
Flappy Bird Clone Code Injected into Super Mario World for SNES by Hand - CameronBanga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0&feature=youtu.be&a
======
JoshTriplett
The idea that someone hand-input 331 bytes of code by this manual method
reminds me of a quote by Joey Hess on
[https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/ouch__33__/](https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/ouch__33__/)
, regarding the development of an RSA implementation in Perl that two people
got as a tattoo: "I remember sending that in, but until today I hadn't
realised that my keystrokes had actually translated into needle sticks for two
people, Youch!"

As the video mentions, the person who developed the 331-byte Flappy Bird
implementation specifically optimized it for code size, to make it easier to
enter by hand.

~~~
grenoire
It looks like it's not compromising functionality by the optimisations though.
I really like how the swimming physics and animations are used to replicate
the Bird's movements and mechanics.

~~~
shultays
That is also for the sake of optimzations though. It reuses swimming physics
and animations because it makes code shorter

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userbinator
It's more like "Flappy Mario", but I guess inputting the appropriate pixels
for the bird sprite would take long... the pipes, however, are perfect.

Still, it's amazing. Ridiculously impractical like those who build ship models
in bottles, but awesome nonetheless. Hopefully it'll also be inspirational
starting-off point for those wanting to learn more about how computers work. I
know many who started down the road to CS with this sort of "game hacking".

Relatedly, I also know of an instructor who does something somewhat similar
for the first class of his "intro to computing" course: he takes out a little
8-bit computer mounted on a breadboard with a few LEDs and pushbuttons, and
enters a few dozen machine instructions bit-by-bit, writing a short program
that causes the LEDs to flash in various patterns selected by the buttons. As
part of that demo, he also writes and runs a "Hello World" binary in Windows
Notepad --- entering each byte as ASCII characters. He says it's these sorts
of "unusual" demos that can most effectively get students' attention, and I
agree.

~~~
girvo
> _the pipes, however, are perfect_

You probably know this, but thats because the Flappy Bird pipes lifted Mario's
pipe sprite entirely!

~~~
panic
No, they didn't:
[http://i.imgur.com/mN2RMNy.png](http://i.imgur.com/mN2RMNy.png)

~~~
girvo
Fine, "heavily inspired by".

~~~
raverbashing
Using the direct sprite data would have been a massive IP violation

Drawing something similar can surely have people questioning it, but it might
be sufficiently different to (try to) avoid bigger complaints.

~~~
tamana
Not massive at all. The pipes are not a substantial creative artifact in their
own right.

An IP violation would require causing brand confusion or drawing sales away
from the original

~~~
Buge
You're thinking of trademark, which would require confusion.

Copyright is another type of IP, and does not require confusion. It only
requires copied content.

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hartator
He also did this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44)
(Also really impressive, I think this guy is a genius.)

~~~
panic
This is cool, though (due to overfitting) it's really just "memorizing" the
first level rather than learning how to play in general. It'd be interesting
to see the same technique with separate test and training data sets.

~~~
minimaxir
The overfitting problem is addressed in the followup:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iakFfOmanJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iakFfOmanJU)

~~~
stormbrew
I wonder if there is a way it could learn to get over that tall pipe in this
one. It might be sufficient for it to learn to deliberately attack any enemies
it finds, combined with its tendency to move right all the time. But I suppose
that might be too complex a set of actions for this.

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l-p
See PoC||GTFO 0x10 [1] for the writeup on "Pokémon plays Twitch chat", a
multi-staged hack that exploits Pokémon to exploit the Super GameBoy to
exploit the SNES to then display the Twitch chat.

Note that the PDF can be loaded directly as a LSNES input replay and reproduce
the exploit.

[1]
[https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo10.pdf](https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo10.pdf)

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beefsack
This was quite popular on Reddit when it was released.

Some discussion:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4capfm/explanation_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4capfm/explanation_on_the_first_human_made_snes_code/)

~~~
meanduck
This[1] was mentioned in its other thread. Not related to programming but the
amount of thought process went into it is just amazing.

[1] "SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)" :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A)

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mkoryak
Next time a watch a movie where they hack a computer by literally breaking an
animated firewall in cyberspace I promise not to cringe

~~~
digi_owl
I see it for what it is, eyecandy for the masses.

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colordrops
This is basically a remake of the movie The Matrix. He even flies at the end.

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beefsack
It's a little disappointing these types of games have become known as "Flappy
Bird clones" when Flappy Bird itself was just a clone of many other games
before it.

Any old Palm users remember SFCave?

~~~
ewmailing
I made this video in defense of Flappy Bird back when people were piling on
the game and the author. There are multiple points, but it starts with my
belief that people overstate the similarities to other semi-recent games and
simultaneously forget much older games. The video includes clips of video
games from the early 80s and even Space War! from 1962.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-W5CWj7Ic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-W5CWj7Ic)

~~~
partycoder
This is very accurate, thanks for doing this.

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cloudjacker
So instead of hacking a bank in Bangladesh, he makes Flappy Bird on SNES

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rollulus
Funny, I recall that I had a Game Genie [1] code which had exactly the same
effect!

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie)

------
golergka
Watching this I can't help but imagine a sci-fi scenario where surrounding
reality turns out to be virtual, with this kinds of bugs. Matrix and others
left this concept completely unexplored.

~~~
luso_brazilian
The Matrix, at least, didn't leave this concept unexplored.

There is this excellent series of short animations (The Animatrix), one of the
stories addresses this exact scenario.

You can watch it on Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruFE126Osrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruFE126Osrg)

The Animatrix is, IMO, the true sequel (and also, prequel) to the original
Matrix, it is very much worth a watch.

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acqq
The explanation of some of the glitches in the game used to enter the bytes:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4capfm/explanation_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4capfm/explanation_on_the_first_human_made_snes_code/d1guniz)

Also, what had to be discovered before:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4capfm/explanation_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4capfm/explanation_on_the_first_human_made_snes_code/d1gz13x)

Not easy to achieve the possibility to "use the glitches in the Matrix."

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petetnt
He also created a working phone with web browser and video calling in
Minecraft sometime back:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMH3wLuR9f0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMH3wLuR9f0)

~~~
Retr0spectrum
I think Verizon did most of the work on that one, not that he couldn't have
done it himself.

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vetrom
Blindly expected sethbling, got sethbling. Its interesting just how firmly
some reputations get built I think.

~~~
nkrisc
Well if it's some kind of crazy Mario related title, it's probably him.

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ccvannorman
This is the coolest thing I have _ever_ seen.

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staticelf
This is practically hollywood hacking IRL.

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kendallpark
There is no limit to human ingenuity.

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pacomerh
amazing tricks

~~~
pacomerh
Interesting that I get downvoted for genuinely liking this video. I guess you
where expecting some criticism or a longer excitement?

~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
Comments that provide no information or insight are generally downvoted.

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hathym
This is insane !

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vans
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y66UjBZN3K4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y66UjBZN3K4)

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raverbashing
Interesting hack but saying over and over "the first human to do blah blah
blah" seems awfully narcissistic

Yeah, I was probably the first human to do a lot of crap, doesn't mean I need
to self-aggrandize like that

~~~
cyphar
He said it once in a 6 minute video. Twice if you count saying "I don't think
anyone else has ever done this".

~~~
raverbashing
I had the impression he said it more times, but you know, it's a videogame
hack, not landing on the moon

~~~
RadicalRaid
I thought it was very impressive regardless. I'm sure it also took a lot of
research, planning, and a lot of failed attempts.

