This TINY Mistake Exposed a MASSIVE Cheater in Super Monkey Ball
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 เม.ย. 2024
- Read the full document:
docs.google.com/document/d/1y...
On the 10th of December, 2021, a small group of Super Monkey Ball community members released a 14-page-long investigation into the legitimacy of a number of high scores from Jcool114, someone once considered one of the game's all-time greatest players. The report detailed by far the most cunning and widespread cheating ever seen in SMB's 20-year-long competitive history, providing damning evidence Jcool went to great lengths to create a cheated liveplay, that would serve to dispel any suspicion of all his other cheated scores. Ultimately, the legitimacy of every high score Jcool had ever submitted was brought into question, with literally hundreds of scores being removed from the leaderboards as a result.
Splicing Super Monkey Ball Speedruns - Why It's Almost Impossible to Cheat:
• Splicing Super Monkey ...
Super Monkey Ball's Biggest Milestone has been Achieved:
• Super Monkey Ball's Bi...
The Super Monkey Ball Flash Games that Were Lost for Over a Decade:
• The Super Monkey Ball ...
𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐬:
00:00 - Introduction
02:21 - IL Basics
05:32 - Rapid Pausing
11:22 - Jcool's Scores
17:07 - Suspicion
22:12 - Cheating Method 1
29:46 - Anomalies
34:55 - Cheating Method 2
44:31 - Conclusion
46:40 - Credits
𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬:
At 12:03 I say the cheater claimed his 26,506 E09 score in July of 2011, however the score was claimed some time before then, and the replay was uploaded to TH-cam in July. It was submitted to Cyberscore on 2011-03-13, although some players who were active during that timeframe believe the score may have first been claimed in 2010.
At 41:08 I forgot to include the final up right input in the M08 frame set.
𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝:
As a measure to prevent possible harassment, I will not be providing links to any videos from the subject of this video.
Blendra:
• 12340 e28 :D
callumbal:
• Super Monkey Ball "Mas...
eddy0777:
• Expert 9 PB Attempts -...
• Expert 9 PB Attempts -...
/ plausiblehonestmulebud...
FerretDruid:
These clips were taken from Vortiginous.
Friday Night Arcade:
• Nintendo NES Advantage...
Gonquai:
• Prelimination - A Mixe...
Hexcus:
• The Magnificent Super ...
Ike:
• Super Monkey Ball - Ex...
• Super Monkey Ball - Ex...
• Half an hour of E9 0.1...
Leemyy:
• Ballance Any% Speedrun...
packattack:
These clips were taken from Vortiginous.
scrap651:
• Super Monkey Ball - Al...
• Super Monkey Ball - B3...
• Super Monkey Ball - A2...
• Super Monkey Ball - E2...
• Super Monkey Ball - E3...
• Super Monkey Ball - E5...
sdkess:
• Super Monkey Ball - Ex...
ShadowJacky:
• Super Monkey Ball repl...
Silverboxer:
• Super Monkey Ball - My...
• Super Monkey Ball - E7...
• Super Monkey Ball - M7...
smilingjack13:
• smilingjack13 smb1 ...
tako:
• スーパーモンキーボール2/Super Mon...
𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬:
Blendra
Claris
Coralfan
eddy0777
Hexcus
Jezs
MrRobTer12
scrap651
Tony
𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜:
Sam Butler:
open.spotify.com/artist/1y05P...
/ sam-butler-76042138
Ancient Aliens OST:
stuartrynn.bandcamp.com/album...
Ape Escape OST:
• Ape Escape OST (PlaySt...
Ballance OST:
• Ballance (Game Soundtr...
Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet OST:
• Shadow of the Comet (C...
Monopoly (PS1) OST:
• Monopoly (PS1) - South...
Super Monkey Ball OST:
• Super Monkey Ball OST
𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬:
High Score WR Spreadsheet:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Cyberscore charts:
cyberscore.me.uk/game/16
cyberscore.me.uk/game/20
cyberscore.me.uk/game/184
EliteScores archive:
web.archive.org/web/201108151...
web.archive.org/web/201007160...
klow.net archive:
web.archive.org/web/200207081...
web.archive.org/web/200207042...
Vortiginous archive:
web.archive.org/web/200610300...
Check out these epic SMB competitors:
/ 42guy42
/ blendra
/ dwaitley
/ eddy0777
/ ikealt
/ namb0
/ tony_smb
/ toothpastethy
/ youbacon42
/ fatguineapigs
/ hexcus
/ pintobean120
/ scrap651
/ silverboxxer
/ @elliottashe8690
/ @hnnes2094 - เกม
![รุ่นใหญ่ EP.2 บุกบ้าน เสรีพิศุทธ์ ระหว่าง บิ๊กต่อ กับ บิ๊กโจ๊ก อา รักใครมากกว่า ?? l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/j2inUqhN__0/mqdefault.jpg)
Following the release of this video, eddy0777 became the first ever player to achieve a 25k on E09 - the result of a 200 hour grind of that floor. His level of committment was unlike that we've ever seen from an SMB competitor before, and it is undoubtedly the greatest high score in SMB history. Please go and send him some praise!: th-cam.com/video/m4GPqU8fhx0/w-d-xo.html
To address a couple of frequently asked questions:
About the possibility of reverse engineering replays: Unlike in Trackmania, Super Monkey Ball replays do NOT store player inputs, but rather ball position data and floor tilt. You can roughly infer player inputs from the floor tilt, but trying to determine exact inputs is not realistically possible. On top of that, with SMB being a console game, it's extremely uncommon for a player to extract and upload the actual replay file from their GCN memory card, and I have no idea how to even do it (though it is possible). Players also routinely delete replays after capturing them to free up memory card space. While this is of course a nice idea, it frankly doesn't seem like something we could feasibly do for SMB.
About pause frames being concrete proof of cheating / finding frame sets for legitimate runs: A point I wish I emphasised more in the video is that finding frame sets for Jcool's runs was only feasible because his inputs were strictly limited to neutral and the 8 directions in each notch around the GameCube controller's thumbstick. The game is actually capable of registering considerably more inputs than this, when the thumbstick is either between notches or not held at full strength, however these are not consistently reproducable so are never used in frame sets. In a legitimate run, when the player changes directions, it is extremely unlikely they did this in under one frame (
Aren't you one of ðe pioneers of *Red Ball* speedrunning?
In the end, it takes a cheater to spot a cheater. Thanks for being honest enough to realize your mistake and turn that negative experience into a positive tool for everyone's betterment. The world could do with a lot more self-aware folks like you, especially in the realm of politics.
Edit: FWIW, a Wii with GCMM can dump entire gamecube memory cards in a few seconds. A couple minutes from booting the Wii to dumped saves. It might not be entirely perfect for what is wanted, but it should be useful for poking at the game engine via Replay data.
Would it be possible to use Dolphin (and some admittedly complicated-seeming code) to bridge the gap?
I imagine, using emulator save states, you could set a script to set a direction on the control stick, advance a frame, and check the platform tilt/ball speed/etc compared to the replay, if they match, continue, if not, roll back that frame and try another input. It should theoretically be possible to fully re-construct a replay quite quickly. It'd take a bit of tinkering to figure out which addresses contain the needed data, but I imagine it wouldn't be too bad for anyone familiar with RE tools in emulators.
The methods were interesting but at times a bit excessivly laid out. Like I didn't listen to each banana sound. I got the idea after nr#3
Even considering the context, hearing the phrase "the increased reaction time makes stabilizing the monkey considerably easier" took the wind out of me
As a monkey stabilization technician I agree.
Agreed upon by Monkey Stabilization Engineering Department at yt
anything involving a game called "Super Monkey Ball" is bound to have gems such as this
There was a news report where the narration with no wavering and dead seriously unironically said "his lawyer argued he had an emergency defecation situation but the judge in the case believed he had a sexual motive" and then bam cut back to the live anchor, and she lost her crap laughing as she repeated back "emergency defecation situation".
Then she had to do a story on a would be terrorist who set off a bomb in a plane but only managed to kill himself by blowing a hole in the plane and getting sucked out. She cried laughing the whole time before finishing that report with "today could be the day I lose my job".
As a stabilized monkey I agree
Imagine having your career ended by a money saying "Ah-uh!" instead of "Wah!"
"career"
@@AlphaCarinaeyeah career, speedrunning career in monkey ball. As niche as it is, if yk the definition of career then it's still applicable.
super money ball...
@@kittykat5090 monke
The stock market
"As is represented by the dancing cheese" that's when you know shit gets serious
33:03
Case dismissed! Bring in the dancing lobsters!
"Wavering sound effects make you lose control, wavering sound effects make you lose control."
I was half paying attention, playing a game with this in the background… But that made me snap to my phone. There is indeed dancing cheeses. Goddamn. This guy is fantastic.
Came to the comments particularly for this LMAO
I was *not* prepared for the creator of this video to casually drop that they used pause buffering to cheat at the same time as jcool
Right? lol
Depends. If they are a speedrunner and submitted such runs, it would be cheating. Otherwise, you can play your games the way you like.
I had to stop the video to consider what the fuck I had just listened to XD.
yeah i really respect them for that
I mean, who else would know cheaters better than a former cheater?
"It's cool that the method he used for chesting was the same I used" hit me like a truck
Lmao same. So much lore I didn’t even know was implied
I love finding cheating exposés by youtubers i dont know about runners ive never heard of in games i didnt even know had a speedrunning community. Its always so absorbing
there's something really scintillating about the lengths someone would go to deceive people and the lengths others would go to expose the truth.
I'm sure jcool's mother is very proud
Don’t forget about games I never even knew existed lol
This isn't about speedrunning, it's about high scores.
Yeah and while it is fascinating the thought repeats every now and then "but... but why?"
Like... it's a monkey in a ball collecting bananas. This has rocked several people's world. How. Guitar hero. Its pressing a bunch of buttons, it sounds a bit fun but ultimately how is this the seat of a scandal? There was a vid about a game where you jump on trucks, where somebody cheated and other people went to great lengths to prove it?
I just accept that i will never understand and continue to watch videos about cheaters betraying communities i never knew existed.
You know, despite the fact that cheating is pathetic, I do appreciate that Jcool just copped to cheating right away instead of serially making up ridiculous lies like some other cheaters, although that does mean that Harvard astrophysicists are out of work now.
Just means Jcool has a one up on Dream 💀💀
Jcool directly lied to other community members and denied pausing for years before we finally had definitive enough proof where he couldn't lie about it any longer. Unfortunately, Jcool did make up some ridiculous lies, but at least he didn't hire a monkey stabilization expert to write a report on his behalf :)
@@silverboxxer good to know. This sucks. I have a Ph D in monkey stabilization and can barely make rent :(
@@silverboxxer well, what's the point in admitting to cheating if there's no proof?
@@satgurshonesty. 😂
Imagine being the undisputed king of your speedrunning category for ages but then someone else comes along, beats you, gets caught cheating and then by proxy exposes you also as a cheater 😂
nah man i would be so upset
Jesus man, this level of thoroughness in this investigation would make Columbo blush. The reverse-engineering of the pause frames in particular blows my mind that it was even possible. The dedication speedrun communities have will never, ever fail to impress me.
I admit you were right about packattack.
As one of the main people behind the investigation, thank you! We really wanted to be as precise and as detailed as possible about everything.
"Oh- uh- Just one more thing- yknow how Super Monkey Ball, always plays that silly little grunting on your little monkey character. The one when theyre teetering on the edge. Now- Im no expert on Sound design or programming... but I Dont think the game is smart enough to predict just when your little monkey guy starts teetering on the edge. Especially in the early days of the 2000's so I just gotta ask, on your live play of E9. How is it that your gameplay predicted... or rather, your teetering noises got cut off right near the end?..."
@@IkeSMBit's excellent work, and I've never even played these games.
@@lancebird6675Detective, your wife called
"This means that a set of wavering noises will be played from the moment the instant replay begins until the point Aye-Aye exits the wire, as is represented by the dancing cheese."
This caught me so off guard. I'm fucking dying.
I swear speedrun communities investigate footage more throughly than anyone else, like they will literally be able to find 1 several frame inconsistency through the whole video and find out that you’re cheating
Imagine if this much effort was put into investigating actual crimes. We would put so many criminals behind bars. Instead, this sort of dedication is given to...speedruns.
It is pretty impressive though, got to admit.
@@bentowers3614 Are you implying that a couple guys pressing buttons on a video game console and typing up a dozen pages of data is anywhere near the thousands of man-hours and tens of thousands of pages that full time investigators, lab technicians, medical examiners, DAs, forensic analysts, transcriptionists, etc put into investigating a crime? Not even to get into the preparation and time that goes into the actual trials themselves.
I hate cops and the judicial system as much as the next person, but trying to say that speedrun mods are even in the same solar system as actual full-time, salaried criminal investigators just shows that you've never served on a jury or worked a job in/related to criminal justice.
@@RangersFan94 I understand that. It was more a tongue in cheek response on how I feel these speedrunner guys put a ton of effort into this stuff that I feel could be more useful elsewhere.
@@bentowers3614thing is those two are completely different skillsets, so I dont think that switch would work
@@bentowers3614 Wouldn't even need speedrunners to get into investigations. Cops just need to start doing their damn job.
This was incredibly well put together, thanks for bringing this situation to light for everyone. It really sucked to discover that Jcool was a cheater, but I'm so glad that there can finally be wr competition on some of the coolest floors now that the cheated scores that were impossible to compete with are gone!
I loved your comment shown in this video 😂
“holy shit I can’t believe how gullible everyone was back in 2011, of course this is paused!”
-IkeSMB
Recently got back into SMB through your videos, keep it up!
I actually competed in SMB back in 2002 (under the name DarkWrath - see 5:20 mark) and I remember how much I revered packattack as a god, so this is very disappointing to hear. Crazily enough, I still have a VHS tape in the back of my childhood home's bedroom closet that he sent me of many of his replays. I had a capture card back then and my buddy had a site where we could upload the videos (this was of course before TH-cam) so I helped him provide proof. I had no clue that pause buffering was a thing, and also had no clue that something like that wouldn't show up in replays. I remember watching that VHS tape and being in awe of those times/scores - I can't believe I still have it!
Hello DarkWrath. I am passingly familiar with your username, given how many hours I've spent digging through klow.net archives, so it's cool to hear from you! Interesting info. about that VHS tape. I know packattack also sent a videotape of replays to sdkess back in 2002, which sdkess kindly DVRed and uploaded for us to watch late last year. I wonder if he sent you both copies of the same tape... Do you have a Discord account or e-mail address I could send you the footage to, to see if you think it's the same tape? Or, if it's not too much trouble, could you DVR and upload your tape for us so we can analyse the replays? Thanks! :D
@@Goober13md I plan on attempting to convert some home movies from VHS to digital next week, so I'll grab this tape too over the weekend and see what's on it. I can give you that info, and if you're interested, I can try to convert it to digital as well so you can view it. I'll be in touch; is the email address located on your channel's "About" section the best way to reach you?
@@bcutler13 That sounds great! Sure, you can e-mail me there or tweet me @Goober13md
@@Goober13md I don't use Twitter so I sent you an email a couple days ago. Let me know if you want anything!
@@bcutler13 Cheers a bunch for the e-mail! I might've missed it if not for you leaving this comment since it was filtered to my junk mail for some reason. I went ahead and sent you a reply.
Speedrunning expose video for most of it: normal
Speedrunning expose video when my parents walk in: 32:03
Same :(
I fell asleep to this video playing and let's just say that 32:03 was a very rude awakening LOL
aRE YOU WINNING SON?!
i came tothe comments right after hearing that to see if anyone else noticed
Great work on this; glad that I was able to help out with the revisions. Finding out that someone in your community was a fraud the whole time can be truly devastating, so I truly respect how much work the Super Monkey Ball mods poured into this investigation. Hopefully this is the last major cheating incidence that the SMB community ever has to deal with.
the day that ItsMaximum guy gets outed as a fraud will truly be a sad day for the Red Ball community...
@@Motorjamthe increased reaction time makes stabilising the red ball considerably easier
Someone was saying Jcool just copped to cheating to let everyone know that he's always been a cheater after being caught! To me, that sounds like somebody willing to take accountability and potentially redeem himself elsewhere.
@@P-nk-m-nalol
I really appreciate the disclaimer in this video about it not reflecting that cheating is rampant in speedrunning, but that the competitive spirit of speedrunners allows these kind of things to get exposed. All-in-all, really clear and informative video, and I hope everyone gets a chance to watch this so they can have the record straight! My sympathy to all the runners who've had to directly compete with any of these times in the past.
If cheating wasn't rampant in speed running there wouldn't be multiple channels making these series lmao
@@Arcanecide Good point.
Cheating was and IS rampant. It's just that we're only figuring it out now.
@@Arcanecide There's an inherent bias in the fact that these stories are the one's get reported, no? You don't see videos made about the 1000s of runs on the leaderboards that are valid compared to the 1 or 2 cheating incidents lol
@@Arcanecide y'know, i don't remember the term for this specific type of bias, but in my field there's something called preservation bias - larger animals are more likely to be fossilized than small ones, so our idea of prehistory is that everything was big and tiny animals were outliers.
however, just like how small animals were very common in the mesozoic and weren't often preserved, valid runs are very common and aren't often reported on, because there's usually not a lot of intrigue in saying "hey, look at this run. it's normal"
I think the word "rampant" is doing a lot of work here. Like sure, very *very* few speedrunners ever dabble in fake runs. That being said, we see new fakes all the time, so cheating isn't exactly rare either. I'm glad the community is good at catching these!
The drama of this all for someone not in the community omg. The multiple chapters. The scientific breakdown of community specific facts. The team of investigators. The reveal that the video creator ALSO used to cheat. Absolutely enthralling, thank you
felt like i was watching a telenovela fr
Not much of a reveal when you spoil it in the comments.🙄
I would like to point out that there’s a tas from 2014 that jcool contributed too, so members of the community from that time likely wouldn’t find him asking about emulation suspicious
Poor smilingjack13, he had the legitimate world record but no one knew at the time and now that the truth is out, he's still not number one as he was outdone by someone else by then. Such a tragedy never being able to be number one despite having the right for it.
That's always the worst part of these long-running cheating scandals, IMO.
@@Pablo360able That's right! Cheaters like these think they don't hurt anyone with their crap, but in this case, success was negated to someone that ACTUALLY deserved it for the longest time.
A very similar thing happened in the Clone Hero community, with a guy named Schmooey, it was all outlined in a Karl Jobst video. The parallels are so real.
I find it odd how the two communities I'm closest to both had a cheater within a month of each other.
this video is how i learned that packattack was once a competitive monkey ball speedrunner and has not in fact always been a no commentary gameplay account for stuff like wii party u. hello
Bro had to have spent thousands of hours actually playing, hundreds of hours editing, and dozens more spent lying online, all to say you're the best at a 2001 children's monkey ball game.
Actively worsening a community while wasting his life, what a class act.
Geez, clearly the only thing that rivals the lengths that people will go to cheat without it being detectable are the lengths of the people that work to expose them.
This was a very educational and mind-blowing video, great work!
This entire explanation was very well detailed. I’m actually very surprised that breaking down each coverup method was able to be done. It’s sad to see that Jcool was exposed as a cheater tho :(
To be specific, seeing Jcool get exposed was good because he finally got the justice he deserved for cheating so much, but initially finding out he was cheating and lying to everyone was disappointing
@@IkeSMB That’s true.
having the video end on "and this guy has maintained a better score than the cheater, despite him cheating the whole time" seems like some terrible foreshadowing. does no one else think this is sus just on the face of it?
In a way, I find this so funny. I love the Monkey Ball games and always loved to watch the records, but I never decided to speedrun them myself because of the possibility of pause buffering, instead focusing on Marble Blast (in which pausing isn't viable for speedruns). I always thought that pausing was allowed in IL runs in Monkey Ball specifically because of Packattack's runs. It always looked so obvious to me, especially the A11 and E9 runs. In a way it's sad to see him be outed as a cheater, but Jcool was also someone I looked up to as a great speedrunner, and I loved watching his WR compilation. However it is also great to see that cheating is taken seriously and that their scores are not listed. We have also had a cheating scandal in the Marble Blast community where the person 2nd on the leaderboards was exposed as a cheater, and I myself was one of the people who did the exposing.
Great video, I love seeing how different speedrun work to prevent cheating.
You're one of the only people I've ever seen mention marble blast, in any context ever. That was a game my siblings and I played the crap out of as kids, we loooooooved that game so much. I'm so sad it's not on Xbox anymore. I still love the soundtrack and can recall the exact sounds the marble makes on all the surfaces, the lady's voice saying super jump, mega marble, etc. No one else I've ever met has ever seemed to have played it, and it rarely ever surfaces online unless I'm actively seeking it out. I loved that game 😭
@@emsparklemojiHave you given Marble It Up! a try? It's a spiritual successor with a really active speedrun community.
Im surprised i haven't seen this til now. It sucks that he was a cheater, Jcool was one of the biggest people of the SMB speedrunning community, i remember watching some of his runs years ago. Im very glad he got caught now though so all the legit runners can get credit for their amazing work!
The recent remake reignited my love for the game and got me to go back and try to get to master in the original smb1, something i've wanted to do ever since i was a kid. So far my pb is expert extra 5 and all i can say is attempting to get to master has really made me gain a new appreciation for these runners of the game. Doing all those levels not only flawlessly, but fast as well, is extremely difficult; i remember stamina master in the remake took me like an hour alone to beat first time through, and it's even harder in the original game. SMB runners truly are built different.
Spectacular stuff as always, Goober. I'm glad to see this sour situation turned into a thorough learning experience for people both in and outside the SMB community. The research and dedication shown by you and the community members responsible for this investigation really shine, and the whole video is really well-executed. 👏
I just don't see the appeal of cheating. Just makes your career a micromanaging hellhole to ensure you don't get caught.
if you're willing to put in the effort to cheat and hide it... then why not put in the effort to build the skills to get those achievements legitimately?
It's part of a bigger problem in society, people who are desperate for attention and will do anything to get it, including faking video footage to make themselves look good in attempt to gain followers. Even the kids who get all existed over a few up votes then edit their comment to includes things like "yay thanks for the upvotes". It's all people who are desperate for attention because their lives lack meaning.
They never assume that's how it's going to go down. They'll cheat once to get this one record and that'll be it, but if they get away with that one, they get more confident. They start cheating to raise their own record, or to take adjacent categories, and by the time someone smells something fishy and they start feeling the heat, it's already too late to back out
@@deathclawplum This will take hundreds of hours. Cheating like that will only take a few hours per video.
But the praise and attention...
Imagine a leader bored where the objective is to cheat, you have to cheat, but your score only stays up till someone can prove how.
It’s called net worth, and the mods are the IRS
The funny thing is someone could lie & just say they cheated but it wouldn't really matter matter because beating all the other cheaters without cheating would be more impressive & actually kind of still qualify as cheating in that context.
It would also be the ultimate way to beat the "until someone can prove how" part of the equation. You can't prove someone didn't cheat & you can't prove how they cheated if they didn't.
You just hit us with those wavering monkey noises no warning like I wasn't watching this at 2 am with my volume way too loud lol
Sounded like Japanese porn to my wife when it just played. I wish I was kidding
This guy doesn't tell you this, but the trick they used to fake their run is very subtle and you will never hear it unless you turn the volume way up exactly before the minute 32:03, use speakers if possible
I absolutely love how I have no interest in SMB whatsoever, but this video got my attention and interest and I enjoyed learning about this very specific part of the internet, the troubles they had gone through, and the amazing work that people in that community went through to defeat the villain.
Me: *hearing about rapid pausing for the first time*
Me: I gotta break out monkey ball again and beat some levels
30:15 that "PRONTO!" caught me off guard XD
I think it could be a cool idea to add a category for pause buffer replays as its own separate thing for entertainment purposes. Sort of like TAS runs.
That’s actually a really good idea
Such precise and time staking work can really only be expressed by the unit of "Dancing Cheeses"
I have to applaud you. Not only have you provided a crystal clear and interesting explanation into how Jcool faked his IL runs, you have convinced me that SMB's speedrun community made the right call in making rapid-pausing/pause-buffering legal for RTA runs but not IL's. I used to think those strategies should be allowed for both, but the way you explained the difference around 38:51 helped make the logic clear to me in a way that no one else managed to do. Keep up the great work!
Finally got around to watching this! It was really nice to see all the intro info put all in one place, and was really fun watch despite knowing most of the stuff in here. Great vid, I liked the subtitles for the screams, helped me understand Aiai’s mental! (:
Man, I remember hearing the news about this and I was devastated. I looked up to that guy and I couldn't believe he'd do something like this.
I've said this elsewhere, and I think I should say it again
If you trust someone too much, there is a 100% chance they will eventually betray you! Or at the very least, the odds are 90%
My point is, every human being's urge to destroy their trust INCREASES as they gain more trust from others. However, at an average of 10x the speed, they gain the strategies to STOP these urges.
In past generations, it was much simpler, so the rule of "Every human being's urge to destroy their trust DECREASES as they gain more trust from others." probably applied (though I never existed for any of them)
However, what was true for every generation up until now, simply isn't true anymore! And I believe my point is pretty dang close to The Truth!
This game is how I found out that I have anger management issues
You should try rocket league for some lighthearted fun! I promise you wont rage at your teammates or your own bad plays. Pinky promise 😜
it kind of goes under the radar but damn, I'm so sad packattack's ILs are spliced too. was really inspirational to watch back in the day LOL
packattack's ILs aren't spliced, but it is heavily suspected some of his more impressive scores (A11, E09, E45, for example) were rapid paused. The vast majority of packattack's scores were set between 2002 and 2005, long before liveplays were ever asked for or expected of anyone. As a result, we only have replays from him to go off of, so we can't strictly PROVE he cheated, even though there is a lot of pretty damning evidence to suggest he did. It effectively boils down to either packattack suddenly becoming a God at the game (specifically at wires and edge grinds) very soon after (if not the same day) rapid pausing was first revealed, or packattack cheated.
I agree that it's sad though, but sometimes the truth hurts. I looked up to packattack as well and was really impressed how many of his scores still held up given how long ago he competed. :(
Basically, it's similar to how "technically" it's possible that Dream's minecraft speedrun was done legit, but the odds of something like that happening are so astronomically low that it's not even worth considering.
For packattack, he went from having mediocre scores on the wire levels to having inhuman, obviously paused scores within days of rapid pausing being first discovered, and he's always denied giving liveplay proofs. Saying that there's "speculation" that packattack was a cheater is like saying that someone who wins the lottery 5 out of 5 times is speculated to be cheating.
Wait a minute… Is that the same guy who now makes videos on nintendo games?
If true, that’s a huge deal since he has a big channel in TH-cam
@@Hue_SamYEAH same guy. i remember his name is matt bc his mii is named that in some of his oldest videos, the wii sports ones
@@Hue_Sam Sure is. Uploaded three monkey ball videos that I could find, all many years after this all went down:
th-cam.com/video/zSlNnyOw4OU/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=packattack04082
th-cam.com/video/YolsBGsasG4/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=packattack04082
th-cam.com/video/lUG6ELBbCc4/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=packattack04082
Looks like he also did high scores and speedruns in several other games before his lego city playthrough broke through the youtube algorithm 10 years ago
Unbelievable, I knew those scores were too good to be true. So disappointing.
I wish you had more views here. This is so well done to where anyone could genuinely find it interesting and informative. The sheer amount of effort and energy is so impressive.
It's always amazing (and cathartic) to know that there's one legitimate player who is able to keep up with or even surpass the cheater(s). Even moreso while the cheater is still active.
And I have to imagine it grinds the cheater's gears, too. Even with an advantage, you're still losing
@@WhiteWolf-lm7gj And you STILL decide you're gonna cheat despite the legit competition (in both senses of the word)? Dunno how you can hold that big an L.
Every time he says SMB I think Super Mario bros.
i’m fairly really new to speedrunning content, even newer to seeing SR cheaters & know nothing about SMB. i really love how much context you added for understanding the game mechanics, so much so that my jaw DROPPED at 34:10. it’s insane to me how something so miniscule like that could still be caught, even after years.
This is a great video! You make the explanations easy for anyone to understand-I’ve never played Monkey Ball or paid close attention to things like animation frames or sound effects, but you laid it all out so clearly that I was engaged the whole time. Thanks for putting this together!
I really appreciate how you explain and illustrate this information. It can easily get overwhelming to the point of making the viewer's eyes glaze over, but you make it simple enough to understand by using dancing cheese.
Man, I haven't heard of packattack in YEARS. Interestingly, I didn't know him because of SMB but rather instead because of his great channels of silent playthroughs and boss runs/compilations. To imagine that he cheated on speedrunning community is a bit of a shocking scenario for me but I guess humans makes mistakes, even your dearest ones.
I am truly impressed with how much effort is put into something with such little payoff. Either being a speedrunner, a cheater, or a judge, it's all a means for something that you will not get a fraction of a cent for accomplishment. The best you get is a bunch of sweaty nerds cheering you on
You're very articulate and easy to listen to. I love watching Monkey Ball speedruns, and I'm glad you and others are protecting the integrity of the competition.
Alpharad sent me here.
2:28
"The meat and spunk" is forever etched into my internal lexicon.
Imagine your lasting legacy in this world being that you cheated at monkey ball.
I really appreciate when experts in their games make really detailed explainers for more casual folks or outersiders to learn
I understand why people don't like rapid pausing but it is a little strange when FPS speedrunners think nothing is wrong with cranking up the framerate and remapping jump to the mouse wheel so they can fly out of the map and land right at the end of the level.
FPS speedruns aren't the same community as the Super Monkey Ball score run community. Every game has its own community and those communities develop their own rules based on what they consider fun and fair while still being skillful and saving time.
The main game which uses the framerate thing is DOOM 2016 because the high framerates breaks the physics and enables skips and tricks that otherwise wouldn't, but are still skillful. The community also offers as many as resources as possible to help even low-end PCs get over the framerate requisites. It's not comparable to pause-buffering to do what is essentially TAS strats in RTA score runs.
Binding mousewheel for jump is mostly common in source games and they allow it because the trick is fun and anyone can do it with practice, while still saving time.
Thank you for doing a breakdown like this. Videos like these are really interesting and shows how knowledgeable a video game community is. I love watching videos like this for any video games. Just nice to be involved in nerdiness
I just discovered your channel, last night. I've watched this video multiple times and I love it. I'd love to see more speedrun cheater vids from you, because the level of detail is unlike anything I've seen before. I can see you really enjoy Monkey Ball, and I won't request that you cover cheaters of games that you don't enjoy. This video, alone, must've taken months to make. The amount of work, put into it, must've been exhausting. So if you're going to make another, in such great detail, it would be best if you focus on games that legitimately interest you. I hope to see more, like this, in the future. I was captivated the entire time.
Wow, I remember Jcool from Mario Sunshine speedrunning back in like 2018-21. I was surprised when I started watching to see that it was about someone I knew! I remember trying to beat his SMS IL times. Kind of ironic because the guy was a massive stickler about which timing methods were superior and about which ones should be official leaderboard rules. He would complain about it all the time.
I used to run IL Time Records back in college for SMB 1 and 2. It was a lot of fun and I got good enough to be pinged on a top 50 or so leaderboard for the times I accrued. I used to think that cheating in SMB was useless given the difficulty and that, with enough practice, Time Records on certain stages could be obtained by anyone.
The fact that something like this flew under the radar for so long is crazy in the High Score and Time Records. I never used rapid pausing/pause buffering, because I actually sucked at it lol. I just brute forced and practied until I got good times.
Very well made video!
Edit: Shooot, and Jcool caught me completely off guard. Damn.
man that's depressing. i remember watching a bunch of jcool's stuff years ago - not speedrun content, but his coverage of smb hacks
Love how well the community came together and did the math. Well done. And I also echo the kudos of others that Jcool just came right out with it. Glad for that outcome.
I fully get why pause buffering is banned, but the way they talk about it is hilarious. “Sickening”
Hi, this was an informative video. Got numerous questions:
I see that Jcool was banned on Cyberscore in 2020. Was this report different from that situation? You said that it was published at the end of last year, which is a little long between the events. I think that the events described in the video were the same for what the state in 2020 was; was there a previous report at all?
For packattack, did he refuse to give non-replay videos for these records at any time? Did he clearly state that he did not do this for his submissions, and was he ever spoken to about this in the last 10 years?
For the first game, has research been done into the game to know what is not possible to do, for things like grinding on platforms, given the game engine and how the game plays control stick inputs? To see what movements the game can't do, regardless of how it is played.
Thanks! To answer your questions:
Jcool was accused of rapid pausing scores in 2020, however the case at the time was poorly put together, because the main stock of evidence was leaked prematurely by one of Jcool's friends. Despite that, the main focus was scores that Jcool had admitted to having rapid paused in the past that he never had removed from Cyberscore. Nothing really beyond that was concretely proven at the time, and Jcool was primarly banned due to how he conducted himself during the investigation. (Avoiding Cyberscore mods, not addressing evidence that suggested he had cheated other scores, doing nothing at all to prove his innocence and instead arguing with their criteria to allow him to remain on the site.) There is a post about it in the Cyberscore Discord server from TheBrain that you can still find. His scores were not removed from the community owned spreadsheet though, since nothing beyond scores he'd already admitted were cheated were irrefutably proven to have been paused.
I e-mailed packattack in 2019 simply asking about some of his SMB scores and his view on rapid pausing and received no reply, which was weird since I had gotten his e-mail address through his friend, so he was expecting an e-mail from me. I tried contacting him again last year, this time confronting him with evidence, and received no reply. sdkess (his friend of the past 20 years who he still speaks to) also messaged him asking if he'd received my e-mail, and packattack did not reply to him either, which he described as "troubling". There is apparently a video of packattack doing the 0.1 path on E09 live from 2002, but it has not since resurfaced, and I was told it was not as fast as his record run. I asked about this video in both of my e-mails, as did sdkess.
It's hard to answer the last question, but I'll refer to a comment previously left by Ike:
"Basically, it's similar to how "technically" it's possible that Dream's minecraft speedrun was done legit, but the odds of something like that happening are so astronomically low that it's not even worth considering.
For packattack, he went from having mediocre scores on the wire levels to having inhuman, obviously paused scores within days of rapid pausing being first discovered, and he's always denied giving liveplay proofs. Saying that there's "speculation" that packattack was a cheater is like saying that someone who wins the lottery 5 out of 5 times is speculated to be cheating."
If you want to discuss this further please message me on Discord. I'm working to compile all the evidence with regard to packattack's scores for Cyberscore mods to review and draw their own conclusions, but the SMB community has already reached a consensus that packattack definitely cheated scores in SMB.
“As is represented by the dancing cheese”
i really hope this blows up. crazy i looked up to him for so long. Goober you're the man. Love all your work keep it up
Finally got some time to give this video a watch, very well put together!
-this TINY mistake
-50 minute video
i love youtube
Great video :) also I love how there are actual subtitles for this, absolutely wonderful!
Do I know absolutely nothing about super monkey ball? Yes.
Am I watching this anyways? Also yes.
27:35
Never played the game, so correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you record the live play, export the replay directly from the game, and use the audio from the replay in the spliced clip? That should remove the artifacts and allow you to keep the continuity
I don't care about speedrunning and I've never played Monkey Ball, but these videos into the sheer insane effort from online communities are just... So good.
excellent video. also thank you for introducing me to a new uk accent to love. the way you say your vowels in your dialect is quite soothing!
I respect the honesty saying you used to cheat. Great video. I watched this a while ago but felt like rewatching because it’s really interesting!
Cant stop watching long videos on speed running. I dont even play video games but this shit Is addicting
so great to see another video from you!
One must Wonder, nonetheless, why JCool removed the admitances from his Video descriptions
I haven't finished watching the video yet so this might be addressed later on (or previously and I forgot), but wouldn't saving the replay once the rapid pause run is finished, then playing back the replay in game and using that audio would make the 1st cheating method much easier ? or is that not possible due to something else ?
Maybe it was told in the video and I didn't understand it properly but why would doing the glitch for music to get the SFX track from the replay would just, not work with also the music track ? since it's using the replay audio track the music shouldn't cut abruptly when pausing right ?
Excellent work by everyone involved here! Great video, fantastic report (seriously, the whole thing is worth a read if you haven't), and amazing dedication to maintaining the integrity of our little community. Let's continue making ball monke go zoom and eat bana the legit way.
What a fantastic video! Your explanations are great, even for an exclusively casual smb player, and i love the dry humor you use
It's interesting to hear you mention that you used to cheat, what was the reaction like when you admitted it? Its a testament to how people can change!
That's fucking brutal dude are you kidding me? I cannot believe he was a fake. That really sucks. I didn't speedrun SMB very much (I did hold the WR on Monkey Golf at some point!), but his name was everywhere at the top of every leaderboard and I thought he was such a badass.
do replays not contain the inputs in some form or another? if not, what is saved? why couldn't that be used to reverse engineer instead of painstaking replication and replay generation?
as far as we know, replays only document the changes in the characters position which can not be used to figure out what inputs were used(and thats assuming someone who cheated would upload requested replay files in the first place).
It's a bit technical how exactly it works, but replays only store the positional changes of the monkey. You'd think that the devs would've stored the inputs to make displaying the visual stage tilt easier, but for some reason they decided not to do that. The stage tilting actually happens 1 frame later in a replay than in the corresponding liveplay, which means the game is probably using the position data to calculate what the stage tilt should be. You unfortunately likely wouldn't be able to convert this calculated stage tilt into input data, since it doesn't exactly match. Most notably, changes in inputs are somewhat smoothed out in replays.
The other big thing is that even if you could reverse engineer inputs from a replay file, most people don't share the replay files themselves, opting to just share a video if the replay instead (or nowadays where people share the liveplay). It's not uncommon for people to delete replays after they record them for more memory card space, so it's possible that the files of some of the replays we analyzed don't even exist anymore.
@scrap651 @IkeSMB thank you both very much for the insight!
10:34
The scale tilted the wrong way
If one side is down, that means there's a lot of it
In this case, you're saying cheating went up when capture cards were required in 2002, which is false
27:34 time-stamp incase this is addressed later in the video, instead of manually adding each sound effect couldn't you just save a replay of a run and then add the audio over top of the spliced one and it should line up?
I don't even like the SMB franchise but this was presented so well, I watched the whole thing and wanted more, so nice job.
Although I'm motion sick from all the pausing and menu flashing and the only MB I've ever played was on my ipod, I'm so impressed with what you put yourself through for this video for a community I'm not even involved with that I made myself get through it then immediately typed this run-on sentence without pausing or looking away because that would be cheating. Respect! I need to lie down and close my eyes for a bit now.
Monkey Ball on an iPod sounds nightmarish
@@Solaceon It was for me, I wasn't very good at it. I do seem to recall a bit of latency in the tilt controls though, maybe I'd be better on a console.
I had to pause when the creator casually dropped that he used the cheating methods jcool did in 2015 😭
as a random side note this guy hacked in competitive mario kart wii like 10+ years ago lol
'ball units'
lmao
I don’t watch speedruns but I can’t stop watching cheaters getting exposed
Seeing and hearing packattack's name in this video was surprising considering I didn't knew he used to be a speedrunner. I've been subscribed to that dude since 2015!
".1 Ball units thick" sounds like an innuendo
Hard to believe he'd do this. He had such great runs.
39:18 wait, you're openly admitting to cheating too?!
Yeah, i was confused about that too
He’s got a video on his channel exposing his own cheated runs/how he did it, I’m about to go watch that after this one, lol
I openly admitted to it back in 2020. As Emma says, I have a video about it on my channel that I made soon after I came clean about my SMB scores.
@@Goober13md Are you banned?
@@hoagie911 No I'm not. I was fortunate that the communities affected were willing to simply remove the cheated scores and move on, and I'm really grateful for that. This is all addressed in the video discussed in the above comments.
Honestly I found that video randomly in my recommandation and I loved it! I will always love these kinds of video of a champion of a speedrun community to cheat. But something I'm not sure to understand is Jcool used splicing and pause buffer to cheat his replays to get top 1 in the leaderboard?
38 minutes into the video and the creator of this video just casually admitting that they used to cheat with the exact same method they're exposing, absolutely bonkers
Pause buffering is so cool in some games!