TasBlock at AGDQ 2017: TASBot
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters rate it a great GDQ watch and point to its feats, such as streaming video and Skype through controller ports, as inspiring hacks.
What it is
A recording of the TASBot block at Awesome Games Done Quick 2017, where a robot plays games via tool-assisted speedruns, including Super Mario 64 and Portal on an SNES via arbitrary code execution, and ending with a Twitch Plays segment. It showcases console exploits and creative hardware hacking.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec pdkl95 · 2019-11 · on “NaN Gates and Flip FLOPS”
LOL... from "Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!"[1] (which is insa^Wbizza^Wa very creative hack): "The cartridge is the dual of the Nintendo." [1] [LINK] edit: for a very impressive variation on the SMW "joke" in [1], I recommend this[2] video of TASbot streaming Skype realtime to [2xNES, SNES+SuperGameBoy] through the controller ports . [2] [this video]
Strong rec zer01 · 2022-06 · on “Super Mario Bros. 3: “Game End Glitch” in 00:00.216”
I absolutely love speed runs and think they’re a great expression of the hacker mentality. To take a subtle bug in something like a physics engine and bend it to your will to eek out another 5s save off the world record is absolutely fascinating. Not to mention things like TASBot which always makes a great GDQ watch [this video] and got me interested in speed running in the first place!
Recommends gmueckl · 2025-02 · on “Diablo hackers uncovered a speedrun scandal”
He was the public figure for TASBot and TASVideos for a while (see [LINK] ). TASBot is really a beautiful idea to help visualize what tool assisted speedruns are doing via the controller button lights in TASBot's hands. I think DwangoAC and TASBot represented the TAS community at multiple events, not just GDQ. Tool assisted speedruns are remarkable to me because creating the authoring tools is hacking in the classic sense. And then there's the sheer insanity of exploiting broken game logic to gain arbitrary code execution solely via controller inputs. The most elaborate demonstration of this that I know of was given at AGDQ 2017, eventually injecting a video player into Zelda on SNES and str
Cites memco · 2021-11 · on “Zig monthly, October 2021: Games, gamedev, Elixir, tools and more”
I'm quite amazed how resilient games are to this. Like how SMB1 for the NES is capable of things like the minus worlds where you're more or less playing levels that don't exist because the game doesn't expect you to be reading memory past a certain point, but as long as the values are valid, it can still use it to some degree. There's more extreme situations like Super Mario Land 2 for the Game boy where it's possible for the game to present it's own memory on the screen and if you understand how it works you can do things like ask the game to execute the ending sequence [0]. At it's most extreme a series of TASes was presented in 2017 wherein multiple different hardware systems were linked
Cites Dylan16807 · 2022-04 · on “Portal for Apple II (2017)”
Assuming you're fine with using a $1 chip to make a TCP<->controller adapter, then you can make it work on SNES. [this video]