The Back in Time Glitch which spans 3 Zelda Games is one of the most significant discoveries in Zelda speedrunning. Here is it's story. Follow Our Twitter: / lowestpercent Edited by: / gymnast86
In 10 years: "A speedrunner found that, by jamming a screwdriver into their Nintendo Wii at just the right angle, they could skip directly to the final cutscene in the game. This strategy became known as the 'Tool assisted speedrun.'"
“This glitch requires your stupid cousin to press a button on a second controller at least 6 yards away from you. It’s the real tool assisted speedrun.”
talking about weird hardware glitches. One time I was playing super metroid on snes and my bedroom was a pretty small laundry room sized room. Power cable came loose a bit so I went to push it back in (I was at the start of the game). It cause the power on the snes to flicker but didn't shut off. Had the power bomb icon appear but zero bombs. Played through the ridley scene and got to the ship on planet and when I saved power bombs kept going up until they hit a 99 state. Never recommend anyone doing it for obvious hardware damage but it was interesting.
Literally though! The discovery of reverse BitMagic seemingly shaved off about 3 times the amount of time saved by all the other Bit techniques, if I understood correctly.
@@judgment5090 not really... this channel is made up of like 4 speedrunners that each create videos for it... he was assigned this particular subject and it happens to involve himself.
@@SPFLDAngler I wouldn’t say that it “just so happens to involve himself.” I think it’s pretty obvious that he spoke on this topic because it is the one he has the most personal experience with, and him being this video’s narrator is largely dependent on the fact that he played a major role in it
That would've been massive in terms of storage space. I think it was in Wind Waker HD where a single, few mins long video took 2/3 of the space on the disc. There is a reason these sequences are done in-engine.
I love how death is something we tend to avoid in games, generally, but when speedrunners come in, they look at death and say "Hmm, another tool for my speedrun. I'll have to figure out if there's an optimal time to use it."
When a glitch makes every other strategy obsolete, speed runners will usually create a separate category where that glitch is banned. You can get the best of both worlds
When speedrunners discover glitches in the irl physics engine and start wrong warping to 5 minutes ago to set up a paradoxical premade save file so their future self can win before theyve even booted the game
By the way, the person narrating this is Gymnast86, who holds the world record in Any% Skyward Sword and has been to MANY Games Done Quick before! Go support him, if you can!
I found the whole thing badass too tbh. Now imagine the author of this video thinking of himself as one of the few speedrunners to have mastered both BitMagic and Reverse BitMagic... He's a Bit-Archmage!
Gymnast: "Can I do something before loading the file?" SS: "No, we reset the flags when you press start." Gymnast: "What if I did it in the other order?" And that, kids, is the difference between great thinkers and the rest of us.
@@sirsmellybottom7480 if you watch the video, the hex viewer in dolphin emulator only came out in 2019, so gymnast was the first to use it and do research. Also, hindsight is big, just because it may seem obvious to do that now, the infinite other possibilities of things to try have to be accounted for as well
Literally both galaxy brain, and something a 5 year old could say. Out of the box, outright devil's lawyer thinking at its finest. The same troll/hacker logic also came into play when they realized that they could travel out of Skyloft within Back in Time and get the Flag 62 trigger somewhere else.
I’d say a gym is kind of a staple of 3D Zelda game speedruns, you can’t go too far without stumbling into him. Which is a good thing, because his narration is so chill and entertaining at the same time :)
Gymnast and Linkus7 are honestly two of my favorite runners because of their chill and informative commentary, you should definitely look up some of their GDQ runs and streams
Finding Bigfoot in GTA San Andreas 009 Sound System - Dreamscape Unregistered Hypercam 2 Let the bodies hit the floor My Shooter - Groove Cutter Windows XP and tutorials using Notepad
This channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites, this video especially. The insane smug aura of "...not in skyloft" literally had my mouth gaping waiting to see what happened next. Great video, please keep doing what you're doing.
Knowing how valuable skips of a few minutes are in speedrunning, hearing that BIT skips *four and a half hours* from a 5h and something run feels amazing even for someone outside of speedrunning like me. Great job with this video, I remember hearing about BIT in SW some time ago from another speedrunner, but it wasn't as well explained as this.
it depends sometimes speedrunning just turns into a game breaking glitch fest with no actual skill (depends on the category of course) but i personally enjoy those the most where people are just extremely skilled and knowledgeable about a game and manage to speedrun it in a "proper" way
Skyward sword speedruns are always fun to watch because you can always make the joke about how the runner is still on the title screen, missing a bunch of key items, and activating early game events with 10-20 minutes left in the run.
ZFG just released a Majora's Mask 100% TAS on his channel. If you want to see a glitch that completely and utterly breaks a game then hoo boy, look no further.
I remember being about 7 years old when my mum came home with Zelda Twilight Princess... She bought it for herself but in the end only my brother and I really played it. I was so in love with it and played it again and again over the coming years.. It´s still my favorite Zelda game
I really appreciate the thorough explanation, including how the tricks were discovered and by who- I've never seen that included consistently and it's fascinating (and also, like, proper credit)
It is absolutely wild to see this channel feature so many runners i've seen bits and pieces of before. Keep creating this awesome content and expanding the web of creators I should watch!
The entering Hylia's Realm early stream was one the coolest things I've seen on Twitch live. Honestly, all of the RBM research was super fun to watch play out.
This channel provides such high quality content. Did I ever play any of the above mentioned games? Certainly not. Do I have any intention to speedrun anything? No. But learning about these game-breaking mechanics in a understandable matter from Lowest Percent's calm, yet passionate voice is simply great educational entertainment.
Now imagine the author of this video thinking of himself as one of the few speedrunners to have mastered both BitMagic and Reverse BitMagic... He's a Bit-Archmage!
I love how much context is given to the history behind each of the techniques! Great essay. This channel has been an extraordinary discovery. Although it makes sense how valuable this would be in a low% run, how different are the SS Low% runs before and after the discovery of this trick? In any case, fascinating how much Any% changed.
Apparently, there’s a glitch like this in Ocarina of Time too. If you go up to Master Sword pedestal in the Temple of Time, the game freaks out and you become young Link
TIL that Reverse BiTMagic doesn't refer to the bit* flags set by the scene action, but rather just Back in Time itself. * dunno if they actually use bit flags; it was just an assumption on my part
15:28 Shows that the flags are supposedly stored in the memory range 805A78D0-805A78DF, which obviously holds 16 bytes. Although, I'd guess that many of them are unused but still allocated to some random pointer for conveniance. Based on that, there would be 128 flags available.
Wow. I can't believe that a glitch that sents you back in time works in a game that has its story split in three due to a kid messing with time. Ironic.
Amazing work, Gym. I've been following you, Linkus, and several other wonderful speedrunners in this community for awhile, and your dedication to finding cracks like this is stunning. Thank you all for providing endless entertainment.
its so funny to me because the first part of this i actually accidentally encountered on my first playthrough as well, the falling into quicksand and pressing sth in panic and then ending up on the bridge, i remember being incredibly confused when i was a kid because i wasnt even aware there was such a thing as glitches in games haha
i've heard BiT explained to me several times over the last couple years, and i finally realized the thing missing from all these explanations is clearly stating that the "title screen" you're traveling back to is itself a three-dimensional zone within the game with its own game data, and not a pre-rendered video. it still wasn't stated outright in this video, but the visual comparison between the original TP title screen and the BiT arbiter's grounds made it finally click for me. a lot of folks still assume that game sequences we don't have control over are pre-rendered, hence the confusion.
This is a really engaging video. I love how it's not just dry facts and technical explanations of the glitch itself, but also a _story_ about the people who found and refined that glitch. It makes it super easy and interesting to follow. Really great job!
I absolutely LOVE the way this video was edited. It felt like a real engaging history. Very good and clear explanations. I've always loved the way gymnast explains things. Seriously this I'm making me tear up, I love it so much. Thank you for making this video. 💜
@Windows98GamerYT Its uncreative and unuqnique, but I read all the comments when I clicked to make sure know one had posted it yet. If there is one it hadn't loaded.
This channel is like the encyclopedia of speed running. Very informative and entertaining. I like getting all the backstories since everything just kind of flies by when you are watching speed runs themselves. Keep up the great content!
I love this channel. It’s taking tons of RU-vid speed runners I love watching and letting them make the interesting kind of speed run content that gets me excited. I already have known about most of the stuff showcased so far but the ways that they are explained thoroughly feels so good
Skyward Sword is so underrated it makes me sad. The first truest Link of them all. Also the most powerful having all of the pieces of the Triforce that you earn through the trials. Also Zelda's speech to Link before she freezes herself is the best scene in Zelda history for me. That game actually made you feel like a real Hero.
Dude It was that like one those games that I played when I was a kid but just forgot about about it. My story with this game was that I got this game in around December 2011 when I was like 6 years old but couldn't play It because young me thought that the Wii motion plus video meant the game was broken and I thought the music CD was the actual game. I was young alright, so because of this I couldn't play the game until a few months later when the game worked (possibly the video ended one time I booted it up). I then played it, enjoyed it, and then I didn't come back to the game for another two years until I learned about BiT. Then I came back to the game here and there and just gave up and went play other games instead and forgot about it. After I rediscovered the game after watching gyms streams in and around 2018 I became interested in SS again. My thoughts on it are that yes It's not the best zelda game I played I mean there are other games I liked more then SS. But overall I still enjoyed skyward sword now that I'm much older and even I didn't have a problem with the motion controls and other waggle events in the game when I was younger. Overall to me SS is a good game, I'm not saying that it's great or that it's the best zelda game ever. To me at least it's just good.
But god I do love the glitches that the game has to offer. This is probably the best Zelda speedrun game I have ever seen and this just makes me like this game a little bit more.
great video! brought back a lot of nostalgia from me and my brothers playing skyward sword together. remembering the last time i remembered something is an absolute trip. i remember seeing that exact demise fight and being so suprised.
None of you actually realize how amazing this video is, the music selected is so perfect, and the fact that the narrator becomes the focus, and the discoverer, is just so cool. then "On Skyloft" part, I was like "wait, during BIT he gets off skyl-" (cuts to flying scene in the clouds) "YOOOOO he can find flag 62!" just such a great video, especially the end when your smirking at stream chat, knowing full well your cutting to the end of the game. Just amazing. well done.
Although I’m never going to be a speedrunner, I am SO fascinated by the teamwork, understanding of the game programming, and the skill it takes to execute a WR run that I will never not watch videos about speedruns.
The devs: Yep seems good to me A tester: So I killed the character while doing an attack animation, quickly paused the game and reset my console and that triggered a glitch The devs: 😐😐😡😐
It would be amazing if we could talk to the game's programmers to get their take on how all of it works. That kind of information would be incredibly valuable.
Gym, you have a true talent for many things. Your dedication to speed running and to your community is inspiring. It’s been fun to watch this journey in real time; from your 5+ hours of SS speedruns to the now blazing quick runs. You have an amazing gift of explaining the technicalities and intricacies of game programming that makes it easy to understand for even casual viewers. Your patience, intelligence, and resolve has proven to be an incredible tool for discovery. In addition to that, your passion for teaching these techniques is complemented by your impressive command of the English language. This was a really great video, keep up the good work. You can do a lot of incredible things!
(Reverse) Bit Magic sounds like an awesome idea for a puzzle game. Or a secret part of a game that requires/encourages the use of tools (even if it's just spreadsheets of pen and paper) not inherent to the game itself. With the part of another game my first idea would go to World of Warcraft, which has seen a few secret puzzles over the last few years.
Oh my god! I hadn't even realized the voice, I watched a good portion of the TP run for SGDQ 2020, was very entertaining! Now I come yo find you have a youtube channel that's just as interesting, this is great! Awesome stuff man
I'd often been curious about this. It especially confused me in Skyward Sword; I saw it there & often in other videos, but I later learned it's in other games. This in-depth explanation was super helpful! It's neat how this glitch was useless when it first appeared in Wind Waker, then mildly useful in Twilight Princess, & finally run defining in Skyward Sword! As a channel, I don't like that you seem focused on posting content on weekends (Seemingly a very competitive timeslot.) but you're frequently uploading exemplary content, so.... Subscribed!
