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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Surely if that was the only goal, it would be easier to have a debug menu come up when you enter a certain sequence of inputs? Among other things, getting to the warp zone still requires playing 1-1 and 1-2, and you can’t warp just anywhere.

It could even only work for the P2 controller, or use inputs not normally possible like left + right simultaneously.

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> use inputs not normally possible like left + right simultaneously.

Are there NES games (or mods) that have different (useful) behavior when an emulator permits such inputs?

In SMB, you can brake more quickly by holding L+R, which is impossible with an original NES controller, and as such that input is not allowed in official speed runs.

https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/SuperMarioBros#Turni...

There’s controversy around this in the mario kart speed run community too. Apparently with snes controllers you can press L+R on the dpad if your dpad has been used enough to wear down the dpad’s plastic center pivot. What’s interesting is this created a schism bifurcating the community, and the one that allows L+R I hear is the more vibrant conmunity.

Not NES but I seem to recall playing Wonder Boy on a master system that had a missing D-pad and pressing up and down simultaneously made Wonder Boy drop through the earth and fall from the sky.

You just compile a dev version of the game during development.

It's quite common for games to have bugs or unintentional behavior when pressing left+right simultaneously. Super Mario Bros. is one example (as another commenter points out); another example is Super Metroid (for the SNES), which allows you to repeatedly wall jump in-place if you hold left+right: https://wiki.supermetroid.run/L+R_Walljumping

This sparked a mild controversy recently in the speedrunning community: L+R walljumping makes it possible to climb walls underwater without Gravity Suit or Hi-Jump Boots. Through the use of very esoteric and difficult speedrun tech, this enabled a runner to complete the game while collecting only 13% of available items, which would beat the previous low% record of 14% if left+right runs were allowed on the leaderboard: https://wiki.supermetroid.run/13%25_xCharge

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