SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated) [OUTDATED]

I recommend this channel in general. He has extremely deep knowledge of the inner workings of the game, and presents it in an approachable way. Other classics: A 3 hour 45 minute deep dive into the game's infamous invisible wall bug (useful for understanding the linked video): link His most famous video, a summary of the extremely involved and complex methods required to beat a particular level using the lowest number of A button presses - in this case, 0.5 : ▶ this video

I kind of lost it at the point where he "builds up speed for 12 hours". AHAHA ▶ this video His mind is so clear. I love how there's so many super super smart people on the internet! :)

At 5:45[0] in that video, he makes a reference to one of the greatest weird explanations of video game things ever: the explanation[1] of how to beat the Watch for Rolling Rocks level in Super Mario 64 with only half an A-press, which is highly worth a watch if you like this stuff about geometry. And if that was interesting, I also recommend the history of any percent speed runs for Super Mario Sunshine.[2] [0]: link [1]: ▶ this video [2]: link

Did you ever see this one? ▶ this video This guy literally has a PhD in SM64. It's insanely complicated, and surprisingly lucid.

Pannenkoek2012 is both genius and crazy awesome at the same time. Its video "0.5x A Key Presses" provoked a riot in video game circles some times ago: ▶ this video

If you're at all interested in speedruns, this is a great video that takes it to the extreme for Super Mario 64: ▶ this video

This[1] was mentioned in its other thread. Not related to programming but the amount of thought process went into it is just amazing. [1] "SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)" : ▶ this video

I highly recommend watching this video, which explains floats in the context of Mario 64: link Games are a great way to explain floats because they're so visual. Specifically, check out 3:31, where the game has been hacked so that the possible float values in one of the movement directions is quite coarse. (If you're curious what a PU is, and would like some completely useless knowledge, this video is also an absolute classic and very entertaining: ▶ this video )

This was interesting. I used to whine about doing this kind of glitched run, but it's just a different category of speedrun. Amazing to have that level of precision, though of course he must have done this hundreds, maybe thousands of times to get it right. If you like this kind of explanation be sure to watch the "0.5 A presses" Mario 64 speedrun video, which is equally interesting as far as getting into the hidden guts of the game: ▶ this video

For anyone else interested in similar tricks, here is an in-depth video where someone talks about getting a star with half a button press. It starts out straightforward enough, but eventually gets really interesting when they start talking about parallell worlds that you can only access by abusing bugs to reach unrealistic speeds. ▶ this video

There are Let’s Plays that I think are better than others, but I don’t think any of them, even the best of them, are popular enough to be part of gamer culture. However, the gameplay video that I think comes closest to leaving “a mark in history” is this single video by pannenkoek2012: ▶ this video “SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)”. That’s the only video I’ve seen referenced in comments on videos of completely different games. The references are to “parallel universes” and “0.5 A-presses”, terms that are explained in this video. I don’t know if you could call this video a Let’s Play, though, since the commentary is recorded after the gameplay, it’s not part of a larger playthrough of the whole game, and the video has custom-made animations to aid in explaining the game, not just raw gameplay footage. It’s quite interesting, though, especially to a programmer. Among popular Let’s Play series, one I recommend is the Achievement Hunter Minecraft Let’s Play series: link . (Yup, they snagged the username “LetsPlay”.) In each episode, members of the Achievement Hunter group of players play some custom-made activity together in Minecraft. I don’t like the personalities of the players/commentators that much, but the immense creativity of the challenges and the players’ occasional funniness make it worth it. After 100 episodes it started getting repetitive though. A few other lesser-known Let’s Plays I recommend: • Cryaotic’s Undertale playthrough, Pacifist

Pannenkoek2012 does great breakdowns of SM64: ▶ this video If you like this sort of stuff, reddit.com/r/speedrun can be fun to visit.