The Biggest Myth in Speedrunning History

Unfortunately, misinformation is common when people talk about

myth

s about

speedrunning

, such as glitches being cheats, homework spot being a machine learning AI, and speedrun being two words instead of one, however a

myth

.

speedrunning

stands out above the rest in terms of how widespread it is and how widely accepted. is among the casual audience and how much it still bothers speedrunners and tasers alike because the myth that a cosmic ray from outer space caused a spontaneous upward warp that saved time in a Super Mario speedrun probably never even happened. 64 now You've probably heard about this incident through a YouTube video or even a meme posted on social media, but in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, I have the story for you and if you end up enjoying this video, don't do it.

Don't forget to subscribe if you like speedrunning content. Thank you. 10 years ago, on September 21, 2013, a 70-star speedrun race took place between two DOTA racers teabag and the midboss. The race itself wasn't particularly notable or notable, but 54 minutes passed. race, something very strange happened. The DOTA teabag was in the middle of collecting red coins and the ticking clock when suddenly what was the invisible wall that Mario warped upwards past the level ceiling above him before falling on top jumping to climb onto the platforms ? This anomaly was saved as a highlight on Tag's Twitch channel, but it didn't draw much attention yet, almost 2 years later in 2015, veteran Mario 64 speedrunner Kiman stumbled upon the upward warp clip of the DOTA teabag and was intrigued by the upward warps in different circumstances, it had already been a well.

Documented glitch where if Mario jumps to the edge of a roof while also under an adjacent higher hanging roof, Mario will latch onto the higher hanging roof as long as he is still supported, you can even see the speed. The racers performed this type of upward warp in Bowser and the Sea of ​​Fire to save time, but this upward warp was different, there were no hanging ceilings in the ticking clock and Mario did not jump to the edge of the ceiling, in fact, he did not. was initiating a jump at all, it was landing. previous one clearly this was not like any previously known upw warp curious for answers behind the anomaly sent the clip to panoramic and coic 2012 a Tasser best known for the one button challenge a massive tool assisted project that aims to collect all 120 stars In Mario 64, with as few keystrokes as possible, naturally, this caught Pano's attention, as again the teabag ascended as he landed on a jump instead of starting one, this meant that if this new type of upward warp could be replicated and understood properly, it could potentially be a new trick was used to save more presses, however neither Pan and Coak nor anyone else had any luck replicating it.

I'm still looking for answers August 4, 2015. Pan and Coak made a video on YouTube about the mysterious TTC upwarp offering an $11,000 reward to anyone who did it. able to recreate it in the mopin 64 emulator and send pan and coic the m64 file containing the controller input data that could be played in mopin shortly after pan and coak posted the Bounty announcement, people in the comments section from YouTube would begin to theorize what may have caused the sudden deformation, one theory that stood out was that a small change occurred in the game's memory that affected Mario's height, which could explain such a drastic deformation and then they tested this hypothesis in a video uploaded to his secondary channel on August 6, in this video, he mapped Tag's movement to the upward warp, where he then tested two different scenarios.

The first was transporting Mario directly to the ceiling, which didn't seem to quite match the original clip. The second scenario modified the first bite it represents. Mario's height from C5 to C4 are hexadecimal bytes for 197 and 196 respectively and when this bit is written in binary, you can flip the first bit to change it from 197 to 196 when bread and coak flipped this bit from 1 to zero. in an upw warp that was visually similar to the DOTA teag clip, although the comparison between the bit flip and the original clip did not match visually, this would become the main hypothesis for the TTC upw warp for the time being, the question was whether there was an There's a bit of confusion about what caused it and could the mysterious circumstances surrounding the warp-up LED be replicated?

YouTube commenters hypothesized some interesting theories like I don't know about cosmic rays, yes this is where it all came from, the theory says that when cosmic rays reach the Earth's atmosphere and break up into smaller ionized particles . The particle's radiation has the ability to spin around a bit in a computer's memory, which can result in a failure known as a single event. This theory is there, to say the least. It's very rare for a small change in an ionized particle to affect something like a computer or a Nintendo 64 in a visually observable way, especially with something like a sudden upward deformation that sticks out like a sore thumb.

There have been unexpected events in

history

where the cosmic ray theory is plausible given the circumstances, but in the case of the TTC upward warp it is a small logical leap to assume that about a possible answer found in the game or even a malfunction. of the hardware, Pan and Coak itself noted how extravagant it found. Regardless of the theory, no one was able to recreate the exact upward warp even as the 1000 Bounty attracted more outside attention. The cause behind this remained a mystery. Years passed with no clues about TTC's upward deformation to solve this mystery. the ABC team focused on other projects, cosmic rays remained a mere hypothesis and unlikely, no sm64 expert believed 100% in that theory and on February 21, 2018, DotA bag left a comment on the video of Panin bit comparison that made cosmic rays seem like all the dubious stuff it's worth, I often had to tilt my cartridge in strange ways to get the game to start, it seemed like I had it pressed all the way down, sometimes it wouldn't boot, but if I ever lifted it to the side. so slightly, it would start out fine, so if you think that's a possible factor, it's worth considering that fact.

Yes, I think it's worth seriously considering a faulty cartridge and console as a potential cause and that's what sm64 Tasser danebo did shortly after danne bought DOTA. Teags cartridge for Nintendo 64 and Mario 64 the following month did some hardware testing and playing around with it, it was in a somewhat faulty condition but after doing some testing on the N64 nothing notable appeared and couldn't recreate the upward warp. A tilt of the cartridge would often result in messy animations, audio, and game crashes. Here I use a setup where dirty or loose pin connections between the cartridge and console are a more likely culprit, as the somewhat recent anomalies were probably caused by a faulty connection. or a cart slap that can cause some sudden code changes.

Here are some examples. On August 1, 2018, another Japanese runner, Aki, posted a video of a Japanese runner, Ami, on YouTube. We can see him 17 minutes away from a 70-star speed race, Aogami. he falls off the mountain slide during the penguin race in annoyance, slams his console in frustration as he regains his composure, jumps back into the painting, except it didn't take him back to the mountain, but to Big Boo's shelter. I bet so. He had never seen that before. I would say this is a very strong example of a bandwagon slap. Another anomaly occurred much more recently, on January 21, 20124, at the beginning of a 16th star attempt.

Speedrunner Xandre experienced a Sky effect with many glitches out of nowhere like literally where is the blue sky? This persisted until he entered the castle. The audio character animations were fine and the Glitchy Sky effect didn't occur in the other levels. When Xandre lost the race, he left the castle again to see if the sky was still messy. he was back to normal, how strange that xandre also went on record that his N64 was particularly sensitive and susceptible to loose carriage connections and even carriage tilts. It's worth noting that cartridge tilts themselves aren't known to replicate warping or flipping, but it's more plausible that a carriage slap, bad pin connections, or even some other memory error was responsible for the Tik watch Tock will warp upward more likely than cosmic rays.

It's very possible that no bits were flipped at all because neither the cart tilts nor hits the bits again without Knowing the exact location of Mario's height in the DOTA teabag clip, we have no confirmation that a small flip occurred. change, especially considering the condition of the N64 cardboard labels, the not-exactly-matching proof-of-concept video, and Mario's expert opinion. 64 and N64 hardware, but let's joke about that possibility for a second, what if a bit actually changed in the memory to cause the warp up? Surely then it has to be a cosmic ray, well not really, in fact another phenomenon occurred in the ticking 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 down from where it was supposed to be, not only that, but throughout the entire the VOD, even during a real speedrun attempt, there would be something. Recurring graphical glitches with Mario's Shadow and Tik Tock Clock after dup doome uploaded the clip and streamed VOD to YouTube. sm64 expert quate started digging and wrote a google doc trying to make sense of everything the sm64 tassin community dug into the dup Do images and managed to recreate the moving bar deformation by flipping a specific bit, they even did the same for one of the strange extended shadow glitches from the onef box that shows that bit flips were a likely cause of some of the strange glitches on dup's N64, but don't twist it like that.

It doesn't mean it was a single event caused by cosmic rays, especially if several bits may have been flipped. In fact, this wasn't the only time on record that dup doome saw that same bar moving down for no apparent reason, it clearly happened again. There had to be a deeper hardware bug of some kind causing these recurring crashes, considering that dum dons N64 seemed to have frequent bit flipping errors, including two separate instances of the moving bar warping down. There is much more evidence pointing towards cache malfunction. have caused all those crashes or some other hardware-related error, it is much more likely to be a theory than cosmic rays.

Hi Editor, If we were still pandering to the bit flipping theory, there is a chance it could be some other type of interference. For example, electromagnetic interference, something as common as a power surge, can potentially be the culprit in causing bit flips, and if you listen to the surroundings of the tea bags during the race, there's a lot of work going on. What if maybe someone could do it? something to recreate it, although I admit, even when I tried using a high powered food processor next to the N64 to make something happen, nothing, there haven't even been recent mysterious warps that probably weren't caused by a small change on December 8th . 2022 Peruvian speedrunner ian1 1243 experienced a strange downward warp on Bowser in the sea of ​​fire during a race.

This downward deformation was not caused by any currently documented method and is still considered an unsolved mystery, but we know for sure that it wasn't one at all. 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 that represents a clean power of two to a bite in memory. The closest power of 2 to 900 is 1.24, but according to experts, Mario doesn't seem to be displaced that much by the sudden downward warp, making a small twist very unlikely, so if experts in sm64 could come up with more realistic theories for TTC's upward warp based on DOTA Teabags Faulty hardware other similar anomalies and their own understanding of the game and N64 architecture why the cosmic ray theory suddenly spread across the internet as if it really happened the answer is bad gaming journalism on September 16, 2020 an article covering DOTA Tik Tock Clock tea bagsupw warp titled how an ionizing particle from outer space helped a Mario speed racer save time was posted about the player based on the player's previous video coverage of speed racing, you know you're in for a real treat, a player with a funilla sm64 tag Dive, jump and explode your way through multiple levels while making seemingly impossible jumps.

That's why we've compiled a list of 10 video game speedruns that will never be surpassed anyway, the article gives a summary of the upw warp, what makes it different from a normal upwarp. and pan and coic 12's $1,000 reward and then makes the bold claim that the upward warp was indeed caused by an ionizing particle, citing pan and coic 12 and their comparison video claiming it was 100% confirmed that it was a little invested, says the author. with so much confidence that it is 100% confirmed that they ignored the part of the video description where it says that the glitch is not fixed and the idea of ​​a cosmic ray is a bit far-fetched and thus began a classic game of telephone.

On February 7, 2021, a tweet containing an excerpt from the player's article went viral, garnering 32,000 likes and over 5,000 retweets, bringing a lot of attention to not only TTC's upward warp once again, but also to the theory of cosmic rays and to this unlikely theory. spread around the internet as if it were a proven fact, much to the chagrin of many members of the speedrun community who had more context than the general public, later that week, news articles from various games and pop culture. Publications began publishing articles about the TTC. Upward warping caused by cosmic rays Theory, many of them regurgitating information from the player's item.

Typos included this topic. This topic became even more widespread on August 31, 2021 when the popular educational YouTube channel veritasium.the universe is hostile to computers published a video discussing cosmic rays and how the ionized particles of said cosmic rays can affect the computers flipping bits has 20 million views for the most part it's a very well made and well researched video that cites various academic journals anecdotes of real world events and the player uh-oh yeah there's a short one and a half minute segment about the upward warping of the Tik Tock watch using the player's article and the Panic Cook 12 proof-of-concept video as an example of a small change that definitely happens thanks to a cosmic ray, as you can imagine, appearing in a video so popular, it spread across the Internet like wildfire again.

More news articles covering TTC's upward warp were then published, including one from a PC gamer wrongly claiming that pan andoa presented evidence. 6 years after I posted the Bounty that was caused by cosmic rays, from time to time you will see occasional cosmic rays affecting my Mario 64 speedrun meme on Twitter Reddit. It's funny, whatever, people see these memes and then find out. Tik Tok's watch warps and assumes it was caused simply by a random cosmic ray without realizing that is simply not true, the mystery was never solved but is promoted as such to this day, community members of Mario 64 are upset by memes and misinformation every time the topic goes viral once again, while unwitting internet users continue to unknowingly spread the

biggest

myth in speedrunning

history

.

Shout out to the Super Mario 64 tasting community for their amazing documentation over the years, as well as ukip pedia for being such an awesome Wiki for Mario 64 speedrunning mechanics glitches, etc. Thanks to the pages related to TTC upw warp history and unresolved bugs, I was hopefully able to create a comprehensive video on this hot topic. and car-slapping in general, a special thanks to the failure doctor for helping with the research and editing of this video. Thank you very much for watching and remember to shoot for the Moon.