Uncovering cheating in Super Monkey Ball speedruns

[jellyfishlover]

I know next to nothing about SMB as a game, but I always find the history and dramatics of speed-running communities interesting to rubberneck! This video specifically has a neat aspect of being made by someone who has falsified world records in the past (and has since fessed up to doing so on their own) in addition to playing a direct part in the investigation itself.

It's a good video to put on in the background while doing something else, I find.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[supermario128]

I've seen a couple of "Super Monkey Ball" speedruns in the past but was unaware of the high score section of the community. Score isn't something I usually pay attention to in games, so it's neat to see people who do care.

I find the pinned comment interesting since it mentions Trackmania replays and how those do store player inputs whereas the "Super Monkey Ball" replays do not (so it isn't feasible to detect "Super Monkey Ball" cheating through that). The Trackmania community had a lot of cheated runs exposed because of those stored player inputs in replays; I recommend looking at the YouTube video "The Biggest Cheating Scandal in Trackmania History" for information on that.

[jellyfishlover]

Yeah, it is really neat to see what different aspects of games are focused on in different game communities! There's a handful of old Lowest Percent videos that still have me going "Who of earth came up with that category?!"

That Trackmania video was super interesting! The tool that creates the visualization of the inputs is really neat. It's cool to see what sort of things are made just for speed running! and it's crazy how many top players used that slowdown method! Thanks for telling me about it! :D