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

So garbage collection sucks at its job so memory leak?

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

Someone needs to fix the broken ass depth buffer.

[@ZygalStudios]

This is fantastic! You should DEFINITELY continue with more of these investigative videos. It's so entertaining seeing an expert do what they do best!

[@kpervanidis1145]

Absolutely

[@MoultrieGeek]

Agreed. Most of this is slightly above my skill level but fascinating just the same.

[@nanoua27]

This would have been very handy for Skyrim on PS3 back in the days

[@Jonnygunboy]

I read they used a method of dipping into the 256mb system ram to help run the ps3 releases. Dunno if that's accurate though.

[@ghost.8836]

@Go Eagles A bunch of developers said the PS3 was really limited, so I'm not sure if it's their fault.

[@ghost.8836]

@Go Eagles I've heard that Valve had their complaints on the PS3 while porting The Orange Box to the platform.

[@ghost.8836]

That's why I said that it was limited, but still, thanks.

[@drunkonsuccess779]

@@ghost.8836 Indeed they did, Valve despised the PS3 for a while and eventually Gabe made a public make up when on stage at.. I think it was E3 announcing Portal 2 for the system, but they let EA handle all of their Playstation 3 ports.

[@StriderVM]

I do remember Nintendo doing a similar thing for Super Smash Brothers for 3DS.

[@jymfiskburk2256]

Yep remember reading about that somewhere, that even you can hear the click when that happens

[@lwvmobile]

I think Pokemon Sun/Moon and Ultra do those too, I've noticed the 3DS has an extended load, home, and application close, its almost like the 3DS is rebooting or something to load a custom kernel or something to free up extra memory.

[@nitrax8629]

This happens to boot the game into an extended memory mode on old 3DS consoles, limiting some functions of the home menu etc to free up more memory for the game application. This doesn't happen on new 3DS as these games just use the standard memory mode on those systems as they have more to begin with.

[@vincentvermilya1365]

Monster Hunter 4 did too. The textures are also lower res on the OG 3DS cause of RAM. The web browser was pretty potato anwyays, worth the RAM.

[@ArtisChronicles]

@@lwvmobile first time I tried to close ultra sun I thought my 3DS was about to shit the bed.

[@cellspeed8682]

Bethesda: "We can't do memory management so let's just turn the system off and on again." Microsoft: "Wanna join our family?"

[@michaelc5019]

I played hundreds of hours of Morrowind when it came out on Xbox. Staying up late. Best friend staying the night. Then jumping on Champions of Norrath on PS2 and then over to Phantasy Star Online.

[@kevinsanthosh3537]

I have been watching your stuff for quite a long time. But now I am pursuing my bachelor's in computer science and for the first time I understood each and every memory related term you used. And damn it felt good.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

Maybe you should get a job at Bethesda writing memory managers ;)

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

Hope you do some combinational logic circuit stuff like we do in Computer Engineering. Seeing what exactly goes into a building register (and doing timing diagrams and stuff) or I/O or just a basic flip flop really gives you a new appreciation for computers.

[@MrValsung]

@@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep anywhere online I could learn about this stuff for myself; or an introductory text on the subject?

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

@@MrValsung Ooh. That's a good one. All our stuff is from lecture notes. I'd say look up digital electronics tutorials online. Allaboutcircuits seems to have a good thing for it on their website.

[@Tubatasm]

As a casual computer science nerd, I really appreciate how well you explain what's going on. I know enough to understand logic loops and the like, and you do a fantastic job of scaffolding up from the base of knowledge. Thanks!

[@Petertronic]

The music in that game was so good.

[@alex.starostin]

for me Oblivion has the best music by far in the series

[@RodniDemental]

yes

[@adam1984pl]

Its only good thing anout ths game.

[@fensoxx]

@@adam1984pl man.. I know we all have different tastes but have you played it through? The game is so full of cleverness it’s a puzzle cube sometimes...for those that go looking.

[@dacukimonsta7157]

This level of technical detail is why I love this channel, keep up the good work! :)

[@midgetsparkle]

Hey, MVG, I just want to say thanks for what you do. I love all the gaming news and reviews that all the other channels give me. However, your unique content really fills this "gaming +" void and as my gaming knowledge grows, you're always there to show what keeps making the hobby fascinating. So thanks, mate!

[@youpoop9755]

Didn´t Oblivion had such function on the 360 if you held down the "A" Button when you boot up the Game? I did that a few times back then and it significantly improved the Gameplay stuttering. I think it´s documented somewhere, i have to research it.

[@starlitalpha7]

Oblivion kept a hard drive cache to help loading and such. Sometimes the data can get spread around the drive and cause long/infinite loading times. Holding the button while booting forces the game to make a new cache. It isn't necessary to do this every time you play, but if you're running into issues, it's definitely something to try!

[@igormoreno3464]

These reverse engineering and porting for the OG Xbox are my absolute favorites!

[@MonochromeWench]

An interesting trick to clean up memory fragmentation

[@Littlefighter1911]

They could have also just used SLAB allocators.

[@fieryfirevivin]

"Todd Howard is very much 100% accurate with words" Todd Howard - "IT JUST WORKS!"

[@Skulldude69420]

Fun fact: Morrowind was on the same engine as Dark Age of Camelot, which is an MMO from Mythic Entertainment (now Broadsword Entertainment, which is owned by EA)

[@jestahjava4255]

I love when you have technical videos like this. I have a software background but never got much into game development, homebrew development, etc but always wish I did more. It’s really entertaining watching how you work and also explain it well.

[@gumbaholic]

That's the kind of content we need on KZbin. Well researched, nicely explained, awesome and unique. Thanks!

[@bananachild1936]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="28">0:28</a> Rare footage of Todd Howard not telling sweet lies to his audiences' face.

[@saschadri]

Love how this was used to reveal the Indiana Jones game without anybody noticing. Watch how he leans to the left to give his cam a full view of the Indy items in his shelf, while dropping keywords like Xbox and Reboot. That's why everybody is laughing, because they know what he is doing.

[@sinenomine3449]

Man, your channel is amazing, thanks for supporting my curiosity and giving great advice, BTW you're also the reason I got a N2DS after that amazing homebrew beast episode, currently on a breath of fire 3 playthrough through retroarch, keep up the great work!

[@alex_dah]

This is the type of content depth why I'm subbed to you MVG. Loved the vid, awesome work!

[@DrFeederino]

I heard the reboot trick was used for Deus Ex Invisible War due to memory leak issues. So, instead of fixing them, they soft-rebooted the console on each level change.

[@Nursesaids]

This would explain why that game loved to hang at loading screens.

[@thegearknob7161]

Even the pc version does that. It drops back to the desktop every level load for a moment before reopening itself. Its a pretty obvious console port...

[@FloosWorld_AoE]

@@thegearknob7161 Same with Thief: Deadly Shadows

[@KopperNeoman]

@@thegearknob7161 wait until you hear about the memory management trick that X-Com UFO Defence used...

[@mathprodigy]

I did enjoy this a lot man! It's intriguing to think about. It's something counter intuitive, something we gamers never really suspected was occurring. We weren't even aware this was a concept until now. Bravo presentation

[@InsanePorcupine]

Wow that reboot explains a lot. I used to just play guitar in my load screens as a kid they were easily 10 minutes + in my late game world with a million things all over the ground.

[@RugerEnthusiast]

well that does sound like bethesda thing to do

[@FadNad0731]

Awesome video, so cool to see you digging into this, more please! Maybe consider doing a series about making an emulator ;) Heck maybe we'll even follow along!

[@baltasaronedge]

I enjoy your level of "geeky and technical" a lot. I find guided code reading very helpful.

[@maymayman0]

Id love to see more videos where you look through code and talk about your thought process doing so

[@simsluver]

This was another great video! Enjoyed it

[@snesiocat4033]

Dude the vid was uploaded one minut ago

[@snesiocat4033]

@@QuiveringQuasar solid point

[@ringbling420]

Great episode I was really curious about this.

[@bakedmuffinman87]

thank you for doing the break down. this has also been on my mind since todd howard mentioned it! and I was so happily surprised to see you were actually doing this video!

[@thatcriticvideo]

Awesome video, thanks for digging into this, I also was very interested after Todd mentioned it.

[@samuelmagilocusts2870]

I’m so glad you made this video! It’s so interesting that it would restart like that. I wonder which other console did that...

[@Nerevarine420]

Now this is a rumor i can sink my fangs into

[@everythingpony]

Its not a rumor

[@alexanderlee5180]

That's so cool man. Thanks for this deep dive! I've always been curious about stuff like this, namely game development and software coding and I hope to.get back into it soon. Love your vids man.

[@Zellio2011]

The 'rebooting during a new game' is most likely set in case someone makes a new character after playing awhile

[@Nursesaids]

Which given that Morrowind is what caused my Alt-aholism, is precisely what I would do a lot.

[@TravisStamper]

Thanks for the vid MVG. Great content. I like the deep dives.

[@CaptainSisqo]

Brilliant stuff, mate. Love your videos.

[@iKilledAppl3]

As a developer myself. This is an interesting way to handle memory fragmentation. Great detective work man! Love your videos

[@CHIPCORNFIELD]

awesome video bud, love your channel

[@Dorff_Meister]

Loved the sleuthing! Well explained and easy to follow.

[@oliverberning130]

I really love those more-in-depth videos. I could easily follow you (sure, my software engineering skills helps here). I really like that you do not simplify it way to much to satisfy the mass market. Many thanks, Dimitris!

[@ix8750]

I wish we were related or something lol your channel and everything you do is so awesome man.

[@SomeDude0881]

I wasn’t even expecting a new vid this early but I’m happy to see it. Anything about the OG Xbox is always interesting. It’s honestly still my favorite way to play morrowind with the pressure sensitive buttons and the weird look it has. Thank you!

[@jolness1]

This was awesome! MVG Mondays are the best!

[@iokaravas]

THE MUSIC /me gets chills :'(

[@TheBlueArcher]

best gaming tech channel ever. you always bring the coolest stuff and the technical explanations other channels don't.

[@digitalbitch9797]

Not too geeky or technical at all! Love seeing you go more in depth with stuff, you're honestly a great educator on this stuff man. Watching you break stuff down makes it easier to understand the technical side of things every time!

[@consulfix]

Awesome, thanks for the walk thru!!!!

[@fake12396]

Cracked IDA instead of Ghidra, quite a chad move. The scene roots are showing :D

[@erc0re526]

You decompiling an old Xbox game and poking around the exe and the documentation is just amazing and very instructing, please do more of those!!

[@MarkHyde]

Pretty cool video idea - great video :)

[@Trask899]

Fascinating topic to explore, love this kind of content!

[@RichardMaw]

I remember reading about this in the big interview about the history of Morrowind's development. The XBox developers were horrified by this hack. In retrospect it's a bit rich of them given what I've heard of the hacks that used to go into Safe Mode. One of the goals of Safe Mode was to make every attempt to work. If you've got a bug in your Mouse or Keyboard drivers though you're unable to do anything to fix the problem. Though the keyboard and mouse work during the BIOS so you can select the boot options. Back when USB keyboards and mice were new drivers would often be a problem, but the BIOS had to make them work so they have emulation to make USB look like PS/2. So it'd be convenient if we could get the BIOS to do that, right? Well, you can't just jump back into the BIOS. intel CPUs used to for compatibility reasons go from running in an 8-bit mode, through 16-bit until 32-bit, the BIOS runs in 8-bit mode and there's no instructions to go back. So… the Windows developers did something terrifying, they worked out a way to reboot the CPU. I don't understand all of the details, but the CPU has "fault handlers" for certain conditions, "page fault" is the one people may be most familiar with. They have the CPU jump into a bit of code to handle it, and store the address to return to in a register. There's a "double-fault" where something happens while handling a fault, but you've only got a limited number of registers, so a "triple-fault" exists for if you're faulting while handling a fault in a fault handler, which resets the CPU as unrecoverable. Memory maps aren't set-up on boot, boot code is expected to set it up, so Windows developers set up the memory maps to include code that would make operating system calls in BIOS mode for input or output then bootstrap back up into 32-bit mode and return to the Windows OS.

[@angolin9352]

Holy shit. "Hey, people might have problems with USB. Let's error the CPU out until it completely crashes, then have it do what we'd call a warm boot attack if anyone but us did it."

[@Alzter0]

​@@angolin9352 what's a warm boot attack?

[@angolin9352]

@@Alzter0 It's when you use an exploit that runs your payload from a "warm boot," when you start a computer that's already partially started (like choosing Restart from the Windows Shut Down menu - your computer doesn't go completely off before it starts again).

[@KopperNeoman]

@@angolin9352 It's only called an "attack" when done maliciously so as to not scare the laymen who don't know how to computer. Nobody's suing the guys who made the online patches for Ratchet and Clank III for utilising an RCE exploit to push the patches in a game not made to support updates of any kind.

[@markbevan5771]

I would love to see more of this type of content

[@sseb22]

Thank you This investigation was great!

[@paulanderson3772]

Love your work man. Many thanks.

[@RaycrowX]

Nice video MVG. As a software engineer myself, I really enjoy these types of investigations!

[@fro334bro]

Great analysis! Loved it...

[@duducorvao]

As a game dev, I love those debug videos! It's cool to see the in and outs of old code and the "secrets" they hold. Do more of these if you like!

[@masterquest91]

I like the higher level videos, but I love the deep dives you do for topics that absolutely warrant it like this one.

[@billybollockhead5628]

Lots of games did this on Xbox. It was usually quicker to do a soft hidden reboot than to clean up all your memory (and safer too as it was guaranteed to give you non fragmented memory afterwards)

[@Xedhadeaus]

I wouldn't have even questioned this rumor after playing it, and watching as the game crumbled under itself if you liked to drop things on the floor. This game needs as much space as possible at all times. At least the GOTY edition tried to save your data before it crashed. Launch version / greatest hits version? not so much. But not having a good computer at the time... This game alone made the Xbox worth it.

[@VeraTR909]

While my coding skill is very limited, it was easy to follow along. I really enjoy the insights you give into the cracking/modding/porting scene.

[@joey199412]

Great video. I really like seeing these sort of hacky solution.

[@drinkoftea4047]

Ayeee, MVG in the morning 😊

[@RodniDemental]

lol I could tell something looked different about the scene but not observant enough to have realised what it was XD

[@Boruno01]

Very cool Mr. Gamer. Keep it up!

[@solidsnakeandgrayfox]

I would love to see you cover timesplitters considering the 4k port was found inside.

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

Todd Howard very justifiably gets a lot of flack but I appreciate that he's still a game dev. Lots of gaming execs out there who aren't and don't understand the ins and outs of the job (AHEM CDProjekt)

[@Jereb343]

Thats an unfair comparison. Cdpr also has a ton of front facing actual devs. Maybe watch an interview with miles tost or phillip weber. Todd howard isnt a corporate executive.

[@KopperNeoman]

@@Jereb343 Had. While making Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED went full DEI, much like everyone else.

[@Beavernator]

Always knew about this, but VERY nice to see a deep dive into the process... We're missing these kinds of things with super powerful systems... Less creativity, and some of these workarounds end up benefitting the entire industry by introducing programming efficiencies... Thanks for the great videos and work...

[@4c1d]

Amazing content, as always

[@MrBmarcika]

I was hoping you'd recompile the executable, removing the reboot, and seeing what happens (if it's possible). Great video, as always!

[@cemsengul16]

Your Xbox catches fire 🔥😂

[@disk0__]

A timeless lesson: Always check the config file lol

[@HARDBEATZZZZ]

THUNDERDOOOOOOOME 👌🏽

[@lionfire3359]

Be careful modifying the config wil break the game and you will end up with a mess comparable to n64 graphics.

[@Danlovar]

@@HARDBEATZZZZ My favorite Tina Turner song.

[@fenderdude0bob109]

I have literally no idea what all the technical stuff is. That part of my brain doesn't seem to work....but I watch every one of your videos and love them.

[@DasAntiNaziBroetchen]

Your brain is fine. You're just lacking the software engineering basics.

[@REMEDY-REPAIRS]

Amazing content bro 👍🏾

[@1337ln]

MVG PLEASE do more Xbox SDK deep dives. There's so little content on this and you're our only hope!

[@ZachAttackIsBack]

Is your Real MVP podcast dead? Or just on extended hiatus? I see you haven't posted an episode in almost a year. I really enjoyed it and wish it would return.

[@luky11990]

I would actually be interested in seeing more detailed analysis on this

[@Tinkerer_Red]

This is really useful information, makes me wonder if Matt from Xemu knows about this.

[@nicholasallen9035]

I had met Michael McDonald from Day One Studios before and he said that the original Mech Assault used this trick as well.

[@showoffvideo]

This is really interesting. I'm guessing this function call would have been thought about/written when used for a compilation of games. Like the Sega GT 2002 / Jet Set Radio Future. Where you launch into a small menu, and then want to scrap memory for the small menu and re-boot into a different game. I didn't think this would be used to launch into the same game, but quite interesting.

[@Berny23]

Great in-depth explanation of the generated pseudocode! :D Did you actually buy IDA Pro just for this video?

[@morpheusdruidic2813]

A loot bag used to appear in the house you were using once you placed too many items down, after this loot bag would appear, even after picking everything up, the loot bag would eat anything you put down. To avoid this, you needed to save your game without leaving the area, reboot-load, then continue, then the infernal loot bag would not appear. Also this game ran the XBOX hot so if it was not in a well ventilated space, it would overheat and lockup. (I was an interior decorator once, then I took a...nvm)

[@devenwest8195]

Dang I loved this so much, I appreciate your skills so much as a student currently taking a reverse engineering and malware analysis course with IDA. I need more of it man!

[@felixdufour4764]

Love this, thank you very much! (no programming knowledge myself, but you made it understandable!)

[@Angel_00xiii]

Hey, you said in one of the spawncasts you have a degree in computer science and math, it’s really shows in these videos. The work you put into these for us is incredible :)

[@seanabsher5577]

I loved this video, MVG!

[@glitchwalker5422]

This was fascinating. Thank you

[@Thebackhouse97]

Great video MVG

[@Vanessaira-Retro]

Thank you MVG!