Alright so this is a weird one, but it seemed too cool not to post. Apparently, the Flappy Bird phenomena is alive and well, at least inside of the Super Nintendo code injection scene. If you haven’t been following all this, strap in for some raw insanity- The extreme cliffsnotes version of how this works is that by doing specific things inside of Super Mario World on a Super Nintendo, you can bits to specific memory addresses inside of the game. Write enough of those bits, execute ’em, and, well, you’ve got yourself another program running inside of Super Mario World. Most of the more elaborate code injections using this method have been tool assisted, which is cool, but nowhere near as cool as what SethBling did yesterday: Programming Flappy Bird, by hand, using nothing more than a Super Nintendo, Super Mario World, and a few SNES controllers:
If you want to watch the entirety of this run in realtime, you can watch the Twitch archive, and if you’re curious as to how all this works there’s an extensive Google Document that explains everything in shocking levels of detail. I just think it’s crazy that of all the things they could’ve injected into Super Mario World, it’s Flappy Bird that was decided on. It really makes you wonder when the cultural significance of Dong Nguyen’s creation is going to fade, or if it ever will. Either way, stuff like this is super awesome, and easily among my favorite things about the internet.
Also, while totally unrelated, if you appreciate this level of craziness when it comes to doing wild things in old video games, watch this video on completing a Super Mario 64 level in 0.5 A presses.
