Okay, this is not one of those thinkpieces with a controversial title where we say that Paper Mario sucks and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is much better. No, the title is literally what we mean: it’s a speedrunning tactic called arbitrary code execution, and it’s absolutely crazy.
We’ve covered Arbitrary Code Execution, or ACE, before – it’s a speedrunning trick that allows players to manipulate the game’s code and therefore complete it faster than ever – or just spawn a bunch of Arwings at Vila Kakariko .
The last game to fall victim to the ACE technique is Paper Mario, which streamer JCog set at 54:22 – a new world record for Paper Mario Any% runs almost twice as fast as the next runner-up.
“For those who are wondering, no, it probably won’t be the new Any% route, as it requires memory manipulation with OoT, but there is a good chance of adding it to the category extension framework.
Either way, it is technically the fastest Paper Mario ever defeated by a human using only official Nintendo hardware. “
– JCog
This Paper Mario race is unusual, not because of its speed, but because 30 of those 54 minutes are spent playing Ocarina of Time. Paper Mario’s JCog’s speedrun occurs mainly in the world of Hyrule for a simple reason – as WarChamp7 puts it, “OoT is so fucked up that people are breaking other games with him right now.”
Putting it in layman’s terms: the speedrunner can use Ocarina of Time to write code using ACE that will distort them directly into the Paper Mario credits, but to perform this nifty trick, they will have to change the game cartridges in the middle of the timing speedrun fraction of a second.
Ocarina of Time clears the memory of the Expansion Pak when it boots, but Paper Mario does not, so if the speedrunner can turn off the console and change the two cartridges for 1 or 2 seconds that the Nintendo 64 still has residual energy, then the code that wrote in Ocarina of Time will be uploaded to Paper Mario, and the speedrunner will be taken straight to the credits after making several precise moves, including hammering the ground much.
However, there is a problem – JCog did not blow into the cartridge before inserting it. He may have set a new world record, but does it really count if he didn’t release all the goo first?