Super Mario 64 Upwarp Glitch Bounty
In August 2015 a Twitch streamer known as "DOTA_TeaBag" was doing a livestream playthrough of Super Mario 64, when he got to "Tick Tock Clock" after already collecting a star or two on this stage he entered the clock with the big hand at the 12 to freeze the moving platforms, while jumping up the still platforms that rotate and being chased by a bob-omb, upon landing on the third of these platforms as well as colliding with the corner edge of the wall and the bomb exploding below, Mario upwarps past all those platforms and the red coins right up to the upper roof, why is this of any interest, YouTube user "Pannenkoek2012" posted a video with a bounty for $1,000 to anyone that could replicate it on the emulator "Mupen 64" with the recording save on so he could examine how this upwarp could be triggered, nearly two years later nobody has accomplished this glitch yet, now it's my turn to have a go at this and i'm going to explain why this is not a glitch and tell you what it really is and why it's not possible to replicate.
Of the known upwarps they seem to require something very specific, the other upwarp pannenkoek displays requires a hangable ceiling, jumping into a lower edge of a block or wall or something with a hangable ceiling above triggers Mario's position to be changed to warp up to that hangable ceiling, it's easiest done in Bowser and the Fire Sea in my opinion where the first heart health replenisher is, after defeating the other enemies here run and do a single jump and then double jump timing to hit that lower edge where the pole is above you, it takes a few attempts to get right, once you jump into that lower edge correctly Mario upwarps.
one upwarp i've discovered requires water, if you play any of the hacks to this game then you'll notice when you are in the water or fall in the water in unprogrammed functions he'll upwarp back to the surface, for example in "Winter in Konkrastadt" down towards the water up on the wooden platforms if you hit the electrical ball enemy above water Mario gets shocked and falls down into the water, when his being shocked sequence is finished he is positioned to the surface of the water as if he only just entered the water, another example is in "SM64 Wonderous Worlds" when on the stage "Riverwide Station", head up the tower thing to draw out the purple chuckya enemies, there's no barriers so they'll fall straight into the water, now let one grab you in the water, when Mario is grabbed he'll instantly warp to the surface again, there was another upwarp video on YouTube in the original game on "Whomp's Fortress", Mario jumps off the left corner edge from the start with his second A jump and kicks below the bigger platform which has water within it while trying to move below it, he practically upwarps to the top of that platform if done correctly.
Ultimately upwarping requires something to trigger an upwarp, hangable ceilings and water are two known triggers, neither is in "Tick Tock Clock", is there something else that we missed that can trigger upwarping, is there something unsuspectingly unnoticed that nobody has really figured it out yet or taken notice, considering Pannenkoek TASed (tool-assisted speedrun, basically replicated every button press and everything of the entire run) the run that was recorded exactly right up to the exact spot it was triggered and discovered nothing happened, this in my opinion is an indication it's not in natural gameplay physics or in the levels themselves, so if we reattempt trying to trigger it aimlessly then a huge percentage of the time we are likely to see nothing happen.
So what could it really be if it was a global event or something outside of gameplay, he stated it was on the japanese version of the game and that he had all four controllers connected when playing through although i'm not sure how it would trigger nothing up till that point so i'm somewhat doubtful about this one having any significance, it's possible multiple controllers being attached to the console could do something as the second controller during the ending sequence and credits moving the control stick can move the camera around, it could mean there's undiscovered functions for other controllers but considering the popularity of this game and how hacked the hell out of this game has been it seems unlikely, as far as i've tested and is known to date, nothing else happens with other controllers attached or used, the japanese version could be more glitchy but i think they only patch a few bugs and make only a few changes to the US release of games, not much else really indicates anything as upwarp affecting, i was even thinking as farfetched as completing each file with the exact number of coins and stars that he has on each of those files of his game, maybe everything together can trigger the upwarp, who knows, nobody has proven this though yet alone on an emulator recording, alast one thing does stand out.
DOTA_TeaBag stated to have used a console, other users that comment online that have claimed to have done this upwarp are mostly done on a console as well or if not have done one of the other known upwarps or something, so why a console, there's some crazed theories out there, from Pannenkoek's byteswapped value to online commenters claiming that sunlight or dust or something entering the console could cause things to mess up or calculate things incorrectly.
So why did this upwarp trigger and only on a console, looking past most theories and technical possibilities i've narrowed it down to one thing, something everyone has looked past up till now, it was no more than a simple malfunction of the hardware, think about it, the game and console is about 20 years old, about 2 decades, the game and console was running for over an hour before the glitch happened, why nobody could trigger it on an emulator but has been reported to be triggered on console, a console malfunction isn't emulated the same way.
Malfunctions of hardware is actually fairly common, i've played "Goldeneye" on the N64 on the train stage and somehow at the end of the train, i'd walked through killing both Xena and Trevelyan and didn't trigger the end to close allowing me to walk to the very end to find some additional paths with some locked doors, on "007 Agent Under Fire" on the Gamecube in the level "Dangerous Pursuit" i was driving through and the road mustn't have loaded for a moment and the vehicle fell through the road, i could name plenty of fine examples of malfunction based glitches, and that's what i think this one off glitch was, a mere malfunction.
So what can trigger a malfunction, this might lead us to another question, i've found that common malfunctions get triggered by either cheap or older hardware, older hardware like Windows 95 and 98 PC's which i've seen that they sometimes freeze up for next to no reason or for running too long, at least from my early experience that i've seen, then again Windows XP works great even in this day and age so maybe they were cheap hardware or virus infected, anyway cheaper hardware which i've noticed in some products like a fairly new "wireless Logitech PC controller f710", at least it seems better than the Logitech f310 with its cheap easily disfunctioning permanently-disconnecting cord, back to the f710, it seems to be fairly cheaped out on that it requires a specific driver to function on some systems (supposedly), it only works fairly well on my older windows xp pc (only buy for older pc's when all else fails) but stopped working on a newer windows 8 pc, while using it the controller will just lose connection to the usb on the odd occasion for at least a few seconds and sometimes multiple times within a few minutes which usually requires a hard whack or two towards the batteries to give it a jolt response or something, just for the record the batteries work great with everything else, so anyway sometimes controls feel slightly to fairly laggy and has an unnatural response and feel to it, really cheaped out hardware as opposed to a wireless Xbox 360 controller of mine which remains connected with no loss of connection not even for a single second even at a distance of 5+ metres, Logitech have fairly cheap hardware, if you don't want disappointment or only plan to play games on newer operating systems (windows 7 and up) then save up for another more quality brand, so new question or thought, maybe Nintendo cheap out on hardware to keep the cost down, considering my examples of malfunction glitches i have are mostly on Nintendo based consoles, this may be an indication of cheap hardware.
I've noticed Nintendo hardware is put together really well though that some of the consoles can fall from a good metre or two even while running and not be affected, please note don't purposely drop or even strike consoles though (especially while the're running), the Nintendo DS was designed to be able to take a 5 metre drop, so if they use cheaper hardware then they do a damn good job of not revealing it and keeping it stable, unlike logitech, good job logitech, keep that hardware cheap, and cr@ping out.
So what have we learned here, malfunction glitches can't be replicated via emulation, they are a different type of glitch altogether and are not natural game mechanics at work, Super Mario 64's game physics are especially unique and interesting to study, although nothing indicates what warped Mario to the roof here that maybe there was something or maybe there are other things in the physics undiscovered that can trigger other types of upwarps and maybe warp the character in some other ridiculous way we've never seen, using gameshark codes i've seen sidewarping and even triggered the character to get thrown out of barriers and out of bounds so maybe someone will discover how to do these sorts of things without gameshark codes, either way i love testing and studying game physics carefully, if there's anything else in gaming to check out i'll definitely look into studying and testing those things out that nobody else has figured out yet, peace.
Of the known upwarps they seem to require something very specific, the other upwarp pannenkoek displays requires a hangable ceiling, jumping into a lower edge of a block or wall or something with a hangable ceiling above triggers Mario's position to be changed to warp up to that hangable ceiling, it's easiest done in Bowser and the Fire Sea in my opinion where the first heart health replenisher is, after defeating the other enemies here run and do a single jump and then double jump timing to hit that lower edge where the pole is above you, it takes a few attempts to get right, once you jump into that lower edge correctly Mario upwarps.
one upwarp i've discovered requires water, if you play any of the hacks to this game then you'll notice when you are in the water or fall in the water in unprogrammed functions he'll upwarp back to the surface, for example in "Winter in Konkrastadt" down towards the water up on the wooden platforms if you hit the electrical ball enemy above water Mario gets shocked and falls down into the water, when his being shocked sequence is finished he is positioned to the surface of the water as if he only just entered the water, another example is in "SM64 Wonderous Worlds" when on the stage "Riverwide Station", head up the tower thing to draw out the purple chuckya enemies, there's no barriers so they'll fall straight into the water, now let one grab you in the water, when Mario is grabbed he'll instantly warp to the surface again, there was another upwarp video on YouTube in the original game on "Whomp's Fortress", Mario jumps off the left corner edge from the start with his second A jump and kicks below the bigger platform which has water within it while trying to move below it, he practically upwarps to the top of that platform if done correctly.
Ultimately upwarping requires something to trigger an upwarp, hangable ceilings and water are two known triggers, neither is in "Tick Tock Clock", is there something else that we missed that can trigger upwarping, is there something unsuspectingly unnoticed that nobody has really figured it out yet or taken notice, considering Pannenkoek TASed (tool-assisted speedrun, basically replicated every button press and everything of the entire run) the run that was recorded exactly right up to the exact spot it was triggered and discovered nothing happened, this in my opinion is an indication it's not in natural gameplay physics or in the levels themselves, so if we reattempt trying to trigger it aimlessly then a huge percentage of the time we are likely to see nothing happen.
So what could it really be if it was a global event or something outside of gameplay, he stated it was on the japanese version of the game and that he had all four controllers connected when playing through although i'm not sure how it would trigger nothing up till that point so i'm somewhat doubtful about this one having any significance, it's possible multiple controllers being attached to the console could do something as the second controller during the ending sequence and credits moving the control stick can move the camera around, it could mean there's undiscovered functions for other controllers but considering the popularity of this game and how hacked the hell out of this game has been it seems unlikely, as far as i've tested and is known to date, nothing else happens with other controllers attached or used, the japanese version could be more glitchy but i think they only patch a few bugs and make only a few changes to the US release of games, not much else really indicates anything as upwarp affecting, i was even thinking as farfetched as completing each file with the exact number of coins and stars that he has on each of those files of his game, maybe everything together can trigger the upwarp, who knows, nobody has proven this though yet alone on an emulator recording, alast one thing does stand out.
DOTA_TeaBag stated to have used a console, other users that comment online that have claimed to have done this upwarp are mostly done on a console as well or if not have done one of the other known upwarps or something, so why a console, there's some crazed theories out there, from Pannenkoek's byteswapped value to online commenters claiming that sunlight or dust or something entering the console could cause things to mess up or calculate things incorrectly.
So why did this upwarp trigger and only on a console, looking past most theories and technical possibilities i've narrowed it down to one thing, something everyone has looked past up till now, it was no more than a simple malfunction of the hardware, think about it, the game and console is about 20 years old, about 2 decades, the game and console was running for over an hour before the glitch happened, why nobody could trigger it on an emulator but has been reported to be triggered on console, a console malfunction isn't emulated the same way.
Malfunctions of hardware is actually fairly common, i've played "Goldeneye" on the N64 on the train stage and somehow at the end of the train, i'd walked through killing both Xena and Trevelyan and didn't trigger the end to close allowing me to walk to the very end to find some additional paths with some locked doors, on "007 Agent Under Fire" on the Gamecube in the level "Dangerous Pursuit" i was driving through and the road mustn't have loaded for a moment and the vehicle fell through the road, i could name plenty of fine examples of malfunction based glitches, and that's what i think this one off glitch was, a mere malfunction.
So what can trigger a malfunction, this might lead us to another question, i've found that common malfunctions get triggered by either cheap or older hardware, older hardware like Windows 95 and 98 PC's which i've seen that they sometimes freeze up for next to no reason or for running too long, at least from my early experience that i've seen, then again Windows XP works great even in this day and age so maybe they were cheap hardware or virus infected, anyway cheaper hardware which i've noticed in some products like a fairly new "wireless Logitech PC controller f710", at least it seems better than the Logitech f310 with its cheap easily disfunctioning permanently-disconnecting cord, back to the f710, it seems to be fairly cheaped out on that it requires a specific driver to function on some systems (supposedly), it only works fairly well on my older windows xp pc (only buy for older pc's when all else fails) but stopped working on a newer windows 8 pc, while using it the controller will just lose connection to the usb on the odd occasion for at least a few seconds and sometimes multiple times within a few minutes which usually requires a hard whack or two towards the batteries to give it a jolt response or something, just for the record the batteries work great with everything else, so anyway sometimes controls feel slightly to fairly laggy and has an unnatural response and feel to it, really cheaped out hardware as opposed to a wireless Xbox 360 controller of mine which remains connected with no loss of connection not even for a single second even at a distance of 5+ metres, Logitech have fairly cheap hardware, if you don't want disappointment or only plan to play games on newer operating systems (windows 7 and up) then save up for another more quality brand, so new question or thought, maybe Nintendo cheap out on hardware to keep the cost down, considering my examples of malfunction glitches i have are mostly on Nintendo based consoles, this may be an indication of cheap hardware.
I've noticed Nintendo hardware is put together really well though that some of the consoles can fall from a good metre or two even while running and not be affected, please note don't purposely drop or even strike consoles though (especially while the're running), the Nintendo DS was designed to be able to take a 5 metre drop, so if they use cheaper hardware then they do a damn good job of not revealing it and keeping it stable, unlike logitech, good job logitech, keep that hardware cheap, and cr@ping out.
So what have we learned here, malfunction glitches can't be replicated via emulation, they are a different type of glitch altogether and are not natural game mechanics at work, Super Mario 64's game physics are especially unique and interesting to study, although nothing indicates what warped Mario to the roof here that maybe there was something or maybe there are other things in the physics undiscovered that can trigger other types of upwarps and maybe warp the character in some other ridiculous way we've never seen, using gameshark codes i've seen sidewarping and even triggered the character to get thrown out of barriers and out of bounds so maybe someone will discover how to do these sorts of things without gameshark codes, either way i love testing and studying game physics carefully, if there's anything else in gaming to check out i'll definitely look into studying and testing those things out that nobody else has figured out yet, peace.