BUILDING A BETTER TETRIS — Hackers discover how to reprogram NES Tetris from within the game

[entremet]

Earlier this year, we shared the story of how a classic NES Tetrisplayer hit the game's "kill screen" for the first time, activating a crash after an incredible 40-minute, 1,511-line performance. Now, some players are using that kill screen—and some complicated memory manipulation it enables—to code new behaviors into versions of Tetris running on unmodified hardware and cartridges.

Click to shrink...

We've covered similar "arbitrary code execution" glitches in games like Super Mario World, Paper Mario, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the past. And the basic method for introducing outside code into NES Tetris has been publicly theorized since at least 2021 when players were investigating the game's decompiled code (HydrantDude, who has gone deep on Tetris crashes in the past, also says the community has long had a privately known method for how to take full control of Tetris' RAM).

Click to shrink...

TDLR: you can reprogram NES Tetris using naming and inputs in the high score table. Crazy!

Hackers discover how to reprogram NES Tetris from within the game

New method could help high-score chasers trying to avoid game-ending crashes.

arstechnica.com

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOES2XTqT74

 

[RadzPrower]

Me and my middle son sat in bed and watched this before we went to bed last night. Very interesting if you're passingly familiar with assembly coding.

 

[adj_noun]

This stuff is modern day alchemy.

 

[julia crawford]

This stuff is modern day alchemy.

Click to shrink...

Hmm. Well it's just bugs really. And people who are very interested in finding them.

Sorry, it's still impressive, that was too cynical of me to say.

 

[TeenageFBI]

You can do some crazy stuff with arbitrary code execution and a device that automatically enters controller input. The most impressive thing I've seen is shown in this Ocarina of Time speedrun:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x_pqyrf9lA&pp

Looking forward to seeing what the community does with this exploit.

 

[DrFunk]

Code injection is so cool. Since Super Mario World is so buggy there's a ton of videos of it in action:

SNES Super Mario World "arbitrary code execution" by Masterjun in 02:25.19

Publication [2513] from 2014-01-12

tasvideos.org

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0&ab_channel=SethBling


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voL3e0iqugo&ab_channel=SethBling

 

[adj_noun]

Hmm. Well it's just bugs really. And people who are very interested in finding them.

Click to shrink...

While alchemy didn't actually work in the magical sense, the idea was that if you applied exact steps in a particular order, you'd achieve wonders beyond what was ostensibly achievable in the natural world.

That's where I see the connection.

 

[julia crawford]

While alchemy didn't actually work in the magical sense, the idea was that if you applied exact steps in a particular order, you'd achieve wonders beyond what was ostensibly achievable in the natural world.

That's where I see the connection.

Click to shrink...

That's fair. I guess the difference for me is that we understand each step rather than following a set of instructions that results in an unexpected result without understanding the underlying steps.

But i have made too much of a bore of myself! Yes it's magical and cool i agree.