> A given game might be a hundred hours long and only exercise certain functionality at minutes 5, 37 and 60.
An infamous bug of that variety exists in the SNES game "Speedy Gonzales - Los Gatos Bandidos", where one specific element in one level would freeze the game on most emulators due to a really subtle hardware emulation issue.
https://mgba.io/2017/07/31/holy-grail-bugs-2/#speedy-gonzale...
> Also, none of that automation you just did will work w/the actual hardware.
You might be surprised. Consider what the TASBot team has done with the NES, SNES, and various other consoles -- http://tasvideos.org/TASBot.html