u/Badel2in r/ReverseEngineering • Recommends
SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in Super Mario World
0:00 / 0:00
#arbitrarycodeexecution#snes#supermarioworld
SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in SMW
SethBling
1.9M subscribers • 5 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 12 people: 9 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 2 in engineering communities.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2025.
- Presented by SethBling
- May be out of date. Uploaded 10 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.
Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.
2.9M views10 years ago12 recommendations
SecurityGame developmentExploits and vulnerabilitiesRetro computingGame programming
SethBling demonstrates how to inject and run Flappy Bird code inside an unmodified Super Mario World game using controller inputs.
Using various Super Mario World glitches, I injected the code for Flappy Bird (code written by p4plus2). This is the first time a human has ever completed this kind of exploit. Special thanks to p4plus2 and MrCheeze who helped me a ton with this project. Livestream Archive: twitch.tv/sethbling/v/57032858 Route Notes: docs.google.com/document/d/1TJ6W7TI9fH3qXb2GrOqhtDAbVkbIHMvL… p4plus2: youtube.com/p4plus2 SethBling Twitter: twitter.com/sethbling SethBling Twitch: twitch.tv/sethbling SethBling Facebook: facebook.com/sethbling SethBling Website: sethbling.com SethBling Shirts: sethbling.spreadshirt.com Suggest Ideas: reddit.com/r/SethBlingSuggestions Music at the end is Cipher by Kevin MacLeodWhy it's here
12 people recommend thisWhat people say. Engineers recommend this as a mind-blowing demonstration of arbitrary code execution and hardware exploitation performed manually.
calvinon Lobsters • Recommends
SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in Super Mario World
qwertoxon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Flappy Bird in 228 bytes”
This reminds me of the incredible Flappy Birds SNES Code Injection into Super Mario World. A must-see video. link to this video
TheLilHipsteron Hacker News • Recommends
On “Crash Course – Educational course videos on YouTube”
Youtube is full of hidden gems, all a matter of taste. Meta-programming: link Math'n'music edutainment: link Science edutainment: link Feats of incredible gaming skill: link Tidbits of hacking ingenuity: link to this video Looking for heart in pop culture: link You can get lost in the maze of excess information. It's great - i think...
tribbyon Hacker News • Recommends
On “'Super Mario Bros.' speedrunner hits nearly inhuman 4:55 world record”
super impressive stuff. I'm generally unfamiliar with speedrunning, but I am familiar with the billy mitchell controversies, so I'm surprised that people accept the legitimacy of streamed runs. wouldn't it be trivial-enough to fake? tangental: my personal favorite mario-related feat is sethbling injecting flappy bird into super mario world manually: link to this video
kibwenon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3 Minutes – World Record Speedrun Explained [video]”
…f cardboard and rubber bands in order to help them achieve the angles more reliably. Sorry that I don't have any video links on hand, but you could almost certainly find examples of these in the GDQ archives. EDIT: Found a good video for the SMW example, by SethBling, which actually goes a step further and manually reprograms SMW into Flappy Bird: link to this video EDIT 2: Here's an excellent explanation of the Zelda ACE: link…
argvargcon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Hacker Exploits Bugs in Original ‘Doom’ Code to Run ‘Snake’ Inside the Game”
This one creates a Flappy Bird clone by hand from within SMW, using the controller under ordinary manual control, on an original, unmodded SNES (with a couple or other standard controllers attached with buttons taped down). Explains the process in detail, which includes creating a kind of crude "IDE" using the score table as feedback for hex values input to make the process faster and less error-prone: link to this video
SkeuomorphicBeeon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Arbitrary Code Execution in Super Mario All-Stars [video]”
…nually to inject a flappy birds game 2 (this second video is really good, he goes into detail of the process). So, what this newer demonstration brings is the use of the known arbitrary code execution capabilities of "Super Mario World" to help finish all 5 games in "Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World" as quick as possible. 1 link 2 link to this video…
Dwediton Hacker News • Recommends
On “Hackers discover how to reprogram NES Tetris from within the game”
Sometimes even after you've come up with the exploit, you can create something really beautiful for the console to run afterwards. Pokemon Yellow: link Super Mario World: link to this video
tbalsamon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Speedrunners are vulnerability researchers, they just don't know it yet”
…ially in some games like the legendary exploits found in the Ocarina of Time speedruns for example. I mean, in Super Mario World, SethBling did code injection to manually run a version of Flappy Bird (how ironic given the origin of the pipes!) in the game. By hand. No savestates. It took forever and the run through is really and truly fascinating: link to this video I speedrun things other than games as well -- and so the generalization is not just that we are security researchers, we are people who fundamentally learn the "shape" of a thing very, very well, and ways that this shape can be used to get from one state on that shape to another. In conclusion -- yes, it can be something as simple as securi…
BuildTheRobotson Hacker News • Recommends
On “Bad Apple but it's played inside Super Mario Bros”
My understanding is that they're glitching the game to inject data into memory, in this case processor instructions. And then they use another glitch to jump to and execute that code. No modifications needed to the hardware or ROM, you're just being extremely selective about how to play the game to cause memory to get flipped. This video is done by hand and explains a bit more about how and why it works: link to this video
u/mackwagein r/netsec • Recommends
SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in Super Mario World
berbecon Hacker News • Mentions
On “'Super Mario Bros.' speedrunner hits nearly inhuman 4:55 world record”
"likely only possible in TAS" has this habit of becoming possible. SethBling turning Super Mario World into Super Flappy Birds on a console comes to mind. link to this video
Stromon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Stadia Founder's Edition”
…sires. Yes this would raise the bar in how easy it would be to cheat. Average Joe Cheat Engine users would be gone, but more skilled cheat makers will continue business as usual and their released cheats will do the exploits hidden from the actual people doing the cheating. Bonus: See this cute hack that injects flappy bird into Super Mario World. link to this video -- 1 Even AAA developers are clueless about threat models. Games like Tom Clancy's The Division 2 and Fallout 76 3 are multiplayer games that put extreme trust into the client. Trust that nobody would modify their script files, trust that the client is always telling the honest truth. 2 link 3 link…
Hasnepon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Don’t try to sanitize input – escape output”
There's lots of examples, but a famous one is this video by Sethbling where he uses a controller as opposed to a TAS tool: link to this video
glxxyzon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’”
It's even harder to imagine how someone could rewrite the code to Super Mario World on an unmodified SNES to play Flappy Bird just using regular controllers, yet it's possible: link to this video