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[nkarafo]

Well... This will probably blow your mind.

So what this does, basically, is that with the right combination of buttons pressed (at the right speed also) you can completely change the game you are playing to something else.

For instance, you don't like Super Mario World? Let me turn it to a Pong game for you....




You can even go as far as create new assets and sounds that didn't exist before in the game you are playing. Go to 50:44.




Apparently, these TASers created this cut-scene while playing an original, unmodified OOT cart. Doesn't matter if the graphical assets or the voice files that you see and hear don't exist in the cart. They coded all that shit in RAM, using the buttons from the controller.


So how far can this go? Can you play any random game, say Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation, and turn it to DOOM or something? Without removing the disk or uploading any new assets or anything? All the programming, physics, graphics, music, etc, all created on the fly in RAM, by using controller inputs? Now that would be a neat party trick for the centuries. And yes, people more knowledgeable than me say it's theoretically possible.

I almost can't wrap my head around this. I'm now waiting for someone to post how wrong i am and it's not exactly how i think it works and that i'm not understanding this correctly...


Edit: A more informative (and technical) video about how this works, i'm sure 3 people will understand it:

 

[Three]

I'm both confused and impressed at the same time.

 

[hybrid_birth]

 

[Holammer]

Kaze mentioned it in his most recent video where he talks about a recently found critical vulnerability in Project 64.

 

[ShadowLag]

Yeah, that's some magical and fascinating stuff when applied to games. It just goes to show you how fragile computer systems really are. Don't listen to anyone that tries to sell you on something as being "unhackable", no matter what kind of hardware or software it is - that's used car salesman talk. There will always be ways to get into the system such as these.

 

[Sleepwalker]

All I can say is wow.

 

[Hrk69]

This doesn't blow my mind

 

[ReBurn]

I could see SNES having vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution. Setting up what appears to the console to be 8 controllers and using that pipeline to hammer instructions into RAM the game has access to is extremely clever.

This was an interesting read. https://tasvideos.org/3957S

 

[Kiya's Guard]

Some games are more prone to ACE than others. A really funny one was speedrunning paper mario using OoT

 

[Maddoxswe]

As a computer engineer it doesnt blow my mind, whats impressive is the time they put in it.

 

[nkarafo]

A really funny one was speedrunning paper mario using OoT

 

[Drew1440]

Isn't this how modchips and Xbox softmods work? They overload a buffer and start running unsigned code, allowing you full access to the hardware.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Only impressive to soydevs.