Indeed, Twin Galaxies seems like a joke.
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First we have to talk about parallel universes.
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“Before you can set a Mario high score, you must first invent the universe”.
-Carl Sagan, probably
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When you replicated this score were you using vintage 1980 110v directly plugged into an outlet at convention center to power the game?
Or organic 2018 filtered 110V power?
And yes…that could make a diffrence.
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Everything must be so difficult for the modern scientist, requiring a different universe each time, for each new task…
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In the comments section of the article, the tester explained that they attempted tests with all kinds of common hardware issues simulated as well - fast/slow clock, partial button presses, etc. - things you might see with twitchy/faulty hardware… And nothing allowed him to start or end the “optimal” race a frame or two early, which is the only thing that could have allowed the “impossible” time reported.
It seems like the guy really knew what he was doing, but did allow that if there was such a severe hardware fault that it created “impossible” game states it was possible - but then, so is anything else, and it’s odd that an “impossible” state (which should be non-recreate-able, because it’d only be the result of random chance, not something you can do on purpose) was claimed to be re-created on multiple occasions.
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Wow, I never knew Keanu Reeves was so into gaming.
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i agree with this. what is the point of litigating the past like this? as if there weren’t plenty of CURRENT problems in the gaming industry, or anything.
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See also Paul Ryan and marathon times. Or people like this:
Some people just need these things, I guess.
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It was claimed to be achieved by two other people as well. If Activision thought the theoretical best was 5.54 and he beat that by literally one frame, the idea that it could be due to a bug unaccounted for in a simulation is plausible, even a bug that occurred only on some machines or on some carts. There are tons of classic speedruns people have been running for ages and still people find new bugs in them.
I find the idea of “proving” something impossible using forensics to be suspect. You can’t rule out unknown unknowns.
I don’t think we can deeply trust his score, but I don’t think we can invalidate it either. As the Atari rep said, it was validated by the accepted methods of the day. If people don’t trust it, they are free to claim they have the best score “on video” or the best score “verified by contemporary methods.”
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Water is wet, friction is a real drag, dog bites man, this and more at 11.
And sometimes it shouldn’t.
Some time after the match, [Arthur] Kinnaird informed the council of the Football Association (FA), of which he was a member, that in his opinion he had not carried the ball over the line for Oxford’s goal. Despite the fact that the referee had awarded the goal and multiple newspaper reports stated that the ball had clearly gone over the line, Kinnaird’s fellow council members took his word for it, and struck the goal from the records, changing the official score to 2–0 (although if Oxford had not scored, there would have been no reason for the game to go to extra time, so by rights they should have annulled Wanderers’ second goal as well). For the next century, all sources reported the score of the match as 2–0. In the 1980s, after fresh research into contemporary reports of the game by football historians, the FA reinstated the Oxford goal, and now regard the official final score of the 1877 final as 2–1.
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it’s downright prescient.
… are you talking about Trump?
(sorry to bring him here, but it’s too tempting)
You’re right, the claimed records are exceptionally trivial.
But the story functions as a microcosm of a pattern that plays out all the time: a corrupt culture, exposed as a fraud by facts and measurements, slowly crumbles. Champions of the old guard leap to its defense, and their heartfelt motives and sympathies are laid pathetically, embarrassingly bare.
I think that’s all pretty interesting in light of the contrasts with GamerGate, parallels with modern workplace scandals, too-tempting parallels with current American politics, etc. I think it could be instructive in a few different ways.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a cultural space where it’s actually novel and useful to remind people that:
- Sometimes bad actors are driven by pride as much as anything
- Cheaters actually get caught all the time
- Facts are real and they can’t be brushed aside forever
- Expertise is real, you can’t just apply “common sense” to an unfamiliar problem domain and expect to be any good
I think this story works as such a reminder.
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I wonder why no one issues awards for playing with other kinds of toys apart from video games.
I’ll bet I could be the best Micronaut-player ever, assuming I’m awarded all the points.
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They do
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It’s about ethics in gaming records.
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In TFA, I believe that it states that the other two were disqualified because they were unable to provide proof of their claim, so it’s really just him and his unreproducible claims against a nerd with a disassembler and way too much time on his hands.
And as for provability, well… The guy did explain to the gent doing the testing how he supposedly accomplished the feat. The tester tried that exact method, and while it was near-optimal, there was still a problem of an extra frame (0.03 sec) that it just didn’t account for, period. At which point the record-holder threw out something like “well there’s lots of ways to shift” (no there’s not) and something vague about “human element mumble mumble” (wat).
There doesn’t seem to be any plausible way that the guy pulled it off UNLESS, and this is a big one, there were different versions of the cartridge with some variance in the chipset or data on the cart. AFAIK that’s the only possibility that hasn’t been addressed.
Edit: Yep, looks like there’s at least cart versions (a) - (h). I can’t help but wonder if there’s any variance between the “record” version and the “test” version? Or if the record-setter stated which cart was used and that was the tested version, but possibly some variance exists within the version lines?
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