How Speedrunners Delete the Flag to Save Time
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
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#Kosmic #SMB1 #Mario
Going to be working hard to put out more videos and stream more.
Subscribe! And follow on Twitch! www.twitch.tv/kosmic
So happy for new videos
Hope to see the return of Romhack Wednesdays, btw watching Kosmic play super Mario bros deluxe was hilarious in the speed running 10 different versions of smb1 video. Those 8-3 hammer bros don’t play around in that version lol
Thanks! Always putting out great content!
ok
Oops! No Flags% when?
Great video! I particularly enjoyed the sprite icons next to their RAM values.
hi bismuth
Thanks! Even though I didn't do it all the time haha. Probably should've for all the despawns at the end. Oh well
Also the HappyLee clip they're a little innaccurate, but they flip around so much I did what made it the easiest to follow I think
Hi bismuth I love your videos
@@Kosmicd12 I actually think the way you did it at the end works well, with the arrows on screen counting out the sprites, it made the ram values window unnecessary since throughout the video the viewer had been building the intuition for how it worked.
5:14 - Speedrunner: "flag despawn"
TH-cam Autosubtitles: "Flagdy Spawn"
I love that even with no possible time saves, you went looking for more places to despawn the flagpole just to style on the game. Even without any practical use, these tricks can just be fun!
It's like watching the ol' Harlem Globetrotters. Not sure if they'd be good at actual basketball games, but they do impressive & stylish basketball tricks.
I've only been aware of this phenomenon on a surface level because there are at least a few places in Lost Levels where crucial trampolines will despawn if too many enemies are present. World C-3 is a big one; if you don't kill the Lakitu right away there's a good chance that he'll toss a Spiny while multiple enemies are already present, and the trampolines will just start disappearing, leaving you with literally no way to cross all the huge gaps. Something similar will happen in World D-2 if you don't use fire to kill a few Piranha Plants. On some level I've always been curious if the designers were aware of this and arranged things like this intentionally; D-2 does actually provide the player with the means to loop through the first part of the stage a few times to collect a Fire Flower if needed, which makes it always possible to clear even if you started out small. So, this has always blurred the line between "glitch" and "intended play" to me.
Killing piranha plants actually doesn't reduce the sprite count, they just hide dead inside their pipe
@@Kosmicd12 Ah yeah, that's right. Then it has to be either the paratroopas or the vine that's messing with something there.
Despawning platforms can also be a major pain. In some places, it makes the level unbeatable when it happens, just like despawning springboards. Sometimes I feel like there was probably a better way to design some levels to avoid that, but the sprite limit is so restrictive that it's hard to do so without compromising elsewhere.
The OG 5-3 platform has fooled me a few times, but the springs on C-3 are absolutely sadistic. Even if you kill Lakitu, if the game is in a bad mood he just respawns too soon and ruins your day anyway.
@@EebstertheGreat an ideal solution would have been for platforms and springs to have priority - nothing is allowed to replace them. So you might see an enemy disappear or fail to spawn, but the level is still beatable.
I never realized just how many piranha plants I had been despawning all these years. They must have known about that happening and probably didn't care because a missing plant never breaks the game in any way.
you're despawning all sorts of goombas and koopas etc. too
This happened to me in 2-1 once: I hit the block with the vine in it, but then I realized I had 00 coins, so instead of climbing I decided to keep going to try for the Flagpole 1UP. I accidentally kicked a Koopa shell and stopped it in front of the end stairs before the three Goombas made it down. I did NOT get the Flagpole 1UP because of the missing flag, even though I kept my coins at 00 and finished at 170 time!
SMB1 doesn't have 1-ups for flag pole tops. that started with NSMB.
@@WaluTime I meant 2-1 in The Lost Levels. When you hit the Flagpole in that game while both digits of the coins match the last digit of the timer, you get the 1UP regardless of how high up the Flagpole you got... if the flag is still there, of course
@@WaluTime The Japanese SMB2 (for the FDS) was the first game that featured that. So too did All Night Nippon SMB.
The gif of Y really came out of left field for me, I nearly spat out my drink. Hilarious.
This was a super great video! Part of the reason I love Speedrunning so much is finding about the ways runners take advantage of the code to cut time. Excited to see more content like this from you
Even if flag-despawning only ends up being feasible for speedrunning a few levels in SMB2J, the thought process required here still adds such a fresh new feeling to speedrunning these games. I love all the new discoveries and oddities people keep finding here.
The Flag Despawn Revolution
Kosmic is such a wholesome... ehm... content creator? There's a word for it.
Anyway, Kosmic is always a mood lifter with his content and personality. Like I can temporarily forget about my troubles thanks to Kosmic. I'm just watching videos, but this honestly is one of the few positive constants in my life and I'm very appreciative for it. Hopefully it'll last for a while, but a thank you is in place either way.
No.
@@n646n Yes.
There’s something so fascinating about such a simple game with SO MUCH working under the hood at times. It’s always a pleasure watching your videos :)
5:06 at this moment, I felt your inner Summoning Salt
This gives me an idea for a new speedrun category: min flags, where you beat the game while encountering as little flags as possible. It would work a lot like any% but would also allow for the use of flag despawning in levels where it doesn't save any time...
or maybe like low%?
i don’t know how to explain it that well, i recommend looking it up if you don’t know how it works
It's amazing how speedrunners can find new things about Super Mario Bros. over 35 years after its release
Awesome ! was curious about this the other day after seeing it in lost levels speedruns, but couldnt find an explanation anywhere easily for how it happens
Ah, those speedrunners, doing anything in their ability to go fast!
edit: hate to be *that* guy, but this is the most likes I've gotten, thanks
I was thinking about why so many in the radical left participate in "speedrunning"
The reason is the left's lack of work ethic ('go fast' rather than 'do it right') and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual archetypes in the marketplace ('fastest mario'), obviously, there are exceptions to this and some people more in the center or right also "speedrun". However, they more than sufficient to prove the rule, rather than contrast it.
Consider how woke GDQ has been, almost since the very beginning. Your eyes will start to open. Returning to the topic of the work ethic: a "speedrunner" may well spend hours a day at their craft, but this is ultimately a meaningless exercise, since they will ultimately accomplish exactly that which is done in less collective time by a casual player. This is thus a waste of effort on the behalf of the "speedrunner". Put more simply, they are spending their work effort on something that someone else has already done (and done in a way deemed 'correct' by the creator of the artwork).
Why do they do this?
The answer is quite obvious if you think about it. The goal is the illusion of speed and the desire (SUBCONSCIOUS) to promote radical leftist, borderline Communist ideals of how easy work is.
Everyone always says that "speedruns" look easy. That is part of the aesthetic. Think about the phrase "fully automated luxury Communism" in the context of "speedrunning" and I strongly suspect that things will start to 'click' in your mind.
What happens to the individual in this? Individual accomplishment in "speedrunning" is simply waiting for another person to steal your techniques in order to defeat you.
Where is something like "intellectual property" or "patent" in this necessarily communitarian process?
Now, as to the sexual archetype model and 'speedrunning' generally...
looks like Shadow was right
Gotta Go Fast!
-Pope John XXIII
Gotta go fast
👴
I find learning the intricacies of the exploits in speedrunkig to be very entertaining. The kind of fun you can only get online with user content. Even though I'm a casual player, I now get what speed runners get out of playing a single game more than average on a lifetime. It becomes its own meta game by that poimt
Speedrunners should be hired to beta test new games. Something a lot of people don't realize is that "playtesters" are people who are really good at noticing patterns, figuring out mechanics, and seeing if they break a game for better or for worse. One of the best "found a bug" stories I know if was a guy who left a car running full speed at a wall while he went for lunch. He came back and found the car roaming around out of bounds. It led to a game-saving bug being discovered. Speedrunners do that kind of thing for fun/discovery, and are invaluable to game dev teams.
Games don't do QA these days thou, it's all release first fix later
I've found out why SMB1's 5-3 fails to load the platforms sometimes. The devs made an off-by-one error while placing an enemy object meant for ending the Bullet Bill frenzy, which would've freed up the enemy slots for the upcoming platforms. Instead, a second Bullet Bill frenzy object is loaded which exhausts the enemy slots. To modify a quote from RGMechEX: "They were so close to preventing this, they even thought of it!" GG code: AIZOVN
A similar issue occurs in SMB2J's A-3. The frenzy end object is placed *after* the flagpole for the upcoming warpzone. If it was placed before the spring instead, it would've freed up the enemy slots for the spring & flag.
Super Mario Bros speedrunning has evolved into something amazing
I'm loving these video essay-style videos!
same
This is really cool. These are my favourite videos of your channel.
love the new style man
Kosmic out here sending these glitch hunters to the Shadow Realm
Interesting. I've watched a lot of your content, and also some other people speedrunning, playing or discussing Super Mario, but somehow I made it until today without ever seeing Mario jump off the flagpole.
Went ahead and signed up for that meals looking forward to trying it out :) First meals arrive on the 19th.
Hope it gives you continued support through future ad deals
Nice, it's always fun to learn new things about this classic
I still remember where I was when GTAce first despawned the flag
If I had to guess, it'd be twitch.tv/GTAce99
Interesting video format, I like this explanation
Damn next step will be : how erasing the background helps saving 2 milliseconds
lols
Great video! I love how you break down the mechanic then use it in some new ways!
This is sweet, the just for fun stuff is my favorite
Great, I love these! First because I just like knowing these fringe details that I'll probably never in my life use, second showing this to a bigger audience may result in breakthroughs in speedrunning and I can always be hiped for that. Thanks Kosmic!
I really enjoy these types of videos Kosmic. Long time fan of the game, but it’s sometimes intimidating going into a twitch chat with all of these terms flying around that I’ve never heard. I hope these become more successful and fruitful for you.
Hello Ophelia,
I have found that cosmic and his chat are very friendly and answer all kinds of questions about the game.
That's not your typical (toxic) twitch channel. Come and stop by!
Love these new videos, you explain things really well and the editing is super chill and easy to follow, the sprites next to the ram slots are a genius idea!
New category: Quickest flagless all levels
It's impossible to despawn the flag in levels like 1-1, 1-2, 2-2 etc.
@@Opanker_ so minimum flag%
@@Opanker_ cant u turn buzzy beatles (dont judge how i wrote it) into red koopas to do it? You can also turn goombas into koopas but they die anyways so yeah
I hovered the video and the first bit of captions read like narration and I was like
"Wait... Kosmic's doing a narration style video? I wonder how he sounds, I don't think I've heard him do that before."
Wasn't disappointed, it's still Kosmic, but you did well with this style. I may not watch every Romhack Wednesday, but I think I'd have to keep up on anything you do in this format.
I love these type of videos pls do more
"our first suspect in this murder mystery are those wretched speedrunners... there's nothing they love more than ruining your childhood to save a fraction of a second" LOL
3:00 aAAaaaAah I wondered why this platform only SOMETIMES spawned. Now I can do the level with confidence. Thanks Kosmic :)
5:15 It's probably just me but that font just instantly remindes me of a summoning salt vid
6:32 I'd recognize the gui.text font anywhere. That's awesome!
I love these technical explanations
Chef created meals. Made by machines with preservatives and chemicals, then microwaved and never touched once by a chef.
I really loved the opening editing in this presentation, and I'm glad you're gonna be doing more videos like this!
these people are insane, each time i put out a game i wonder if in 20 yrs some kids will be totally cracking it in ways i neverr considered. and giving it respect that i never thought possible. good vids mate thanks i like speed running.
5:08.....Kosmic doing his best Karl Jobst impression!!! :)
now my friend Joyful Li can pass super mario brothers in less than 4:54 minutes
0:00
The flagpole has appeared in only 9 Mario games (Super Mario Bros, Lost Levels, New Super Mario Bros, New Super Mario Bros Wii, New Super Mario Bros 2, New Super Mario Bros U, New Super Luigi U, Super Mario 3D Land, and Super Mario 3D World)
There are more Mario games with flagpoles!
@@ant2902 Super Mario Bros 2 uses the bird gate thing at the end. Super Mario Bros 3 uses the "power up roulette" end card. Super Mario Land and Land 2 use just walking into a door. Super Mario World uses the goal tape thing. Super Mario 64, Galaxy, and Galaxy 2 use stars. Super Mario Sunshine and Bowser's Fury use shines, and Super Mario Odyysey uses moons.
The thing that stood out to me most in this video was not anything weird with flags or whatever, but that there are sequels to SMB on the same engine!?
Hmm, I wonder why 1:45 is the most replayed part of this video?
great video, I really like this explainer format. Can't wait for the NoFlag% TAS 😆
New speedrun category? Most Flagpool Despawn%
I used to be addicted to speed running the Nes Remix challenges. Many were traditional speed running, but some were like "defeat x number of enemies with star or fire power." A fun speed running strat was to actually slow down because it allowed more enemies to spawn, enabling you to complete the challenge quicker.
It was also fun searching for new places to make more enemies spawn.
Now that I understand what's going on behind the scenes with sprite slots, I can basically do the opposite of the strat in the video: free up instead of fill up the slots.
With your knowledge of the levels (lost levels included), you might already know many places where slowing down to free up sprite slots will enable additional enemies to spawn.
It's hard to believe new tricks are still being found in these games.
* casually confesses to killing the flagpole in the midst of his own investigation
Not gonna lie, that Factor 75 food looks like a tv dinner and a fancy dinner had a baby and the result looks delicious.
Huge fan of these game analysis videos, they remind me of the ones Decino does for Doom. Keep up the great work!
Do ya'll realize how awesome this is for someone who played these games back in the day? Very awesome. It's also very awesome for people who played these games back in the night. That's a grandpa joke glitch. It works, but nobody knows why it works, not even grandpa.
See, we KNEW the games were awesome. We didn't know how much MORE awesome they would get almost 40 years later. That. Much. MORE.
The year is 2030. The fastest SMB speedrun known to man is in the flagless category and it’s 3 minutes
LOL. Great video Kosmic!
0:39 yeah that's an efficient description
It's interesting seeing how much more primitive sprite management is in early nes games like this, than in later games like RECCA. I can actually understand it! There's no constant shuffling or reloading everything, they just stay put!
_those wretched speed runners will ruin your childhood to save a fraction of a second._
And they'll happily figure out ways to ruin your childhood faster, if it would save them another fraction of a second.
3:00 I HAD THIS HAPPEN TO ME. I kept getting screwed and didn't know why until one play through the platform showed. I thought the game just took pity on me. Little did I know I just had to stomp the Goomba. Thanks for the explanation!
There's so many times that i feel like a game has pitied me and has gotten a bit easier lol PAIN
Ha ha, that intro was flaggone funny!
what a great video, well written and really enjoyable!
Wow, this was really fascinating!! I think it'd be fun just to see a whole playthrough where the goal is to beat the game without flags (or minimum flags), thank you for sharing!
Awesome job!
going from the flagpole glitch, to just despawning the flag is definitely something
Seems like having a vine permanently occupy a spot can be useful for despawing other stuff throughout the level to same time too.
And now we wait for the inevitable flagless% category extension
I flagged this video as one of my favorites. Pls do not despawn it. Thank you.
SMB2J programmer: *accidentally deletes a line of code*
The game:
Actually, they didn't delete a line, they added 35 of them lmao
There should be a "minimal flags" speedrunning category now. One where you attempt to beat the game with the least amount of flags.
This is how speedrunners play Capture the Flag
Shoutout to Goofy!
Very interesting video. It's crazy to me that we still find new optimizations in these games after all those years!
damn it’s 2022 and new stuff is still being discovered about this game. amazing
wow awesome! thanks a lot bro
pristine breakdown.
i really wish nintendo would reinvent it's console to house more sprites.
i tried making my own mario levels before, and never understood why the screen would slow down and crash when i flooded the map with monsters.... it's all so clear now.
Back in my day it was trial and error until you figured it Many months later ! Today you need to know how to make the game first to know how to Speedrun it ! Good to see kids understanding a thousand times more than we did at same age BUT it also kills the entire magic and Kills any imagination left inside it for each person
Minimum flag speedrun when?
I love this kind of videos.
Fascinating as always. Love these technical breakdowns.
Also, that snark and self-deprecation at 0:36. :-)
Hell yeah, new video
i enjoyed learning about this
(3:53) That's not really the relevant code here. Instead, you want the code where the star flag is spawned by the castle object, on lines 3749-3762. This code calls FindEmptyEnemySlot (on lines 3896-3904), which counts up to try to find an empty slot in the normal enemy slot region. SInce the code to spawn the star flag doesn't check if FindEmptyEnemySlor actually found an empty slot, if all of the normal enemy slots are all full, the star flag will instead spawn in the next slot *after* the normal enemy slots, i.e. slot 6, the slot normally reserved for items.
New category: SMB1 Flagless
I found your flag deload glitches at the end interesting, especially the level where you had to get the red koopas to skywalk on the ground in that last level
Dude, this is cool!
KOSMIC YOUR THE BEST SPEEDRUNNER
Can't wait for the puzzle hack where you need to despawn the flag
great video Kosmic! I love these types of videos, so keep 'em coming :)
The Flag on the Pole was sent to the Backrooms
"f**k it, *deletes your flag*"
The vines everyone *wants* to see (apparently)
Wonder if they'd ever make a flagless% specifically for doing this, cause ya, in many instances the overall time isn't faster, but it would still be it would still be fun to do/watch
In World 5-3 (and 1-3 in second quest mode), they were supposed to have canceled the Bullet Bill frenzy right before the two back-and-forth platforms, but the programmers mistakenly added a second Bullet Bill frenzy (enemy ID $57, instead of the intended $58 for no frenzy). However, this is not an issue in Super Mario All-Stars since the number of enemy slots was increased by three (from six to nine).
love the tropical freeze music, great taste!