The Biggest Myth in Speedrunning History

misinformation is unfortunately common whenever people talk about speedrunning myths such as glitches are cheating task spot is a machine learning Ai and speedrun being two words instead of one however one particular speedr running myth stands Above the Rest in terms of how widespread it is how widely accepted it is among the Casual audience and how much it continues to annoy speedrunners and tasers alike because it probably didn't even happen the myth that a cosmic ray from outer space caused a spontaneous upw warp that saved time in a Super Mario 64 speedrun now you've probably heard about this incident either from a YouTube video or even a meme posted on social media but in case you have no idea what I'm talking about boy do I have the story for you and if you end up enjoying this video don't forget to subscribe if you like speedrunning content thank you 10 years ago on September 21st 2013 a 70 star speedrun race between two Runners DOTA teabag and midboss took place the race itself wasn't particularly high-profile or notable but 54 minutes into the race something very strange happened DOTA teabag was in the middle of collecting red coins and ticktock clock when suddenly what the what the invisible wall what Mario warped straight up past the graded ceiling above him before falling on top skipping to climb up the platforms this anomaly was saved as a highlight on Tag's twitch Channel but wouldn't Garner much attention quite yet nearly 2 years later in 2015 veteran Mario 64 speedrunner kiman would stumble upon the DOTA teabag upwarp clip and was intrigued upw warps under different circumstances es had already been a well documented glitch where if Mario jumps into the very edge of a ceiling while also underneath a higher adjacent hangable ceiling Mario will snap to the higher hangable ceiling as long as a is still being held you can even see speed Runners performed this type of upw warp in Bowser and the fire sea to save time but this upw warp was different there were no hangable ceilings in tick tock clock and Mario didn't jump into the edge of a ceiling in fact he wasn't initiating a jump at all he was Landing from a previous one clearly this was not like any previously known upw warp curious for answers behind the anomaly he sent the clip to pan and coic 2012 a Tasser most well known for the a button challenge a massive tool assisted project which aims to collect all 120 stars in Mario 64 with as few a presses as possible naturally this caught Pano attention as again teabag ascended as he was Landing from a jump rather than initiating one this meant that if this new type of upw warp could be replicated and properly understood it could potentially be a new trick used to save more a presses however neither pan and coak or anyone else had any luck replicating it still seeking answers on August 4th 2015 pan and coak made a YouTube video about the mysterious TTC upwarp off offering a $11,000 bounty to anyone who was able to recreate it in the mopin 64 emulator and send Pan and coic the m64 file which contains the controller input data that could be played back in mopin not long after pan and coak published The Bounty announcement people in the YouTube comment section would begin to theorize what may have caused the sudden upwarp one theory that stood out was that a bit flip occurred in the game's memory that affected Mario's height which might explain such a drastic warp pan and coak would then test this hypothesis in a video uploaded to his secondary channel on August 6 in this video he tasked Tag's movement up until the upw warp where he then tested two different scenarios the first was warping Mario straight to the ceiling which didn't seem to quite match the original clip the second scenario instead modified the first bite representing Mario's height from C5 to C4 these are are hexadecimal bytes for 197 and 196 respectively and when this bite is written in binary you can flip the first bit to change it from 197 to 196 when pan and coak flipped this bit from 1 to zero it resulted in an upw warp that was visually similar to the DOTA teag clip although the comparison between the bit flip and the original clip was not a one toone match visually this would become the leading hypothesis for the TTC upw warp for the time being the question was if there was a bit flit what caused it and could it be replicated the mysterious circumstances surrounding the upwarp LED YouTube commenters to hypothesize some interesting theories like I don't know cosmic rays yeah this is where it all came from the theory goes that when cosmic rays reaches the Earth's atmosphere spere and they break apart into smaller ionized particles the radiation of the particle has the capability to flip a bit in a computer's memory which may result in a glitch known as a single event upset this theory is out there to say the least it's very rare that a bit flip from an ionized particle would affect something like a computer or a Nintendo 64 in a visually observable manner especially with something like a sudden upw warp that sticks out like a sore thumb there have been single event upsets in history where the cosmic ray theory is plausible given the circumstances but in the case of the TTC upw warp it's a bit of a leap in logic to assume that over a potential answer found in game or even a hardware malfunction pan and coak himself noted how outlandish he found the theory regardless no one was able to recreate the exact upw warp even as the 1000 Bounty garnered more outside attention the cause behind it remained a mystery years passed with no leads on the TTC upwarp solving this mystery was put on the back burner as tassor and the ABC crew focused on other projects cosmic rays remained a mere hypothesis and an unlikely one at that no sm64 expert 100% bought into that theory and on February 21st 2018 DotA bag left a comment on panin's bit flip comparison video that made cosmic rays seem all the more doubtful for what it's worth I often had to tilt my cartridge weird ways in order to get the game to start it seemed that I had it all the way pressed down sometimes it wouldn't start but if I pulled up on one side ever so slightly it would start just fine so if you think that's a possible factor it's worth considering that fact yeah I believe it is is worth strongly considering a faulty cartridge and console as a potential cause and that's what sm64 Tasser danebo did soon after danne bought DOTA teags Nintendo 64 and Mario 64 cartridge the next month he' performed some Hardware tests and messed around with it it was in a somewhat faulty condition but after running a few tests on the N64 nothing notable popped up and he was unable to recreate the upw warp a cartridge tilt would often lead to messed up animations audio and game crashes here I use a setup where what dirty or loose pin connections between the cartridge and the console are a more likely culprit though as somewhat recent anomalies were likely caused by such a faulty connection or cart slap which may lead to some sudden shifts in code here's some examples on August 1st 2018 a video from a Japanese Runner a Ami was posted on YouTube by another Japanese Runner Aki we can see that 17 minutes deep into a 70 star Speed Run Aogami falls off the cool cool Mountain slide during the penguin race upset he hits his console in frustration upon regaining his composure he jumps back into the painting except it didn't take him back to cool cool Mountain but instead Big Boo's haunt I bet you've never seen that happen before I'd say this is a very strong example of a cart slap another anomaly happened much more recently on January 21st 20124 at the start of a 16st star attempt speedrunner xandre experienced a very glitchy Sky effect out of the blue like literally where's the blue sky this persisted until he entered the castle the character animations in audio were fine and the Glitchy Sky effect did not happen in the other levels when xandre lost the Run he went back outside the castle to see if the sky was still messed up it was back to normal how strange xandre would also go on record to say that his N64 was particularly sensitive and susceptible to loose cart connections and even cart tilts it's worth noting that cartridge tilts themselves are not known to replicate up warps or flip bits but it's more plausible that a cart slap bad pin connections or even some other memory error was responsible for the Tik Tock Clock upw warp more likely than cosmic rays it's entirely possible that no bits were flipped at all because neither cart tilts nor slaps flip bits again without knowing the exact as placement of Mario's height in the DOTA teabag clip we have no confirmation that a bit flip even happened at all especially when you consider the condition of tags carton N64 the proof of concept video not matching exactly and the opinion of Experts of Mario 64 and the N64 Hardware but let's humor that possibility for a second what if a bit actually did flip in memory to cause the upw warp surely then it has to be a cosmic ray right well not really in fact another phenomenon occurred in tick tock clock again in May 2020 speedrunner dup doome was practicing Tik Tock Clock specifically the 100 Coin Star when suddenly one of the moving bars from above teleported downwards from where it's supposed to be not only that but throughout the VOD even during an actual speedrun attempt there would be some reoccurring graphical glitches with Mario's Shadow and Tik Tock Clock after dup doome uploaded the clip and stream VOD to YouTube sm64 expert quate began to investigate and wrote up a Google doc trying to make sense of everything the sm64 tassin community investigated dup Do's footage and managed to recreate the moving bar warp by flipping one specific bit they even did the same for one of the weird onef frame extended Shadow glitches showing that bit flips were a likely cause for some of the weird glitches on dup's N64 but don't get it twisted this does not mean that it was was a single event upset caused by cosmic rays especially if multiple bits may have been flipping in fact this was not the only recorded time dup doome saw that same moving bar down warp for no apparent reason it happened again clearly this had to be a deeper hardware error of some kind causing these reoccurring glitches taking into account that dum dones N64 appeared to have frequent bit flip errors including two separate instances of the moving bar down warping there is significantly more evidence pointing towards a malfunctioning memory cache to have caused all those glitches that or some other Hardware related error is far more likely of a theory than cosmic rays hi there the editor here if we were to still humor the bit flip Theory there is a possibility that it could be some other type of interference for instance electromagnetic interference something as common as a power surge May potentially be to blame for the causes of bit flips and if you listen to teabag surroundings during the race there is a lot of construction going [Music] on what the if it was that perhaps someone could do something to recreate it though I will admit even when trying to use a high-powered food processor next to the N64 to get something to happen nothing did there have even been recent mysterious down warps that were probably not caused by a bit flip on December 8th 2022 Peruvian speedrunner ian1 1243 experienced a strange down warp in Bowser in the fire sea during a run this down warp was not caused by any currently documented methods and is still considered an unsolved mystery but we know for a fact that it wasn't a bit flip because the vertical displacement is estimated to have been around 900 units bits in memory represent exponential powers of two when a bit is flipped it adds or subtracts a value representing a clean power of two to a bite in memory the closest power of 2 to 900 is 1,24 but according to the experts Mario doesn't seem to be displaced by that much from the sudden down warp making a bit flip highly unlikely so if sm64 experts were able to come up with more realistic theories for the TTC upwarp based on DOTA teabags faulty Hardware other similar anomalies and their own understanding of the game and the N64 architecture why did the cosmic ray Theory suddenly spread across the internet as if it actually happened the answer is bad gaming journalism on September 16th 2020 an article covering DOTA teabags Tik Tock Clock upw warp titled how an ionizing particle from outer space helped a Mario speedrunner save time was published on the gamer based on the gamer's previous video coverage of speedruns you know you're in for a real treat a gamer with a tag of funilla sm64 Dives jumps and bursts through multiple levels as he makes seemingly impossible jumps objection that's why we've compiled a list of 10 video game speedruns that will never be beaten anyways the article gives a recap of the upw warp what makes it different from a normal upwarp and the $1,000 Bounty from pan and coic 12 and then makes the Bold claim that the upw warp was certainly caused by an ionizing particle citing pan and coic 12 and his comparison video claiming it was 100% confirmed that it was a bit flip the author States it with so much confidence that it is 100% confirmed that they ignored the part in the video description where it states that the glitch is not solved and the idea of a cosmic ray is a bit far-fetched and thus began a classic game of telephone on February 7th 2021 a tweet containing an excerpt from the gamer article went viral getting 32,000 likes and over 5,000 retweets bringing a lot of attention to not only the TTC upw warp once again but now the cosmic ray Theory as well this unlik likely Theory began to spread across the internet as if it was a proven fact much to the Chagrin of many members of the speedrun community who had more context than the general public did later that week news articles from various gaming and pop culture Publications began to post articles about the TTC upw warp caused by cosmic rays Theory many of them regurgitating info from the gamer article typos included this topic became even more widespread on August 31st 2021 when the popular educational YouTube channel veritasium published the universe is hostile to computers a video that discusses cosmic rays and how ionized particles from said cosmic rays can affect computers by flipping bits it has 20 million views for the most part it is a very well-made and well researched video citing various academic journals anecdotes of real world events and the gamer uh-oh yeah there's a short minute and a half segment about the Tik Tock Clock upw warp using the gamer article and panic cook 12's proof of concept video as an example of a bit flip definitely happening thanks to a cosmic ray as you could imagine with it being featured in such a popular video it spread around the internet like a wildfire again more news articles covering the TTC upwarp were then published including one from PC gamer that erroneously claims that pan andoa came out with proof 6 years after he put out the Bounty that it was caused by cosmic ray every so often you'll see the occasional cosmic rays affecting my Mario 64 speedrun meme either on Twitter Reddit I funny you name it people see these memes and then find out about the Tik Tok clock upw warp and assume that it was just caused by a random cosmic ray unaware that it just isn't true the mystery was never solved yet it is being touted as such to this day members of the Mario 64 Community are annoyed by the memes and misinformation whenever the topic goes viral yet again all the while oblivious internet users keep unknowingly spreading around the biggest myth in speedrunning history shout outs to the Super Mario 64 tasting Community for their incredible documentation over the years as well as ukip pedia for being such an incredible Wiki for Mario 64 speedrunning mechanics glitches Etc thanks to the pages related to the history of the TTC upw warp and unsolved glitches I was able to hopefully create a comprehensive video about this Hot Topic shout outs to stick for info on aami's cart slap and cart slaps in general special shout outs to the glitch doctor for assisting with research and editing this video thank you so much for watch watching and remember to shoot for the Moon

Channel: LunaticJ

Views: 755,052

Keywords: speedrun, spedrun, speedrunner, speed run, speed running, speedrunning, speed runner, mario, lunaticj, lunatic j, glitch, wr, world record, nintendo, super mario 64, mario 64, sm64, m64, cosmic ray, cosmicrays, cosmic rays, pannenkoek, pannenkoek2012, ttc

Id: vj8DzA9y8ls

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2024