After 44 Years, Someone Beat the Donkey Kong Kill Screen
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
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Wait this is a thing that actually happened how
i caught an upload 33 seconds after uploading ...
aren't the magnets like really flimsy and don't hold the plates that well
and also a worrying amount of the "art" is AI generated.
@@Kosmicd12 I know how you can do that if you're using a PC controller you can hit the bottom one exactly 12 times per second which is a 180 BPM 16th note jackhammer constantly on your finger and then you do the other one for the up arrow at a fourth note Pace immediately afterwards and then you switch back as a 4/1 16th note poly rhythm if you have a top level stepmania player they could actually do this in real time
Happy to reach 500,000 points.
Billy Mitchell will claim it as his I fear.
New apple product: iFear
He’s gonna find a lost tape of when he did it
"That's right, we're gonna cheat" AVGN
STOPPPPP that's exactly what I was thinking as soon as I saw this!! 😂😂🤣🤣🤣
🔥🔥🔥@@someonecalledeulogio2280
legend has it that if you progress 20 levels past the kill screen, the arcade machine will display a lawsuit from Billy Mitchell for daring to be better than him.
I have seen it. 100% verified.
and if you get 200 levels past the kill screen, you unlock Luigi
@TrafficallityTrue
@Trafficallity Jumpboy
BS
Billy Mitchell already did this back in 1492 while driving a Honda Civic hatch in 2nd gear across the Atlantic Ocean. The VHS is currently in a maximum security prison for arson.
What's he up to these days? Attempting to prove the joystick was black and not red?
@@TheDanzomanzoNah, now he's trying to revise the history of his Cartoon Network suit to make it seem like the suit was about CN going back on a (non-existent) contract they made with him.
Nah he's gotta get to 5th to crack vtec
@@TheDanzomanzo suing youtubers left and right while throwing tantrums
In terms of his other claims, this narrative actually seems plausible by comparison.
The year is 2030: ten year old speedrunner LordAppleSmaX is casually on Donkey Kong level 999 where all the colors are bugged out shades of magenta and dayglow green and Mario's head has glitched to become a flaming barrel. He's telling his chat this is a bad run.
And Billy Mitchell is claiming that its not impressive because he did it 20 years ago
Also all people have twitch chat running in their heads at all times
out of all the dystopias that has to be the worst ever conceived @@Sorrelhas
Ain't nobody pogchamping that garbage run, LordAppleSmaX. Get your head in the game.
"This is what happened to his small intestine"
The crazy part is that you may not have even investigated further if you didn't get super lucky the first time
I think i would have at least tried, but yeah there's no guarantee I would've figured it out! Based on the wording of JC's post, it seems he was aware DK could do different patterns, but either didn't know they would give him more time to live, or didn't know DK could delay longer
It actually baffles me how no one investigated further after the REALLY close call from Jeff Harrist. Or at least, there were no new results for well over a decade after that!
You can probably get past the last level he was on using automated inputs. Like write a python script to keep doing the ladder glitch and get the timing just right.
@@AndrewMooreMar I think it was done too early, and that's why it flew under the radar. It was probably rediscovered only because it was proven to work now.
Unrelated but nice Cirno pfp
A few years ago, everybody knew humans couldn't reach the killscreen in Tetris. Last year, everybody KNEW the blue dog couldn't win in Majora's Mask! And 30 minutes ago, you knew that nobody could beat the kill screen in Donkey Kong. Heh... Imagine what you'll _know_ ...tomorrow.
I’ll know nothing, probably less than I do today. 🫠
also great movie reference btw
very nice reference, heh
I think you meant make it PAST the killscreen in Tetris. Everyone reached the killscreen in Tetris, that's how we knew there was a killscreen.
@@KelpTheGreatman yk what they meant
Billy Mitchell did this back in 1980 at the World's Fair PacMan Arcade Expo in front of a crowd of over 9 billion spectators. A VHS of him performing the feat arrived at the Whitehouse just moments after this video aired. You will be hearing from his lawyers shortly.
That VHS is now haunted by pacman ghosts
I was there and can confirm its true. Justice for Billy.
OOOOOOHHH BILLYYYY! 🖐🏻
Yeah I was there, it was wild
Trump would absolutely vouch for Billy's claim if you asked him, so it must be true, right?
22:00 "This WILL not happen for real"
That's speedrunner slang for "give it 10 or 15 years"
Keyboard time
@@silvercrownt what does a keyboard have to do with this?
@@turkia6148 easier up down input switching than a joystick
Summoning Salt just clipped that audio and now waits.
@@silvercrownt In order for the record to count, you have to use original hardware. The entire Billy Mitchell fiasco is due to him using MAME and a non-original joystick and still claiming a record due to being on the in with the officials.
16:49 I've lived my entire life up to this point without knowing Donkey Kong could actually *run out of barrels* to throw at you.
And when he runs out of barrels he gets bored and thanos snaps you
The fact that this was posted a few hours before Karl Jobs made another video about Billy Mitchell just makes it even funnier
As another one who follows both channels, I just tossed my water almost in my keyboard while laughing at this, LMAO!
does Karl even talk about video games
@@Rhyme_TimeGenuinely yes, a lot
Yeah, but that Regular Show episode is old. It's pretty well-known, though maybe not to as big an audience as Karl has. Actually, more people have probably watched all Regular Show episodes than Karl has an audience.
@@Rhyme_Time what makes you think he doesn't?
It's really impressive how just a lucky 1/32 delay is what kept this from being uncovered in 2013. Hats off to all the crazy work everyone put in to not only pulling this off, but digging through the code to figure out what was happening and why.
On the NES you could influence the delay.
Kosmic, thanks for the tribute to Jeff. He was a great guy-welcoming and generous with his time. When I was developing DK hardware, he sold me an original board for a song just to help move the project along.
Thanks for sharing!
Todd Rogers did this in 1983. The trick is to start each level in second gear.
Twin Galaxies can vouch for him.
This comment is Walter Day approved ✅️
*Todd Togers
Fact Checked ✅
as true by REAL
Billy Mitchell Patriots.
It's in Guinness. I've seen it in the book!
I'd have you know, It's Todd Todgers now 😂
That's a pretty incredible discovery. I doubt, however, that an outcome like 19 straight long delays could really happen. I don't know how the RNG gets seeded, but I have a hard time believing there's a way to manipulate it into doing 19 1/32 rolls in a row that are all half a second apart.
Party pooper...😢
You never know though
agreed, the problem always comes up once the odds get that unlucky that its not TRUE random and there are only so many results. so while it would be tedious you could check all possible results and with odds that insane its just unlikely for a sequence like that to exist
Yeah, this was my exact thought, you could probably calculate the possible seed patterns and confirm whether it's even possible or not.
On an 8 bit system though, I don't think there are enough possible random sequences to make it even a possibility.
@@Zalied Lots of games let you do what's called 'luck manipulation'.
It's difficult to think of another case where the effect of a villain running out of ammunition is the hero's sudden death.
The spring speed getting affected by a glitch to make it possible to continue before the glitched "timer" runs out is absolutely insane. Congrats on this upload Kosmic, it's clear it was a lot of work and looks to be performing strong, well deserved.
Thanks! Yeah i didnt explain this but the timer is actually slower on pie and rivets for the same reason. Not sure if beating pies would be possible with the faster timer. But rivets wouldnt even be close with a normal timer. Level 73 you have literally 1 frame of wiggle room to beat the springs board, and thats with the springs coming out 8 frames slower total on that level than on 22 🤯
The timer issue has been known for a long time. It's been determined it's theoretically possible for an infinite "pause" where he never throws barrels. JC was great thats Richie. Knuckles and I in that photo from the kong off in banning. Great times miss them
So proud of Billy Mitchells newest achievement! Thanks for showcasing this!
Let's chug a bottle of his hot sauce to celebrate! /s
That is Kosmic's you must be high
r/woosh; Billy would totally claim this as his own, knowing him
Who's Billy Mitchells?
@@aidansedelnick4443 dang bro that observer probably has a better ability to see through sarcasm than you
Would be insane if Nintendo hid like 16 previously unseen level designs after the kill screen
Or if there were actually more levels but when building they didnt realize the system limitations wouldnt let you reach them and they just never took them out. Like a game breaking bug that happens so far into gameplay, almost no one will reach it anyways, so no need to fix it or remove the extra levels.
5:16 He just passes out, after like 2 hours straight of running, jumping, dodging, swinging hammers, unbolting rivets, and climbing ladders, he is out of power, out of juice, he just immediately passes out, he can’t handle any more.
Poor Mario... He needs a well-deserved break after all that...
Now it's canon that he's doing a Looney Toons comedy bit and climbing up a ladder after it ended. If he stops because he's tired, he falls and dies.
😂
First, NES Tetris has their “Rebirth” screen beaten.
Second, the Blue Dog in Majora’s Mask finally got his first legit win in the race.
Now this monkey business! Another primal arcade challenge that must be harder than beating Grobda 1cc!
Nowadays most impossible feats in videogames are getting beaten! It shows that nothing is truly impossible
What do you guys think is next?
A *modified version* of NES Tetris had its rebirth screen beaten. That allows for pure focused gameplay rather than struggling to do tricks to avoid game crashes. I don't think doing crash-avoiding tricks while also playing the game at LV29-speed will ever happen.
@@Dwedit People said the same thing about LV29 speed to begin with, so who knows. The human limit has a habit of exceeding our expectations.
@@GearsCringemongerpossible but not plausible. Until someone gets the skills to do it. That’s how it always is huh?
1 in 40 octillion...so you're telling me there's a chance. -Lloyd Christmas
There's something else really cool about this, assuming I'm right.
If Rivets 22 was somehow proven to be possible, the timer on level 23 would be 23*10+40 = 270, giving a time limit of 1400 which is much more doable. Eventually, it would just about reset to the normal timer, allowing you to continue until the next "killscreen," level 48. If you do the math (520-512=8), you'll find that level 48 gives a time limit of 800, which is still doable with the glitch. Then, you would get to continue until level 73 (770-768=2) gives you a time limit of 200, which is completely impossible; even if the impossible happens and Donkey Kong delays the barrels indefinitely, there's no way to delay the Pie level (and the other levels, for that matter) long enough.
So, assuming Rivets 22 is doable, Pie 73 would be the absolute end of the game.
There can always be an as of yet unknown way to manipulate the game to do the "impossible". With enough time and determination/obsession.
@@witness2.512 Called "damage the medium on which the code is stored in a very arbitrary way" or, in simpler terms, modding
Barrel 1 level 124 will be the end of the game, this is because of the time limit being 0
Correct on the additional kill "levels" at 48 and 73. DK can never delay until he's thrown 3 barrels so there would truly be no way to finish level 73 barrels. You actually can still beat the pie board and you can even finish the spring board with literally 1 frame to spare. At level 99 it's another kill level with 600 timer, all of which are beatable and then you just play level 99 over and over forever
@@Kosmicd12 Oh i see, so time would run out on 73 before even being able to get lucky on delays then? Wow, well maybe in the future if some new way of being able to clear barrels without relying on pause luck is found (like some way to manipulate memory or a new strategy that hasn’t been uncovered yet), then infinite gameplay might actually be possible! Just because the amazing method you found of clearing barrels is the first way doesn’t mean it’ll be the last! Games like Donkey Kong truly are amazing in that regard, sometimes it can take years or decades but new secrets are waiting to be found!
The fact that the rivet stage can not be passed in time is... well i don't know if I should say fortunate or unfortunate.
The important thing to keep in mind is that at that point, the next screen will be the next level, meaning the timer will be increased by 1000 again. So from that point you can actually keep playing normally for another 25 loops or so until it overflows again. Then... at Level 48, it would overflow again, but it will be offset by another 400, so you'll get a bonus timer of 800, once again giving you a lot more time than Level 22 ever did. And so you can keep going until Level 73, where it overflows a THIRD time. The offset would be at 1200 by Level 74, but that just means it overflows one level earlier, giving you a Bonus Timer of just 200. Only then would the game truly become impossible.
Those final 2 rivets are all that's stopping you from having to play for another 300 screens.
Level 23 would only give you an extra second on usual the ammount of luck required would be a little less but you would still need the ladder glitch which takes precision perfection and 1 extra second not being enough to get all 8 rivets on the next go through anyway. Somehow, male it past that level and 2 extra seconds further lowering the luck needed but still too much precision for any human and maybe enough time to get every rivet now. Then 3 seconds, perhaps with precision and luck you can get by normally and you could likely get by normally by now. But all of this is still just theoretical and the kill screen remains where it has for the past 44 years in terms of legit
@@Finn_the_Cat One extra second? No, the timer would be increased by 1000. That is, ten more seconds. or however long barrels or springs take to spawn.
@GL_099 right 1000 is 10 seconds not one second. I'd like to imagine a world where Nintendo was bent on making sure their arcade machines could be played indefinitely to keep kids spending quarters and not being satisfied even when it gets to insanely high levels. My solution would be to remove the +40 part of the equation and that gives another 4 levels without problem until 26 where it goes over the limit then you re add it to bring it well over the limit again
I'm sure the community will study deeply the code and maybe find out a totally unexpected solution for those rivets.
The initial kill screen was believed unbeatable for decades and yet here we are.
@Kafei01 well the original kill screen is still unbeatable, it's just there's a very small chance you could beat it with frame perfect precision that leaves no room for error and a ton of luck but the speed at which you would need to go up and down is impossible for any human reflex and would break the cabinet joystick more than likely
First off, huge congratulations!
This reminds of how a Spyro the Dragon speedrunner just picked up Super Mario Sunshine and discovered a way to perform a skip that the community had been trying to do for a few years.
Sometimes a different perspective is all you need!
22:38 I know this is someone's home setup, but you're still banned from the arcade forever.
I was somewhere between laughing and crying that whole clip.
This is how people feel watching me play wangan, I shift incredibly hard and they're like "bro chill chill!"
Todd Todgers actually found a way back in 1980. You basically had to smear his BBQ Sauce into the screen for 69 trillion points
i can confirm, i was his coin
He did it back in the 80s by starting Donkey Kong in second gear.
I actually watched Todd do this live, the way he slathered the cabinet in sauce was very impressive
this comment is too funny pls help
I had this thought and instantly knew someone would have beaten me lol
22:30, you picked the perfect person. Dude sounds like a machine gun when he plays.
It's a shame that JC didn't get to live to see this landmark victory in video game history. But amazing feat, this was fascinating to watch. Thank you for playing!
Who is JC?
Edit: I see. Very sad 😢
R.I.P. JC. It’s sad that he doesn’t get to see this and how close he was to doing it himself
I bet Billy Mitchell could get further! Just … he can't show you right now. Not unless he has a MAME setup that is totally an original arcade cabinet.
Swapping a board takes time, you know. /s
He's already released a video showing he's passed the impossible level. He even claims that he uploaded it to UA-cam before cosmic but they took too long to post it and now he's suing YT, Cosmic, Karl Jobst for some reason and everyone in the comments! Prepare to get served!😅
JFC can you people shut up about Billy Mitchel and give this guy his time in the sun?
@@sor3999 🎶 Every party needs a pooper That's why they invited you. Party pooper. Party pooper. 🎶
@@sor3999Billy Mitchel is allergic to giving people their time in the sun
Everyone keeps talking about Billy Mitchell when instead we need to be worried about Garrett Bobby Ferguson.
wow! another great vid, brotha. so honored to have been included in this one. even more grateful to call you a friend. exciting to have you as part of the dk scene! can't wait till the day you get your own dk cab! halfkappa
I can't wait for all the TAS videos for this now. What an incredible discovery. Analyzing that code must have been something else.
Thanks for this fascinating video! I appreciate the pains you take to give credit where it's due to speedrunners over the years; I know that can take a lot of extra work. It's amazing to me how unintended quirks of old games like this, like the way the timer is so variable, can lead to really complex situations.
27:19 That's too bad that he didn't get to live to see what he almost achieved.
I don't know, every time we've discovered that a killscreen is beatable in a TAS setting, some madlad comes around a little later and does it. Can't wait for this game to be the next one broken
True but stories of that happening were reasons that weren’t physical limitations, this one is which is why it’s clear nobody will get close
@@TF2Starlight Tetris was LITERALLY about using new techniques to overcome physical limitations.
I want to see Wind Waker speedrunners attempt a manual superswim up the broken ladders
@@TF2Starlight using some techniques you can easily get 12KPS on the up arrow, with some luck you can get it done i believe
@@Stormkyleis I was just thinking this, didn't someone do a manual superswim in this most recent AGDQ?
18:54 To put that number in perspective, if you had to randomly choose between every single star in the observable universe, you're nearly 40,000 times as likely to get our Sun on the first try than this.
22:40 Getting kicked out of the arcade speedrun
Best comment ever!
This doesn't sound like it's entirely a joke. It looks and sounds like you'd need some kind of controlled grip to minimize how violently the joystick is shaken.
It's ambience for the game, it does take place at a construction site after all, sounds like a jackhammer.
an employee finds the source of the extremely loud person...
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT JOYSTICK"
"dudee i was so close to getting past the killscreen!"
Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune machines in Akihabara and Yokohama Chinatown be like...
Billy Mitchell is shaking his fist in rage rn
Heh heh, good! That's what he gets for being a save state using wimp.
The Ding of Dong haha hahhaha haha hahahaha haha lol
He's going to say he found this 30 years ago and then sue anyone who disagrees.
He’s on his way to sue rn
He's already passed that impossible level and has already contacted his lawyers to start the lawsuit against Cosmic, Karl Jobst and everyone in the comments section of this video!
maaaaan the fact a guy almost proved it was possible 12 years ago passed away recently hit me HARD
The sheer amount of knowledge and determination that was needed to make this video is so incredibly impressive. I'm amazed
I've never seen this channel or heard the narrator, but at 00:40, I audibly marked out for some reason. 😂
Thanks ❤
All of this was achieved because of Billy Mitchel himself, he will now send a lawsuit to your door.
What's even more incredible (to me) is that after 40 years and countless quarters there are still new things to learn about the game. The game is 22 kilobytes. A text file that size is like 15-25 pages of a book. (Don't quote me on this figure, I'm just human ...and perhaps a donkey 😅).
People are amazing. Amazingly stubborn. 😉 I don't know You guys, but I love You.
Weird way to announce that Billy Mitchell is planning to sue you
Legend has it billy Mitchell reached level 26 but twin galaxies recorded over the tape with the tv broadcast of spaceballs by accident.the lawsuit is pending
23:57 DON'T YOU DARE GET ALL VSAUCE ON ME THIS LATE INTO THE VIDEO
LOL
🤨
How I’m I reading this comment exactly when it happens lmao
last time i was this early, it saved a whole frame rule
That’s great!!!!
you weren't early, you were on time at best :P
Going for WR pace I see
Goddammit take my upvote
What is a frame rule?
I heard Billy Mitchell found this 15 years ago. He has it recorded on VHS but Twin Galaxies stole it.
I can't wait for the hour long Summoning Salt video about how speed runners took on this challenge and broke the limit further.
2:38 jumpscare
Lmfao hi
That doesn't look like a metallic crystal!😜
Hi
Great video, This game was a huge part of my childhood.
12:57-14:14 Kosmic not only explained Donkey Kong's "ladder" glitch, but Metroid's "door" glitch. Who would have thought?
insane how a 1/32 chance delayed this discovery by over a decade
The nod to Jeff was classy, good work.
This video made me realize after 35 years I've never actually seen gameplay of DK beyond the "iconic" screen.
right, rivets? flames? what am I looking at
Love how you give credit to JC at the end. Never heard of him before this video, you could have easily just not included that but that fact that you did shows integrity.
It's really incredible that this is even theoretically possible and it was great to dig into the technical details with you. Donkey Kong is one of those few games where there really is an interest in the deep, technical aspects of the game/code/logic
Dude, JC was such a legend
yess .. Jesus Christ the Lord!
Even describing the 1/32 odds of getting the long delay by itself fails to mention this is at the end of a run that's reached the killscreen, a feat in and of itself.
23:02 "... so you're saying there's a chance?"
At the start of the video "After 44 years someone finally found a way to get past it and that someone is me"
My dumb part of my brain "oh looks pretty good for 44 or plus".
Tetris: *gets a kill screen for over 34 years later*
The Donkey Kong player: _…”And I took it personally.”_
So the run is now an intense test of skill, competence and endurance... capped off by the highest effort roulette spin ever?
and making impossibly fast inputs that will break the joystick or your hand, or both
So… just like every other modern speedrun
Careful Billy Mitchell might sue you for breaking his 100% legitimate and not cheated record
Todd Rogers already did this in 1986, it just cant be shown because Twin Galaxies spilled hot sauce on the paper copy of the record
Billy Mitchell made it to level 32’s kill screen he just assumed that’s what everyone meant because he’s just so good.
Wow, I can't believe Tommy Tallerico was the first person to discover and get a new record past the kill screen! His mother must be *VERY* proud
Go away Hbomber cultist
oof
Shane_NC here, 53rd person to KS DK, less if you only count arcade, and I am blown away and extremely proud to be able to witness this. Would be incredible for the next generstion of gamers to take this where tetris has gone!
23:15 You should look into the Rolling technique used by the NES Tetris community since it could be used as way for a human to perform the 24 inputs per second consistently.
on the switch it’s actually 12/s because down is just being held
I feel like doing it once might be in the realm of possibility. I'm not sure if rolling is precise enough to get it consistently enough to do it all three times, and then you would need to win three 1/32 rolls on top of that.
@extremepayne That actually makes it more favorable. If the rolling is done efficiently enough (at 20 hertz), it would be possible to send 40 inputs per second to the game.
Don't think that would be possible on real hardware since the original game uses an arcade stick and not a dpad
@MineCreeperLPs yeah there's no shot this is possible on the arcade version with the original joystick
The most insane thing of them all is that 1982 was almost 44 years ago
Billy Mitchell has a video tape recording of him doing this back in 1988. He's been saving it just for this moment. You'll see it in the lawsuit.
Todd Rogers beat this in 1980, he actually got to level 200. He’d show you the tapes of it, but somebody accidentally set them on fire and only the first two minutes of footage remain.
Todd Todgers has excellent rapid hand movement due to a misspent youth.
Imagine what it feels like to be the only person out of millions to reach a level on a 40 year old game
waiting for billy mitchell to claim he already passed the killscreen a decade ago
This absolutely needs a new TAS to be shown at GDQ. That's amazing!
im sorry to say but that'd be absurdly boring 😭
Haha, love it! I'm the marinomitch13 from the DKF thread. Me and f_symbols tried to get good at the broken ladder technique back in 2013 on arcade. Good times!
heyyyy
@@AndrewgSpeedruns Sup!
@ you read every book in the world yet? ;) Hope all is well... it's been a little bit.
@@AndrewgSpeedruns haha, working on it!
Many won't know this but Billy Mitchell actually beat those "new levels" back in 1950. He was also nominated for a Guinness world record of beating a game before the game was even released.
If Kosmic turns up dead, Billy Mitchell did it
I've been playing these games since I was a kid. Donkey Kong was always a challenge for me on the NES; never got very far in it. I used to speed run SMB and LoZ with friends during summers, we even recorded our runs on VHS. So many amazing memories watching your videos, and then to see the insane things you're doing in modern times, it's so awesome! I cannot express how much respect I have for the dedication and enthusiasm you guys have.
I'm not a speed runner but I do love the community. As a kid, I used to get free play of Donkey Kong at the local pizza place in return for doing odd jobs (folding boxes, sweeping, etc) and I played a lot. I could eventually get to the kill screen almost every game, and I did figure out the ladder glitch (the L1 at least, and only on the first ladder) but I never really understood the mechanics. As it was my favourite game for such a long time, I love learning how it works and how you can bypass it. Well done!
As a former QA Tester for Konami, EA and Atari, I find this absolutely awesome! This is so stimulating, Excellent work!
What years did you work? Any games you were part of the testing for that you feel pride for being part of the launch of?
@@creamedgravy Coded Arms (PSP), Metal Gear 4, Karaoke Revolutions American Idol Edition (PS2), Champions Online MMO (cryptic / Atari), Official Star Trek MMO (cryptic / Atari), Dragon Ball games (multiple), Alone in the Dark (PS3/Central Park one), Test Drive Unlimited 2 launch team, many more etc...
Thanks for being part of the magic making games so great, and especially the DBZ titles. Any fun stories you may be able to share, like a particularly nasty bug you discovered, or some kind of cut content you particularly enjoyed?
Billy Mitchell already did this back in 1982 by starting the level in second gear
Wrong guy
Having grown up playing these games, it brings me no end of joy to see we're still pushing the boundaries in what's possible on them. Thank god for Mame!
For context of just how insane getting 19 long delays in a row would be, the current odds of winning the jackpot of the Powerball lottery are 1 in 292 million
This means that you can theoretically win the lottery approximately 136,986,301,369,863,013,698 times before hitting 19 long delays just once.
Congratulations to Billy Mitchell! I am so happy for him! After all these years it is so nice to see him finally succeed.
And here I thought that Billy Mitchell beat the kill screen while Tommy Tallarico held hands with Shigeru Miyamoto and looked on. Learn something new everyday.
I'm told his mother is very proud
@four-en-tee At night he has to go pee.
If getting to 23 was possible the overflow would be bigger so the timer slightly longer so each level above 23 becomes more doable as the overfllow increases by 10 each level after 22 till 48 (which should overflow to 8, less than less than 23's 14 but still more time than 22's 4) . So if 22 rivets is beatable it might be difficult to know where things really end. Level 73 though would overflow to 2 so it has an exceptionally short timer (half of level 22) and surely would be impossible if someone could get that far.
Billy Mitchell will claim he did it first and come up with a VHS tape from 1989 that shows him completing it on a totally real Donkey Kong Cabinet.
22:45 sounds like a machine gun
Great thing about old school gaming is that they're still secrets to be found and limits to break. Games nowadays get updated, patched, hacked, and will eventually be shut down then forgotten. I'm going to try the ladder glitch on my Donkey Kong arcade now.
7:00 or so - "underflow" is different than "overflow in a negative direction"; arithmetic underflow has to deal with floating point numbers *very* close to zero, which is not a possibility here. This is still overflow.
Wow, this is crazy. I assume that even before you got really lucky, it was understood that the timer was RNG, but not that it was technically possible for it to delay forever?
22:00 every time someone emphatically says that something can't be done in a speedrun someone else comes along and proves them wrong. all that to say, never say never. especially in the speedrunning community lol
I'm imagining someone using some kind of analogue device to flick the lever. Like a hand-cranked mechanism
Thats works for one in a billion, maybe even something in a trillion odds. When you get to octillion odds? I know several "This will never happen" with those kind of odds and they do, in fact, just never happen.
Thanks for the fun video. Takes me back to my youth, but as a software engineer, who learned assembler on a Z80 I also appreciate the technical elements presented.
its crazy because if you beat rivits you would in theory unlock infinite more screens. unless a different killscreen based overflow happens.
Even if you could get past rivets the run would almost certainly die at level 73. At 73 your countdown would be 770 which would overflow to 2, which simply isn't enough time without some sort of RNG manipulation. Even if you found that at level 124 your countdown just straight up overflows to zero.
@Lankpants true I guess it's convenient that the current overflow is tight enough to at least get a few more levels than expected
That's real cool Kosmic and Imma let you finish, but Billy Mitchell just beat that after 43 years and 11 months. He told me so himself. No, you can't see.
This will be so lovingly remembered by the 2000 rich people in their few underground bunkers in twenty years amazing work kudos
Oh look, at 26:37 there is a picture of the original VHS tape containing the actual performance that beat Billy Mitchells 1982 arcade world record in August of 2000.
This is the same performance that the film makers lied and defamatorily deemed "constantly disputed and impossible to verify therefore merited no inclusion in the film" This lie blew up in their faces so they changed their story. What makes an uncharismatic bore like Steve Webie "movie material"? The fact he has ties to the film makers who will bribe Twin Galaxies and lie for him.
Petition to coin the term "skillscreen" for false kill screens that only someone with extreme skill could make it too
I'd sign that honestly
To think that one of the iconic kill screens needs just one more breakthrough for a legendary TAS playthrough...
I love seeing new developments in speedrunning and high-score runs, so imagine my surprise seeing that Donkey Kong, of all games, got a new development after all these years. Though I hold some hope for what could come next, I am in love with a discovery like this being revealed (and documented too~ ^^). Thanks for the cool video (and the new fave song! I loved the last song in the video, and the song credits let me find it for future listening~ ^^)
24:42: "Good luck!"
yeah to the RNG manipulation people in 2027 pulling this off in a real run.
Maybe by then we'll have quantum assisted speedruns that can run the game an infinite amount of time until the RNG gods smile upon us lol
It's technically possible in one try, I'm just imagining someone accidentally getting this and being like "wtf"
holy smoke, ladies gentlemen guys and gals, its time to pick the wine and pop champagne, we have to celebrate this New Donkey Kong Arcade Discovery