Hackers uncover the right way to reprogram NES Tetris from throughout the recreation

Enlarge / I can see the code that controls the Tetri-verse! (credit score: Aurich Lawson)

Earlier this 12 months, we shared the story of how a traditional NES Tetris participant hit the sport’s “kill display” for the primary time, activating a crash after an unbelievable 40-minute, 1,511-line efficiency. Now, some gamers are utilizing that kill display—and a few difficult reminiscence manipulation it permits—to code new behaviors into variations of Tetris working on unmodified {hardware} and cartridges.

We have lined related “arbitrary code execution” glitches in video games like Tremendous Mario World, Paper Mario, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time up to now. And the fundamental methodology for introducing outdoors code into NES Tetris has been publicly theorized since not less than 2021 when gamers had been investigating the sport’s decompiled code (HydrantDude, who has gone deep on Tetris crashes up to now, additionally says the group has lengthy had a privately recognized methodology for the right way to take full management of Tetris‘ RAM).

However a current video from Displaced Avid gamers takes the concept from personal idea to public execution, going into painstaking element on the right way to get NES Tetris to begin studying the sport’s excessive rating tables as machine code directions.