postmortem

Tom7 explains and demos software that learns to play NES games by finding score patterns in memory and then searching for inputs that raise it. It is the video companion to his SIGBOVIK paper.

Howard Abrams demonstrates, in an EmacsConf 2015 talk, how he uses org-mode's Babel and Tramp to configure and operate remote servers from a single document. Code blocks, their results and the explanatory text all live together.

SethBling uses Super Mario World glitches to inject and run Flappy Bird code on an unmodified SNES, entering it purely with controller inputs. It was the first time a human completed this kind of exploit by hand.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow by MrWint that uses arbitrary code execution to push Game Boy hardware to its limits. Through crafted inputs it injects code and ends up running other programs, such as Tetris, inside the game.

The author of copyparty introduces the FOSS file server he has built over five years, demoing its features such as resumable uploads, WebDAV and deduplication. The video itself is shown running on a demo server.

Overdrive 2 by TiTAN, a Sega Mega Drive demo that won first place in the Oldskool competition at Revision 2017. It shows effects and 3D graphics on the stock console.

In the finale of Double Fine's Devs Play, speedrunner SMK demonstrates glitches and exploits that skip entire sections of Psychonauts while Tim Schafer and the dev team watch. The developers react to and discuss the bugs as they appear.

SethBling performs the first credits warp in Super Mario World on a real SNES console, a glitch that plays the ending without beating Bowser. The run relies on pixel-perfect positioning and tools such as a helper ROM hack.

Cosmo's 22:38 Ocarina of Time speedrun, performed live at AGDQ 2013. The runner uses a complex exploit to skip much of the game.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Ocarina of Time at Summer Games Done Quick 2022, using TASBot and arbitrary code execution to reach an alternate ending in about 53 minutes. The run is introduced by its creators and followed by an interview.

Lyle Bickley of the PDP-1 restoration team tours the 1959 DEC machine at the Computer History Museum and plays the original Spacewar! He covers its graphics display and the MIT student programs written for it.

A two-minute demonstration of LucasArts' iMUSE adaptive music system in Monkey Island 2. It shows music layers and transitions changing seamlessly as the player moves.

Gameplay footage of Zarch, the 1987 3D Defender-like game by David Braben for the Acorn Archimedes. It shows the 256-colour 3D landscape where you stop landers spreading a virus.

James Lambert demos a MegaTexture-style technique running on real Nintendo 64 hardware, built for an N64Brew game jam. It streams high-resolution textures onto stained-glass scenes on the console.

Der8auer tours Hetzner's test lab and shows a custom AM5 server motherboard with the CPU socket rotated 90 degrees, built for rack airflow in their AX52 servers.

Solomon Hykes shows Docker to the public for the first time in a five-minute lightning talk at PyCon 2013. It demos Linux containers and the simplicity of a Dockerfile.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow on Game Boy Color that uses glitches and frame-precise inputs to make the game execute an arbitrary program. It was later obsoleted by an improved run.

A two-hour complete longplay of the 1993 MS-DOS puzzle game The Incredible Machine, in which players assemble Rube Goldberg contraptions to complete simple tasks.

Gameplay footage of the original 1986 Macintosh version of Dark Castle by Silicon Beach Software. The uploader argues the original is a great game that was tarnished by inferior ports.

LGR reviews the weeCee, a tiny mini PC that boots MS-DOS and Windows from a microSD card. It offers Sound Blaster Pro and General MIDI compatibility with VGA output, and the video tries it with DOS and Windows 98 games.

A 11:29 complete speedrun of Quake on Nightmare difficulty by the Quake done Quick team, assembled from separately recorded runs refined since 1996.

A one-minute demo comparing RetroArch shaders on the Sonic the Hedgehog waterfall, where Sega Genesis dithering creates a transparency effect. It shows how different shaders emulate the CRT look.

A Ben Heck Show episode tearing down the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, one of the rarest consoles ever, with its owners Terry and Dan Diebold. Part 2 then gets it working again.

A short clip of the Super Mario Bros 3 proof-of-concept PC port built by id Software's founders to pitch Nintendo on a PC version. Nintendo passed, and the same technology led to Commander Keen.

A short explainer showing what walking through walls would look like with movement in a fourth spatial dimension, using the 4D puzzle game Miegakure.

An early 2009 tech test by Notch of an Infiniminer-style cave game running about 700 fps on a 256x256x64 tile map. It is the prototype that grew into Minecraft.

Intro and gameplay footage of Rescue on Fractalus, the 1985 Lucasfilm Games title for Atari XL/XE, programmed by Loren Carpenter and David Fox. It shows the game's fractal-generated mountain terrain.

A demo of Quake's E1M1 rendered as vector graphics on a Hitachi oscilloscope. A laptop generates the audio signal that the scope draws.

A demo of a Skyrim mod that uses Inworld AI to let players hold free-form conversations with NPCs. It previews LLM-driven characters in role-playing games.

A live performance at AGDQ 2014 in which Super Mario World is made to execute arbitrary injected code, running other games like Pong and Snake on the cartridge. It is done through a TASBot feeding precise controller inputs.

Tech Tangents sets up original Doom's three-screen multi-monitor mode, which required a separate networked computer for each monitor. The video covers the hardware and setup work and the result.

Level1Techs' Wendell shows Intel's Flex 170 GPU providing GPU-accelerated virtual desktops on Proxmox 8.1 without subscription licensing, using SR-IOV, and demonstrates many desktop instances running at once.

A short video of five people carrying a live, running web server across the city by public transport to a new datacenter. It stayed powered and connected to the internet the whole way, so there was no downtime.

Linus Tech Tips backs up their petabyte server to Google's unlimited G Suite Drive plan and runs into the daily upload cap. It shows how far the 'unlimited' offer can be pushed.