Now if only we could do this in modern games...

March 20, 2009 4:00 PM

Thanks to the LUA scripting support in NES emulator FCEUX, you can do things like drag and drop enemies and powerups, alter gravity, give mario a jetpack, or make him shoot magic missiles. Super Mario Brothers not your thing? Perhaps you'd rather just have it play Pinball for you.
posted by Pope Guilty (14 comments total)

Curses! I'd been sitting on some of these links for a while waiting to build a more substantial post out of them.

But yes, these are very cool. Take note, the LUA scripting thing isn't changing gravity at all. Super Mario Bros. gravity naturally works like that. Mario actually falls slower at the beginning of all lives, areas and subareas until he jumps the first time. It's so when he falls into a pipe zone, he doesn't flash by the screen but floats down slowly.

I'm pretty sure I've been killed at least once by this behavior.
posted by JHarris at 4:30 PM on March 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't get what I'm supposed to be seeing in the "alter gravity" video. To me, it just looks like Mario falls into a hole twice.
posted by DecemberBoy at 5:17 PM on March 20, 2009

I'm very unimpressed by the guidance on those magic missiles. But all this stuff is really neat.
posted by Simon Barclay at 5:19 PM on March 20, 2009

I was watching this the other day. And by "watching" I mean "sitting stock still with my mouth hanging open".
posted by DU at 5:27 PM on March 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

December, watch how quickly he falls from off the pipe. First death, he lands on the ground then falls into the hole. Second death, he falls in without touching the ground.

The second time, he's had no chance to save himself with a jump. The player, not expecting this, probably won't be prepared to react for it.
posted by JHarris at 5:30 PM on March 20, 2009

Lua is a freaking marvel, btw. It's also the scripting engine that powers World of Warcraft and allows for such interesting gamer-produced user interface enhancements. Really nice little language, easily embedded.
posted by Nelson at 7:22 PM on March 20, 2009

Lua is really great. It's the only language created in a developing country to have achieved global relevance. (awesome paper about The Evolution of Lua). And it's written Lua, dammit.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 8:39 PM on March 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

It's great to see that hacking classic video games doesn't end with sprite hacks and level editors. This kind of control is apparently specific only to the original Super Mario Bros. at this point, but goodness knows that there are quite a few frustratingly difficult NES games I would love to be able to "improve" in this manner. Imagine being able to toss away a swarm of Bladers in Mega Man or nudge Blob-turned-trampoline into a better position in A Boy and His Blob. The possibilities are endless. Then again, so are the time and resources needed to enable this sort of control in other NES games. I'm patient, fortunately.
posted by Servo5678 at 3:55 AM on March 21, 2009

Servo, I thought that paragraph looked familiar, and sure enough, it was your blog that I got the initial link from. It never ceases to amaze me how many people turn out to have MeFi accounts.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:34 AM on March 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, maybe you could make Battletoads beatable (or at least the overcraft level).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 8:18 AM on March 21, 2009

Battletoads is only unbeatable in two-player mode, MsM. I can vouch that, for one player at least, it is possible to beat that level. I've gotten pretty far in the game in fact, and only on a rental or two.

Not that it's not horribly unfair and soul-crushing to do it, though. Honestly, to think that Rare thought they could make Battletoads into a franchise when it was SO HARD.
posted by JHarris at 10:45 AM on March 21, 2009

Play pinball? Ha! More like set the controller down and have a beer!
posted by Clamwacker at 5:28 PM on March 21, 2009

This is kinda like the stuff I can do when lucid dreaming.
posted by Eideteker at 3:01 PM on March 22, 2009

Oh god, the only shortcoming I could possibly see there being to this post is that there is not more
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:36 AM on March 23, 2009