Super Mario Bros. gets arbitrary code execution after 40 years

Forty years after release, the original Super Mario Bros. still has secrets. Kotaku reports that speedrunner Kosmic posted a video about a major new glitch found by the game's speedrunning community, first covered by Polygon. It uses arbitrary code execution (ACE), an exploit that lets players input custom code through the game itself. ACE has been used to skip large parts of other games, including The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Final Fantasy and many Pokemon titles, and appeared in other Mario games, but never in the original.

The trail began when a playthrough of The Lost Levels on Nintendo Switch Online crashed, shared by a user on X. Community members found the footage, tried to understand the crash and worked out whether it could be reproduced in the original game. After a lot of guesswork they found a loophole, and ACE is now officially possible in SMB1, letting players jump straight to the ending.

For now it will not change how people run the game. Kosmic told Polygon that the trick is limited and needs many pixel-perfect inputs, and even then skipping to the ending is slower than beating the game normally. If players did make it faster, it would probably count as its own category rather than replace current records, because it is such a significant exploit.

Kosmic framed the find as an achievement of making it possible and solving it. His quote stuck with me: you can now reach not just the Minus World but any world or level you want, with no hacks or cheats. After a stretch of drama in the Mario running scene, it is nice to see a story about collaboration.

Source: Kotaku