It’s time to legitimately start making some money playing video games by helping out the speedrunning community.
As you know, speedrunners take advantage of all sorts of glitches and tricks to make their way through games, and Super Mario 64 is one of the most popular speedrun game in existence. For a long time, we thought we had that game perfected, but new data suggests we could go even faster. How?
The secret lies in a video uploaded by Twitch user DOTA_TeaBag. While playing a game of Super Mario 64 on a stream, Teabag ended up warping, strangely, immediately upward. The glitch took place in the Tick Tock Clock level, near the area with rotating platforms and a grate overhead. The platforms were frozen due to the clock being at 12 when entering the stage. Teabag jumped up to one of the platforms, performed a kick, and then landed, only to zip upward through the stage. The stage, for some reason, treated Mario as if he was falling from a high distance, as he took damage after the strange warp.
Mario 64 has some strange artifacts in its coding that sometimes make Mario warp up and down in levels. Usually, this is when Mario is at the border of two different surfaces. When this occurs, the game tries to process the properties of both surfaces at once. This is what has lead to the only upward glitch we know of now, otherwise known as the pole glitch. This occurs when Mario jumps into a ceiling, while being below another adjacent hangable ceiling. The game reads that he has both jumped into a ceiling and is below a hangable ceiling at the same time, and so he is warped up to the hangable ceiling.
But in this new glitch, Mario wasn’t jumping upward. Instead, he was landing. The game somehow caused Mario to fall through the platform and continue falling higher up in the level. This is what makes this glitch so weird.
Thus, pannenkoek2012 is offering a $1000 bounty to anyone who can reproduce the glitch and record it as it’s happening. He wants users to use Mupen, an N64 emulator and debugger. Then, we can look at the code as the glitch happens and can figure out why it happens, allowing us to later exploit it in speedruns.
The first person to send him a .m64 and .st file detailing the glitch will get $1000 from his own pocket money.
Further details about the challenge can be found on his official YouTube video detailing the challenge.
Here are pannenkoek2012’s direct comments on the challenge:
Recently, a video by twitch user DOTA_TeaBag was brought to my attention, in which he did an upwarp in Tick Tock Clock. I believe this is a new, unexplored glitch, but unfortunately I have been unsuccessful at recreating it myself. Thus, I’m putting a bounty of $1000 on the glitch. In other words, the first person to recreate the glitch and send it to me will earn $1000 from me.
The submission should be a .m64 and .st file, which when played perform the glitch. To submit, you can zip up these files, upload to TinyUpload.com, and then send me the link in a comment or private message. The bounty will hold until the first person successfully submits a recreation of the glitch, at which point I will add the word [CLAIMED] to the end of this video’s title, and then no one else will be eligible for the prize.
Helpful downloads (a savestate in the TTC room on the Japanese version and an MHS file showing the ceiling currently above Mario):
DOTA_TeaBag’s original video of the glitch:
http://www.twitch.tv/dota_teabag/c/2975430
The song I used at the end was a Benny Hill Techno Remix Demo made by Dj Freshwinter, which you can find here:
Additional Notes:
(1) Some people are wondering why the spinners are rotating instead of being still. You must enter Tick Tock Clock when the long hand is at 12 for the objects in the course to be still.
(2) I’ve been told others have reuploaded this video. Basically, the bounty is awarded to the first person to submit a valid recreation of the glitch. If you submit your entry to someone else and they send it to me, then that person will earn the bounty. I’m not responsible for tracking down the original creator of the .m64; I award whoever sends it in, as is said in the rules. So don’t submit to someone else.
(3) Your submission should be a .m64 file and a .st file that Mupen64 can play. Anything else (such as .avi, .rec) is not valid. So don’t use Project64 or Bizhawk.
(4) I’ve heard of and thought of every theory in the book. Maybe it was the bob-omb, the bob-omb’s explosion, the bob-omb’s coin, when Mario hits the corner, when Mario presses the wall, when Mario hits his head on the spinner, when Mario touches the other corner, when Mario lands at the edge, being under certain ceilings, etc. Telling me you believe one of these is the cause is not very helpful. I’m looking for hard evidence.