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Comment by JonSkeptic | Hacker News Reader

I was watching that video and expecting an explanation along the lines of "If I tap the c-pad, then b really fast at just the right time" and being met with an explanation that shows an intricate working knowledge of the game....it was impressive to say the least.

Wow. That guy is a hacker. Maybe he is only a hacker of this one game, I don't know. But, this is a video that deserves to be linked by HackerNews.

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I agree that this guy is a hacker, however I just want to share what a hacker on steroids playing a game looks like.

Have you seen bortreb's pokemon hack?

http://hackaday.com/2012/11/24/programming-a-game-boy-while-...

"Realizing this ROM hack is able to control the CPU with only the player’s inventory, [bortreb] wanted to see how far he could push this hack. He ended up writing a bootstrapping program by depositing and discarding items from the in-game PC, and was then able to reprogram the Game Boy with a number of button presses on the D-pad, select, start, A and B buttons."

I prefer the Pi Day celebration hack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNPisyK43Lc

Not to diminish Cosmo's skills or his excellent explanations, but the tricks used in these speed runs were discovered and improved upon over many years by many different members of the speed running community who all deserve some credit. [1] has a list of techniques and usually notes who originally discovered them. There are some speed runners who are very good at discovering these kinds of techniques but they are not always the ones who are the fastest at running the game.

1: http://zeldaspeedruns.com/oot/

While the exploit itself was very impressive, I was also very impressed by how clearly he explained it, and how he was able to do it without stumbling, and generally was able to keep playing while explaining. Great communication skills.

I'm also really impressed that he managed to explain everything while still playing the game!

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