The Complete History of the A Button Challenge
Bismuth3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2023–2024
documentary · general · evergreen · 2023–2024 on HN
A five-hour documentary history of the Super Mario 64 A button challenge, which aims to beat the game with as few A presses as possible. It covers the bugs and exploits discovered over the years.
Recommended as a deep-dive rabbit hole showing extraordinary knowledge of game internals.
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5 comments from Hacker News
For over a decade, the author of this video has been leading an effort to complete Super Mario 64 with the smallest amount of A presses, often using extremely complex strategies. Here's a 5h video with the history. Bismuth says the history video took roughly 1500-2000 hours. ▶ this video
Langlangs program (The Dream: Riemann Hypothesis and F1 (RH Saga S1E1)) link History Dose (The Mongol vs. Order of Assassins War) link Beat Mario64 without hitting the A-Button (5h22m long!) ▶ this video
Complete History of the A Button Challenge ▶ this video It's over five hours long. I put it on in the background or to pass the time. The amount of knowledge and abuse of bugs these guys are performing is insane.
That was Bismuth, not pannenkoek2012 ▶ this video Though Bismuth does spend some time explaining why pannen took a break from making videos, which I'm very glad to see was temporary.
> Games only hold a challenge until the game-writer's secrets are broken. Games ultimately are code themselves, and you can manipulate it to some extent, creating other infinitely complex interactions (source: advancements in speedrunning or various game challenges like the A press challenge [1]) [1] ▶ this video