Donkey Kong's Famed Kill Screen Has Been Cleared For the First Time (arstechnica.com) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If you watched the 2007 documentary King of Kong or followed the controversy surrounding score-chaser Billy Mitchell, you know all about Donkey Kong's famous kill screen. For over four decades, no one was able to pass the game's 117th screen (aka level 22-1) due to a glitch in the game's bonus timer that kills Mario well before he can reach the top of the stage's girders. That was true until last weekend, when Mario speedrunner Kosmic shared the news that he had passed the kill screen using a combination of frame-perfect emulator inputs, a well-known ladder movement glitch, and a bit of luck. And even though Kosmic's trick is functionally impossible to pull off with human reflexes on real hardware, the method shows how the game's seemingly insurmountable kill screen actually can be overcome without modifying the code on an official Donkey Kong arcade board.
AI taking over (Score:2, Funny)
Re: AI taking over (Score:4, Insightful)
Ay? There was no AI used here...
Re: (Score:2)
First the programmers and now the gamers; All your base are belong to us
+1 Funsightful
Re: Question (Score:4, Informative)
It's mostly a tool assisted speedrun. kosmic has a video on his youtube channel where he explains it.
an official Donkey Kong joystick will not allow th (Score:3)
an official Donkey Kong joystick will not allow this to happen.
maybe if you wire in buttons to the joystick inputs but that is not allowed under TG rules.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:an official Donkey Kong joystick will not allow (Score:5, Informative)
an official Donkey Kong joystick will not allow this to happen.
Why would you think that? The glitch CAN be done by a human. The video even includes recording of a human trying to do it on real hardware, to explain why it likely will never happen in a world-record attempt in real life.
No illegal (diagonal) inputs of the kind that Fraud Billy Mitchell had at his disposal on his faked scores are required.
What's required for the ladder movement trick is a five-frame sequence of up and down inputs, repeatedly. The reason it's considered impossible is the necessity for a human to hold the joystick down for 4 frames and flick it up and down for one frame on a game running at 60 fps, for the minimum number of times (90) required to reach the height before the game's glitched timer runs out on that board.
Just 90 frame-perfect up/down sequences. It requires a human to operate perfectly in sync with the game for 7.5 seconds straight (since it's a 5-frame pattern at 60 FPS). And in real life, the human would also be getting pretty tired since this would be happening at the end of a world record attempt and they would have played all the previous boards without rest before reaching this point.
Re: (Score:1)
ill give it a year tops
Re: (Score:2)
Billy does not need an pardon he not in lockup and even won some of the court cases.
Re: (Score:3)
But our justice system these days is really just a vending machine the two people keep pumping quarters in
Re: (Score:2)
Just like real arcade machines actually. That simpsons skit about it was accurate.
The only reason we can do it these days is because emulators and such let us practice games with virtual millions of quarters to get good. In the past one either need to be rich enough to buy a machine for themselves to put into free play, or or know the owner of an arcade who cou
Re: (Score:2)
He can't pardon Billy Carter; he died over 25 years ago.
Re: (Score:3)
He can't pardon Billy Carter; he died over 25 years ago.
There have been cases where presidents have pardoned already deceased people. For example, Clinton and Bush the First have done so.
Re: (Score:2)
Give his payment time to make it to the blockchain.
back in 2007 someone modded the rom to fix it (Score:2)
http://donhodges.com/How_high_... [donhodges.com]
functionally impossible to pull off with human ref (Score:2)
challenge accepted
Re: Unlistenable (Score:2)
"Do you remember that?"
Re: Unlistenable (Score:2)
Get used to it. That's just part of the speech of young Americans, particularly on the West Coast. It isn't going anywhere.
only 2 games i rolled the credits on (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of older games were never-ending, they just sped them up until they hit the machine's limit. I once played Dig Dug until I gave up in boredom, because if you got to a certain point you couldn't help but gain enough points (they scaled with the level number) to get a spare life or finish the level before you'd get killed. I suppose if I'd held on long enough there'd have been a buffer overflow, but that's not the same as an end credit screen.
Not sure what console that was on, it wasn't mine, probabl
It can be done by a real human, (Score:1)