"Mario, blink twice if the person controlling you is cheating"

"Mario blinks every 64 frames." Oh, so that's why the game is called Super Mario 64.

I too blink every 64 frames, so i can make sure noone is cheating on me

he spelled "this guy is cheating" in morse code by blinking

Imagine getting caught for a speedrun you cheated 13 years ago because Mario fuckin blinked a little earlier than he should have had

“Mario blinks every 64 frames, his eyes operate on what we call a framerule. Imagine Mario’s eyes as a bus stop…”

"Give us a sign if you're being controlled!" Mario: blinks every 64 frames

Mario's blinks don't line up anymore if you come out of a loading screen with Mario already in second gear, it's a secret technique that only Todd Rodgers knows.

This video only proved to me that I can kick Mario’s ass in a staring contest

(He blinked)

Honestly the increasingly insane and niche ways cheaters are caught is fascinating. I don't speedrun so my understanding of just how hard the tricks are is limited but I love hearing about the technicalities of how both legitimate runs and cheating/cheat detection work

Speedrun cheating analysis videos are like true crime documentaries, but nobody dies (usually). Criminal investigations use all sorts of forensics techniques, but to convict cheaters in video games, usually only clever digital forensics is required- it's always interesting to hear explanations of the specific details in a game's implementation that allow false runs to be found. Love this stuff.

No wonder this method took so long to figure out. It's really a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visual cue.

catching someone for inconsistent blinking is the most big brained thing this game has provided

Every copy of mario 64 has personalized blinking

I almost wonder if the blinking after 64 frames was a super subtle easter egg, not unlike how the results music changes in Mario Kart 64 on the 64th loop.

Almost exactly like Super Meat Boy speedruns where they discovered the Bandage Girl icon on the loading screen had a consistent animation involving her raising and lowering her arms at 20 frame intervals that carried between the screens, so for example if the loading screen ended on her having raised arms for 6 frames, the next would start arms-raised for 14 frames - and of course, caught a cheater with it.

So every 64 frames a bus comes to pick up Mario's eyes

blinking timing is definitely a good addition to cheating detection

The amount of people dissecting SM64 to this day makes me so happy, it’s like there’s a never-ending trove of secrets

This reminds me a lot of a similar cheating detection method in Minecraft. One day someone realized that once your character becomes hungry, the icons in the hunger bar bump at a steady rate. They found several records where the runner spliced when traveling between dimensions; hungry before, not hungry after. It's hilarious seeing someone get caught because of something obscure like blinking or a hunger bar.

Wouldn't believe if someone on street told me, that they got caught cheating by a blinking animation.

Imagine you wake up one morning and the speedrun you cheated 13 years ago was retired from the leaderboard because Mario blinked too late

This is kinda similar in the Clone Hero community where they check how fast the golden circle (that indicate no missed notes) is spinning. It will spin at the same rate the entire time, so footage that is sped up (from playing a song at a slower speed) is noticeable.

That cheater really had a “blink and you miss it” moment

“We both stared into the void, but when it stared back at us, you blinked” -Mario (crisis on infinite cartridges)

What should really get recognized are the judges that take the time out of their day to watch over all these runs and work tirelessly to make sure no cheaters slip by

The one thing i have always loved about speedrunning is once impossible gaps and people always finding a way around them. Even brand new techniques to remoderate old runs like solving a cold case! The speedrun communities never cease to amaze me and I genuinely adore and appreciate all the work and effort everyone in the community puts in. Love this !

Now I'll only be submitting runs where the camera never shows mario's eyes

Mario: *has dry eye so blink* Speedrunners: CHEATING

This is why I will always love mario speedrunning. No other franchise has crazy turns and discoveries like this. Great vid, and I hope your channel grows rapidly!

It's incredible how insanely detail oriented things have gotten in terms of cheat detection. Not just in terms of tracking them, but the ability to understand the performance inputs and small technical quirks of games that I would wager the Devs themselves weren't fully aware of.

now imagining a Mario 64 hack that has Mario not blinking at all and staring at the player the whole time

The unstable mic really screwed with my sense of hearing before I realized it was literally how the audio is

Thank you for putting the music used in the video! I really appreciate when creators take the time to do that. Very much appreciated. Thank you for all of your other contributions to the gaming community as well

Investigator "Mario blink twice if you're okay! Blink once if you're being manipulated!"

The fact mario's blinking animation can catch a cheater is absolutely insane what is this community

Thanks a lot for your acknowledgements, I'm glad I could help! Let me perhaps share my thoughts on some of the questions you brought up and address some points I've seen in the comments. Some people don't seem to realize that "Hasu64" went inactive in 2011, that he was a Japanese runner who - aside from the confrontation with SilentSlayers in 2010 - had nothing to do with the Western community ever, and that the Japanese community used different leaderboards at the time than we do now, so the runs were never even submitted to "our" community but had just been carried over. That's also why debating a ban is a bit silly. He just isn't around anymore. Though while otherwise inactive, he actually did delete his KZfaq channel (with some uploaded runs) a month after the discovery was made, and probably because of it. In my mind, there's nothing more to act upon. The runs were removed and that was it, the rest is history, literally. How do you punish a Japanese guy that wasn't seen in 12 years, and why would you? Since he deleted his YT channel, I'd argue that this was the end of everything that's gonna come from the identity that's tied to his username. He only ever did a few runs but it doesn't seem like any of them were legit, so there's no way he's ever gonna return where we would recognize that it's him. Can he redeem himself? Sure. You can never plan this. It always depends on how a former cheater goes on to conduct himself and then these things will play out in an organic way that's never quite the same. From experience, it'll take care of itself one way or the other. In this case, I Imagine "Hasu" will never return. I don't see why something from 2011 matters other than to give a factual report on it. Personally, I want a true WR progression because I'm maintaing them, but I'm not quite emotionally invested. I don't believe anyone has a reason to be outraged because nobody would have cared much about "Hasu", or have known about these two runs we've discussed, prior to this video. It's really no big deal, so I'm fine that not much happens in response. How would that even look like? The situation for SM64 is also nowhere near as grim as some people think it is. The last cheated WR is still from 2013, and there have been very few cheated runs since, almost none of which were notable. And no, this method hasn't opened the floodgates to where half the community turned out to have cheated all this time. We haven't done checks of the whole leaderboards (that'd be insane) but it doesn't look like there's really any cheaters around. It was mostly just this guy, who I always thought was sketchy anyway. And the only thing that made it so hard to catch him is that all his runs were old. The only footage to work with was the 16:11 in a comparison with another run (fusing both runs' audio tracks), uploaded to a Japanese website where I needed an account to view it. Such a submitted run would straight up be rejected today. He had been on my radar since 2018 though, it just had to remain ambiguous. And while this one is a fair point, it's not really like public knowledge of this method is a game changer. If you cheat your 2893rd placed run, chances are you get away with it in any case, because nobody can spend a week reviewing it in-depth. Good job. But chances are you make one tiny mistake and get caught and it's all over for you. If you're a top runner and spliced a run, you were already quite unlikely to get away with it due to the mains hum method that's been reported on in abundance. That's cyclical in much the same way. As a top runner, you were already wise to opt for something else than splicing if you wanted to cheat. I never once thought cheating "undetectably" was out of reach. It's a sad reality, but I'm rather looking at what is than be paranoid about what might be. Again, virtually nothing happened since 2013. I don't suspect we've been sleeping on a big scandal either. If you get too paranoid, no 200 IQ anti-cheating method can ever realistically redeem speedrun competition to you.

Weegee: “We both looked into the abyss. But when it looked back at us… you blinked.”

Great video! I can honestly say I've never been more invested in the blinking habits of a fictional plumber.

Now I want someone to make a romhack where Mario experiences allergies like I do, so the blinking is frequent and unpredictable.

honestly its pretty interesting to see how the A button challenge and the investigations into various game mechanics could lead to such a good cheat detection system. It makes you proud of the sm64 community at large as they come together to help each other in various unexpected ways.

Is the global timer for all events using one the same number of frames on NTSC as it is on PAL?

The mirrored cartridge is a very cool idea, crazy that even cheaters from back then are still being caught out.

That pannenkoek video has been burned into my brain for so long and I never even considered checking it, absolutely ingenious move

Can audio splicing be masked by overlaying the audio clips over each other, fading in/out simultaneously?

That's a really interesting find. I'm all for the most creative methods of analyzing gameplay footage, and this shows how not only creative people can get, but how much more information is available for these games that isn't released. That's a ton of attention paid into the gameplay recordings. Well done, great find.

This really shows that the top speedruns in general might be full of actual cheaters, crazy it took 13 years to find this out.

Mario: Wants to blink normally Nintendo: BLINK EVERY 64 FRAMES

I really respect your outlook, not naming the cheater as you believe in multiple chances. Really enjoyed, looking forward to future videos!

The temperature is 90. The temperature is rising. Therefore, 90 is rising.

He would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling blinks

Blink once for splice. Blink twice for clear.

Super Mario 64 is such a funny game to me cause not only can blinking wrong make someone’s runs illegitimate but a SOLAR WAVE hitting an N64 perfectly can result in a time save

that's crazy! i always love watching these videos, my favorite is learning about how the ways to catch cheaters develops. youre awesome !

wow Mario is really bad at staring contest

10:31 i love the dutch pronounciation 😂

I legit thought Mario only blinked while Idle. Big brain.

I’m so excited that you had a video pop off, liked, subbed, and commenting to help the algorithm. Congrats and I’m excited for more vids

Mario: *_blink blink_* Everyone: thats a cheater.

lmao wasn't expecting that. surprisingly reliable tool to check for splices tbh. speedrunneres never cease to amaze me. great video, man.

Good video, I like videos that go into details like this whilst still keeping it short.

Thanks for making me manually aware of my own blinking

What an amazing video Drogie! This method is amazing, and I really appreciate how big names like pannen and weegee are pillars of tehse method

You taught me how to do speedkicks and now you're teaching me about cheat detection years later, cheers to you, and thanks weegee

Will game stutters or mods that influence framerate change the blink timing

It's really neat to see how these sorts of persistent cycles (either a programmed one such as the blinks or and fundamental electronic one such as the main hum) underlying a single run can be so helpful in verification. Hiding the name felt jarring because I know the drama-loving lizard brain part of me clicked the video for that, but with your justification and more rational thought, a rehabilitative stance such as that you've presented is wayyy healthier for everyone involved, so thank you!

They really need more methods for a lot of games really. If you want to take a speedrunning a game seriously then you need serious counter measures to be able to detect that. Blinking though is absurd but probably the best idea I have heard of for any game! Great detailed video 🏴‍☠️ 🦈

It always amazes me how in-depth the SM64 community is about their game. I would have never even imagined a cheating detection such as this could have been developed.

im now learning how to make the perfect splice

Nice job on documenting this, glad the moderators are open and thorough on their cheating detection methods

I remembering watching that exact video on blinking and thinking that such a consistent timer could be useful for verifying speedruns, because I remembered hearing about a similar thing happening with Super Meat Boy speedrun verification.

That mirrored sm64 copy looks so cool, i hope it is an actual romhack

Great video, subbed on it. What a great dive and I appreciate the method - focusing on the speed run and behavior and not the individual

"Your Honor, might I present to my evidence: Defendant blinked 0.16 seconds earlier than he should have." Defendant: "Frick! I admit."

This video is super well made and edited, it explains everything in a way easy to understand. Loved this video totally! Keep the great work!

It's kinda scary to think that we now have to find out how often Mario BLINKS in order to catch cheaters, and we're only now uncovering these cheaters. Who knows how many good times are up that are cheated and we've just never found a way to prove them.

Really nice edit Drogie!

Danke, dass du das so einfach für uns erklärt hast! Normalerweise habe ich öfter Probleme, so technische Dinge gut zu verstehen, hab natürlich gleich abboniert für zukünftige Videos! Good job, fantastic video!!

Mario standing with another Mario on a desolate planet. "We both stared into the abyss, when the abyss stared back... You blinked."

Mario is like **blink** then the console is like "IM OUTTA HERE"

Nice video! I found this so interesting! It's always great when a new method is found to detect cheaters. You love to see it.

Really good deep dive! i love listening to these super precise videos that focus on one very specific game element... lol

I feel like there could be a way to automate this process by using a machine learning model to recognize frames where non-"ingame frame" periods start and end, and a script that cuts those parts out of the video, then with an additional model which recognizes Mario's blinks, and creates a time-series of blink values and compares them against the expected time-series for the gameplay video and returns a confidence value on whether the gameplay is legit or not.

Damn cant even blink without gets in trouble, only in mushroom kingdom

It never ceases to sadden me that KZfaqrs and video gamers are more thorough in detecting cheating and enforcing consequences than our own government is in finding and prosecuting criminals.

But, consider the following: What if an ionizing particle from a cosmic ray hit Mario's eyes, making him blink early?

Yoooo, I’m so glad KZfaq recommended your channel to me. This video was made really well, watched the whole thing without checking the time, definitely enjoyed. The mirrored Mario 64 game looks so interesting as well. Wonder if it could gain enough traction that people start speed running it, like other Mario 64 rom hacks.

No wonder it took so long to be caught. Blink and you'll miss it!

I wonder if you can modify TAS to add certain delays before a splice starts to synchronize blinking frames

very clever method, did the decomp helped somehow to check the exact rules on the blinking animation?

I love how the ever-growing knowledge of the community makes it constantly more difficult tonfake runs.

Always fun seeing how speedrunners can take the most obscure mechanics and find uses for them. In this case, cheat detection. Great video!

Everybody's talking about mario blinking, but nobody's talking about Drogie not blinking through the whole intro

This is a really great video man, can't wait to see more!

nice to see new vid from you. Cheers from Germany

I’ve always been curious if moderation teams consider withholding this information and keeping the cheating detection methods secret to prevent future cheaters from working around them. Nonetheless, amazing video and glad this was shared

Thank you for the three disclaimer points. Big ups for taking the time to talk about them

Subscribed and awesome, well put video along with music in the background Mr. Drogie 👏

now Mario can't blink