Even when crafty speedrunners figure out a way to magically skip over 95 percent of a beloved game, they’re usually stuck wasting time fighting through its finale (like in the famous route that teleports digital daredevils from the first dungeon to the final boss of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time). Last year, though, the wizards in the Super Mario World speedrunning community figured out a way to skip straight to the credits from within the game’s first level. A runner going by Jeffw356 was the first put it all together and pull it off, executing the trick in an emulated version of the game. Earlier this week, SethBling, known for his YouTube channel full of crazy Minecraft creations, became the first runner to nail the “Credits Warp” on an actual Super Nintendo console, proving the technique was possible outside of an emulator and legitimizing Jeffw356’s run as a world record (at 4 minutes and 59 seconds). He was also kind enough to commentate over the original video of his accomplishment in an attempt to explain the complicated glitch.
The trick requires the meticulous manipulation of objects in a way that essentially writes new program code from within the game. When the code is executed, the game freaks out and jumps straight to the credits—no Bowser killing required. It’s the same Inception-style programming principle that allows for the bizarre Mario World manipulations seen at the last few Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathons, like the time runners recreated Super Mario Bros. inside its SNES descendant.
A day after cracking the Credits Warp on console, SethBling did it again but faster, improving his time to 4:49 and snatching away Jeffw356’s world record. Regardless of whether one considers just making the credits appear “beating the game,” triggering the glitch is one hell of a feat to perform live, as evidenced by this other video where Mr. Bling practices it for six hours straight.
[via Kotaku]