Metroid ※ Cracking VG Passwords S2e2

I love love love the fact you used Compiler Explorer for this :) Thanks for the amazing video :)

When your bus driver helps you with your C++ exam while drives you there.

This episode: Casually looking at the code compilers produce, finding a bug, getting it fixed; Going deep into the inner workings of the NES and the game; ...And all that in a soothing voice we all like

First! Wow, this video took much longer to make than I anticipated. Almost two months. In any case, there are hand-written English captions for it as usual. Enjoy! EDIT: And as usual, YouTube is only giving 360p quality when the scheduled publication (I set a 30-minute timer) comes up. Oh well. Nothing I can do but wait. I uploaded in 4K 60fps.

ENGAGE RIDLEY MUFFIN KICKER

Probably this comment could be seen toxic, but it's just because it is very (6:30 am) late in a night. Also, English is't my native lang. I just want a peaceful duscussion. 1:48 don't forget that it is not smallest genome through the history of Earth, but smallest that we know. Also, all bacteria carry "legacy" code: for example, E. Coli's "genome was observed to contain a significant number of transposable genetic elements, repeat elements, cryptic prophages, and bacteriophage remnants" (Wiki). Btw, "genes" are arrays of aminoacids, so they can not be counted as "bits". Aminoacids can tho. Nevertheless, there is 4.3E46 atoms of water in the world ocean (calculating amount of impurities can be tricky, so lets have that number at least). Speed of chemical reactions is tricky to claculate too, but rule of thumb is that spead doubles every 10 C raise. Usually uncreasing pressure can speed up reaction too. So, we have the bottom of the ocean with hydrothermal vents all over the tectonic plates spreading centers, producing hot (60-450C and in liquid state) and mineral rich (also, catalists rich) water, forming primordial soup. Yes, it's very unlucky, but mind the scale: there are a big number of outer worlds; lets asume that every star system has 5 planets and every 100th of them has liquid water ect ect, so it's 0.05 habitable planets per star system, times stars per galaxy (2E11 for Milky Way, not a big one btw), times galaxies per observable universe (about 2E12) times, well, let's say 4B years (1.3E17 secs) times RNG knows how many chemical reactions per second with given conditions (I haven't found a single numerical ref...) *for something as simple as Assembly quine*. Basically a single self replicating, chemically or temperature driven protein. Not mentioning that we can not state for sure that the universe is finite (but at least we have proven that it is topologically flat and is not looped on itself), because borders of observable universe arent borders of the whole universe. And that's how I wasted another 1.5h of my sleep. P.S. Though im am IT, drawing and guitar guy, my favorite books in childhood (3-16yo) was ussr's biology and physics for high school students. They had awesome drawings in these.

An NES game with a very transparent password system is Faxanadu. I cracked it simply with just pen and paper years ago.

Mind blowing programming. Beautiful editing.

Hey that compiler optimization output comparison was awesome, I'd love to see that explored for tricky logic/math!

The BRK killed me, amazing!

great video as always, but the "titular character" means the character in the title, which Samus is not, just fyi :D

Very impressive and interesting work as always! Thanks a lot for making these! :)

I enjoy your content. Your voice/accent reminds me of the old Creative Labs DOS program Dr. Sbaitso.

Another great video as always. Thanks for taking my suggestion! I'm still curious as to how this password system compares to that of Kid Icarus, though I feel that the encoding/decoding are similar enough that it's shared between the two. I should probably start doing my own disassemblies and find out for myself 😅

I get excited whenever there's a mention of ACE with classic NES games. Can't wait to be able to play Tetris in Pokemon in Metroid :D

Great video! It was absolutely worth the wait. :) It is strange that four different area codes end up executing a BRK instruction. Maybe the developers knew that people would try wacky passwords and prefered to freeze the game in case of an unexpected event instead of letting it proceed with unknown data. Who knows. :] Your hard work is very much appreciated!

I partially cracked the password system back in the 90s, as I did with many NES games. Part of the process involved just doing one task at a time, such as collecting a power-up, and then creating a new password and comparing changes with the previous. I’d note how much certain characters incremented or decremented in each position, and then try to create my own new password from there. I’d also try inputting 2 or 3 random characters in specific spots to see if things changed. One of my favorite random phrases that worked was the following, documented on my old glitch website: Samus_ beats_ Mother brain_ (where each _ = a space) Furthermore, you can check my YouTube channel for videos on what happens when you eject the game while it is running. One of the results is debug mode with a wrong color palette (Samus has green skin.) You can also begin the game in glitched zones that aren’t accessible otherwise, among other things.

1:51 Given the size of the universe (which we don't even know) and the literally or figuratively infinite number of chemical permutations that have taken place in it, human intuition is simply useless when it comes to determining what could or could not arise on at least one of the planets.

Thank you Bisqwit. Awesome as always

This video makes me wish for a Kid Icarus video to get to the bottom if the password "DUVANS MAMMOR KOMMER BORTOT" (somewhat Swedish for "the pigeons' mothers goes away") is just a coincidence or really coded in.