A week ago, a player succeeded with a pseudonym name “cosmic”, which was considered impossible in the donkey Kong community for decades: he used a starting arcade version of Donkey Kong using a frame-Jan-input in an emulator. Hit the screen. To understand why the game-historically is an important event, it takes some backgrounds and historical 8-bit systems for the game.
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Donkey Kong was the first world success of Nintendo and appeared in 1981 as a slot machine with a tube screen. The company not only defined the style of Jump’nrun, but also established the principle of a character with recognition value only despite a low pixel. In donkey kong, the player heads for a figure that was only called “Jumpman”, from which Mario later became Mario, who was about to jump on every nintendo platform and later run Gokarts.
Limits of initial 8-bit system
Because hardware, especially RAM, was still relatively expensive in the early 1980s and players should keep more and more coins in machines as much as possible, sports were extremely difficult for today’s conditions. Separate memory areas were rarely present for codes, graphics, sound and frame buffer, whatever processor was used was a common RAM and Rome in which the game is stored. These romas were later read so that the original code of the machine could also be played in the emulator.
In 1981 due to new sports theory and difficulty, donkey Kong was also very attractive for competitive players. Various companies also organized a tournament for these, and it was quickly seen: you cannot play more than 117 rounds. This donkey matches the Kong level 22–1, that is, the first round in the difficulty of almost twenty-two levels. For comparison: Topical players rarely go beyond level 4 or 5 on original hardware. According to Level 5, nothing changes in order of personal tasks, everything becomes only sharp and more random. Nintendo did not clearly think that no level would come at 5.
However, because, among other things, not actually random random generators, the players quickly developed a strategy against the game, Round 117 already reached in 1982. Incidentally, it takes more than one and a half hours. At this point, the game behaves completely differently from normal: the countdown for the rest of the time to deal with the goal is clearly unexpectedly unexpected, shows misleading numbers, and the death of the jumpman after eight seconds Gets, although it was not touched by an object or opponent. This is “Kilskreen” in the game because the player is clearly killed by a mysterious power. Of course there is a bug behind it, more about it. Unlike the recently launched “rebirth” by Tetris on NES, the donkey does not resume, the player dies, the match ends, back to the start screen. Very disappointing.
250 plus 10 is 4
The Kills appears to be reproductive in screen round 117 as the counter for a player is stored as a single 8-bit value for a level of the player. From this (among other things) the number is obtained for bonus points, which is credited for unheard weather. The price increases with every round, at round 116 it is decimal 250. With round 117 it will be 260, which does not fit in 8 bits, 256 is the end. There is an overflow, and the actual value in RAM is 4. This results in the result of 8 seconds in the formula of bonus points.
Original, more accurately by donkey Kong: Arcade Rome “US Set 1” can only be played beyond Round 117 if you can make it at the top of the screen in 8 seconds, at every round of destination. But how should it work during that time? Cosmic, ie especially rapid, was now a solution known for speedrun. They used an emulator and tool that could accurately repeat entries through software. The new record is a “tool assisted speedrun” (TAS). This is not a deception in many communities, but it has its own deputyline. Cosmic is also good with the original machine, it already reaches the kiln without a tool.
It also takes good luck
While overcoming the kiln screen, Cosmic used “the ladder mess”, a bug in the game, in which the jumpman climbs further to a conductor – even if there is no ladder in the same places. With this bug, cosmic round 117, and then continued for a few hours – the frame for most frames. Round 122, with level 22-6, it could not really go, the time could not be seen with “ladder mess”. Along with some colleagues, Cosmic continued the code and the word behavior of the game. He found that he was already very lucky in 117 rounds. There is another random factor that provides half the second additional time with the possibility of 1/32. How it really works and has many other details in cosmic and its assistants It is written here,
In His YouTube videoWhich has now been viewed more than 1.4 million times, Cosmic also states that it is not possible to be human with 117 with half an additional other round, because “the staircase mess” can only use 24 times for every 24 times. Is the movement by Jumpman. A player will have to repeat the entire 8.5 seconds. And then he is a real game without technical help to jump in about an hour and half and jump into his fingers.
(Never)
