This is the new fastest SMB2J (The Lost Levels, FDS) "game end glitch" (ACE) tool-assisted speedrun (TAS), improving upon the previous TAS by 9 frames, through optimization of the final room in World 8-4.
In March, 2025, LuigiSidekick accidentally crashed the game in 8-4 and posted it on Twitter. Simplistic6502 verified that there was ACE potential. Threecreepio made the payload approach, and web2000 made the first full TAS.
HappyLee's Comments
Recently, I tested ACE in this game for the first time, and discovered the 9-frame improvement in 8-4. Since I wasn't familiar with ACE, most of my time was spent learning its underlying principles.
In simple terms, the glitch works by loading the long Firebar twice to overflow the enemy slot value, creating an enemy with ID $84. By taking damage from the Firebar in lava, and combining 2P controller inputs with the X positions of two fireballs, arbitrary code can be executed to end the game early.
8-4 is currently the only known location in this game where ACE can be triggered. This run is 19.25 seconds faster than the fastest any% TAS, but ACE and non-ACE runs are considered separate categories.
Most of the entertainment part comes from my 2017 TAS, with minor adjustments by me and web2000. Don't miss the wall clip in the third room of 8-4 - it was an idea I discovered in 2018. Coincidentally, it reaches the pipe at exactly the same time as the previous upper-route turnaround drop, so I never had a practical use for it - until this TAS.
I wouldn't think of it as "lose the community". I remember TASVideos has way more active users 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But right now, there are way less active users and posts, and people mention that we're losing judges.
Forum activity reduced way before we lowered the "standards". In fact we had to lower them exactly because we stopped getting enough feedback regarding entertainment, which was required for every single submission in order to decide which tier to put it in. Now please compare submission counts over the last 10 years.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I remember TASVideos has way more active users 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But right now, there are way less active users and posts, and people mention that we're losing judges.
You are only seeing the forums. Forums have seen a massive decrease in activity internet-wide, not just on TASVideos. Most of our user activity is instead represented on Discord. It makes sense that the site would appear to be less active given that you're not exposed to that side of the community.
I mentioned 2 factors. When it's easy to reject you lose the community.
I wouldn't think of it as "lose the community". I remember TASVideos has way more active users 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But right now, there are way less active users and posts, and people mention that we're losing judges.
The forum has been getting less active for many years now. This isn't really a TASVideos-specific issue, forums everywhere just aren't as popular now as they are back then, as other kinds of social media have replaced their purpose. We now have a Discord server with over 3500 members, plenty of daily chatter, and the rate of both submissions and submission authors has increased in the past few years. TASVideos is more active than ever, it's just less visible if you only look at the forum.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
It's true that forums everywhere just aren't as popular now as years ago. But our problem is that, the Submission Workbench is piled up, and people mentioning we're losing judges.
If this problem gets worse, more and more talented TASers might be disappointed, some might quietly leave. That's "losing the community".
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
It's true that forums everywhere just aren't as popular now as years ago. But our problem is that, the Submission Workbench is piled up, and people mentioning we're losing judges.
If this problem gets worse, more and more talented TASers might be disappointed, some might quietly leave. That's "losing the community".
Now you see there's no easy solution. Tho as I said there's no way to know if someone left due to long waits, but it's a known fact people were leaving (or not joining in the first place) because our standards were too high.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Tho as I said there's no way to know if someone left due to long waits, but it's a known fact people were leaving (or not joining in the first place) because our standards were too high.
I'd say TASing is not for everyone. For example, I can't publish my article on Times magazine, so should they lower their standards to let me in, or should I admit that I'm not suitable to be an editor?
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
I'd say TASing is not for everyone. For example, I can't publish my article on Times magazine, so should they lower their standards to let me in, or should I admit that I'm not suitable to be an editor?
Is Times magazine some kind of a niche hobby ran entirely by volunteers too?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
No, but "hobby" and "volunteers" don't mean we should be amateur-like. We're the largest TAS community in the world, and most of the best TASes in history are here.
Lower standards might mean worse experience for viewers, worse experience for talented TASers, and harder for judges, too.
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
No, but "hobby" and "volunteers" don't mean we should be amateur-like. We're the largest TAS community in the world, and most of the best TASes in history are here.
I already explained how old standards were gradually rendering us irrelevant. If we continued we'd eventually have no community. Amateur-like is blindly sticking to standards just for the sake of keeping them, with no regard to reality around. Emotionally mature people know how to work with changing reality to not lose relevance.
HappyLee wrote:
Lower standards might mean worse experience for viewers
Viewers stopped posting as often way before we lowered the standards, I already mentioned it.
HappyLee wrote:
worse experience for talented TASers
Consistent rejection of well-done work just because we stick to old standards is the worst experience for talented TASers.
HappyLee wrote:
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Do I really have to "provide a specific reasoning"... As I said, no TASer would like their work being ignored for a long time, or waiting endlessly to get a verdict.
I’m a TASer, and I’m perfectly fine with waiting. You do not speak for me or for every TASer.
HappyLee wrote:
At least I don't like waking up every day and check to see any update with my TAS in the submission workbench...
Then don’t. I don’t see why you need to do that, especially since you don’t like to do it.
Joined: 7/11/2016
Posts: 21
Location: 🇰🇷 South Korea
HappyLee wrote:
Lower standards might mean worse experience for viewers
As an active lurker(?) for 15+ years until recently, that is not the experience I've had. In fact I'd argue it has been a better experience for me.
Thanks to the lower standards I got to see TASes for games that have personal meaning for me, even if they would deem "trivial and boring" by the old standards. Take [5602] Flash 40xEscape by Spikestuff in 01:35.13, for example. Understandably, this TAS might not mean much to most people, because it's just about solving puzzles by clicking things really fast. However, as someone who grew with Flash games, I played this game a few times and so it has some kind of relevance to me. So I find it interesting to see how fast it can be beaten, and I appreciate its feature on TASVideos. Other obscure games, I'm sure there is someone that would relate to them too.
There are also technical achievements that may not be entertaining to watch but are interesting in their own right. For such TASes, I like to read Author Notes and appreciate the effort they've put into solving technical problems.
Meanwhile, entertaining TASes did not stop being made. There are still people pushing complex games to their limit (including yourself!) and there are still TASes published regularly that attains high rating.
Just to add to this discussion, I think we need to be clear about what are those "standards". I can classify them as "vertical" standards and "horizontal" standards. What I mean by that? Well, vertical would mean how the run itself is doing? Optimized, finished, legal, can be console verified, etc. These factors only judge the run itself. This part of standards was NOT lowered at all. In fact people are getting their runs rejected all the time still because it's not up to those standards.
Horizontal standards however would mean being open to a variety of other systems, games and categories that are subject to discussions on whether they are acceptable or not based on those standards. Now this part is exactly what was adjusted to become open to many other possible options thus allowing more people to come in and be creative. This, in my opinion, has advanced TASVideos to a good level.
When I was merely judge and not an admin, I'd say ascertaining entertainment and "audience" opinion on a TAS was one of the most annoying parts of the process. Half the time there would only be like 3 votes and 0 posts. We eventually ended up begging on irc and discord for additional people to post.
Nowadays, I believe the whole process of gathering audience opinion through tasvideos forum posts was flawed. There have been discrepancies where for instance certain fighting game playarounds had received poor feedback on tasvideos and thus were rejected, but at the same time found popularity elsewhere on sites such as youtube or nicovideo. I do not believe that the audience that participated on the TASVideos forums way back 10 years ago or so is necessarily reflective of the population at large. We justified it to ourselves that were had "higher standards" than say youtube audiences, but that was an excuse. I suspect that the process of rejecting things we don't like resulted in viewers and TASers who did like those things electing to not participate in our community, which created a sort of feedback loop:
Existing community members dislike X thing
X thing gets rejected
People who like X thing have no reason to go to tasvideos
Only people who dislike X thing show up on tasvideos
Repeat
With the Baba Is You submission, we had another instance of something having mixed feedback on tasvideos, but great feedback elsewhere. In that case we elected to accept it to Moons anyways. From there, we've changed our standards to accept a wider variety of tases and please a much wider audience. I would not want to restrict that simply because we struggle to keep up. This was something that was happening even when I first started judging back in 2018, long before we started accepting those things.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Joined: 1/9/2023
Posts: 45
Location: Quebec Province
I don't think you guys arguments (which would be great in another situation, but imo this one is different) will wow him when he only want stricter standards so that TASes get judged faster (because less TASes in the workbench = faster judging time I guess). His comment on standards only came after his judging time complaint, so I think he just see it as a mean to an end. Anyway thats how I read the situation right now.
Just to add to this discussion, I think we need to be clear about what are those "standards". I can classify them as "vertical" standards and "horizontal" standards. What I mean by that? Well, vertical would mean how the run itself is doing? Optimized, finished, legal, can be console verified, etc. These factors only judge the run itself. This part of standards was NOT lowered at all. In fact people are getting their runs rejected all the time still because it's not up to those standards.
Horizontal standards however would mean being open to a variety of other systems, games and categories that are subject to discussions on whether they are acceptable or not based on those standards. Now this part is exactly what was adjusted to become open to many other possible options thus allowing more people to come in and be creative. This, in my opinion, has advanced TASVideos to a good level.
Interesting view. The first aspect is what we call "well-done" and we evolved into wanting all well-done movies to be hosted on the site eventually. Previously there were categories for which it didn't matter how well-done or even mind blowing something was, it was all just rejected without remorse. I'd call it scope.
Indeed it got expanded a lot by removing requirements and limitations that were making less and less sense for us. But we also got a bit laxer regarding what we consider a well-done movie. Exactly because checking every single thing until you've checked everything before judging is not scalable. And not fun when you have to repeat it infinitely.
And no matter where you draw the line, like 1/3 of everything you judge would be in the grey area about which nobody can be sure what to do with it, and you'd have to spend months discussing it with others. And right after you got an agreement and drew the line, someone instantly submits a movie that hits another grey area. Because not having gray area is impossible. And if you try to stay relevant and accept things that don't quite fit the existing policies and you update the policies, after every single policy update there will be a movie that still goes against them and still looks too good to reject. That cycle is endless, all policies are pointless and subjective. Best thing we can aim for is to annoy people the least.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
