I was in my mid 30s when I found out that you could hold some button when continuing after game over in Super Mario Bros to continue in the world you died.
We just got gud and abused the turtle shell stair 1up.
After completing the game, when you're sent back to the title screen, you can also press B to select which world to start on. The World 1-1 in the HUD changes, then you have to do the continue trick - hold A and press Start.
I can finish the game on one life without warps, but I've never once been able to get the 1ups from a Koopa shell.
Edit: Another fun one is to play a bit of Tennis, eject the cart and insert SMB without powering off the system, then reset and do the continue trick. Tennis changes the memory value that SMB uses to tell which world you are continuing on, so you can play "weird worlds" like 63-1 that are generated from non-level data. Reset doesn't clear all RAM. 😅
Look at it this way. Didn’t you have more fun losing over and over, never completing the game and being stained permanently with that empty feeling of defeat?
I watched a video recently about tool assisted Speedruns which actually educated me on why this worked. An issue with the sound card and the way user input was handled allowed certain button combinations to cause Random Code Execution. It's actually possible to beat one of the Mario games (can't remember the name right this second) on the first frame using this method, but it requires a ridiculous amount of inputs
Right. But the GUI the user is served has only one possible action, which is leaving that screen. The rest of the buttons were set up to do nothing. "Press any button" style screens make a lot more sense. Although I'd rather be sent to an actual menu immediately when opening a program.
I get what you're saying and I'm not disagreeing. I'm just trying to view it through a lens of a generation that doesn't have the accumulated life experiences of operating such screens.