Twenty years after gamers began to explore Super Mario Bros. 3, there are still a few odd things popping up from time to time. We've seen lost levels and gone behind the scenes on the creation of the game, but there's still more to see. Or, in this case, hear. Consider a glitch that causes the game to tack some extra notes onto the "you earned a 1-up" musical cue.
That's kind of neat, but we'll never know why it happens. Nope, it's one of those unexplainable myst-
The "glitch" involves the tail wag sound effect and the 1-up sound effect's calls getting merged. The sound code reads both, treats it like a 1-up sound effect, but writes the wrong length, so it plays more notes than it should. We're still doing some research here, but the general consensus among us is that it's just a glitch.
Alright, so there's a working theory about why it happens, but we'll never know how to deliberately trigger the effect. Nope, it's a secret to everyb-
Simply wag Mario's tail 5 frames (1/12sec) after the "1UP" symbol appears. Done right, the sound effects will conflict and the longer "version" will play. This is extremely difficult to replicate on purpose, which might explain why it was never caught.
Fine, so it can be reproduced under exact circumstances. But an exact explanation as to why the game glitches in this exact way? Some questions just don't have answ-
The tail wag sound effect is written (B0), then the 1-UP (40) is ORed, resulting in F0. It writes the wrong "length" for the 1-up, and as it reads bytes in reverse, the beginning is broken instead of the end.
I love that the Internet is home to people devoted enough to explore these sorts of things. "Video Game Archaeologist" isn't a real job title yet, but it definitely should be.
(via The Mushroom Kingdom)
