NES Remix Exploit Leads to Contest Cancellation

[roseofbattle]

NES Remix Exploit Leads to Contest Cancellation

NES Remix contest participants used an exploit to reduce the time needed to complete a stage.

Nintendo canceled a contest for NES Remix, a compilation of 16 NES games announced and released last month, after participants took advantage of an exploit to reduce their stage completion times.

The Time Attack Challenge began last month as a promotion to the recently released NES Remix. Players competed for the quickest time to complete a stage in which they controlled two Mario characters at once. Director Koichi Hayashida revealed the contest the day after the game's release. Participants had until Jan. 2 to take a screenshot of their fastest time and post it to Miiverse.

To reduce the time and cheat the clock, players were able to constantly pause the game to run it frame by frame. Following discussion of scores in Miiverse, Hayashida released a statement:

"Hello Everyone.

Thank you very much for participating in this event. Unfortunately, we confirmed that there is a way to exploit the challenge to achieve a faster time. In the interest of being as fair as possible, we decided to terminate the event without recognizing the fastest time.

We know that you dedicated a lot of time and effort towards achieving your fastest time possible. We sincerely apologize for this matter, particularly because the vast majority of people played fairly.

We appreciate your understanding.

Thank you."

NES Remix is on the Wii U eShop for $14.99. Nintendo has not announced any plans for other NES Remix contests.

Source: Destructoid [https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADRUqFl7dpCBA]


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[Artemicion]

Cancelling the contest outright seems a bit excessive - why not just identify the obvious cheating times and disqualify them? That would probably actually be less of a hassle - especially considering there's guaranteed to be a wide time gap between the cheaters and legitimate players.

 

[Something Amyss]

Cancelling the contest outright seems a bit excessive - why not just identify the obvious cheating times and disqualify them? That would probably actually be less of a hassle - especially considering there's guaranteed to be a wide time gap between the cheaters and legitimate players.

So what if someone got savvy and cheated just enough to shave some time off?

What if a bunch of people do?

 

[Falterfire]

especially considering there's guaranteed to be a wide time gap between the cheaters and legitimate players.

Not necessarily. It doesn't sound like you have to use this exploit for the entire level. If you could figure out what the best 'legitimate' time roughly is by lurking on relevant forums you could cheat in order to hit just a few seconds less than that.

 

[Artemicion]

Cancelling the contest outright seems a bit excessive - why not just identify the obvious cheating times and disqualify them? That would probably actually be less of a hassle - especially considering there's guaranteed to be a wide time gap between the cheaters and legitimate players.

So what if someone got savvy and cheated just enough to shave some time off?

What if a bunch of people do?

especially considering there's guaranteed to be a wide time gap between the cheaters and legitimate players.

Not necessarily. It doesn't sound like you have to use this exploit for the entire level. If you could figure out what the best 'legitimate' time roughly is by lurking on relevant forums you could cheat in order to hit just a few seconds less than that.

Okay, so the possibility of savvier cheaters only using the exploit for a slight gain could happen, meaning that the chance of catching cheaters may not be guaranteed, but take a moment to browse through various time-based leaderboards. The cheaters are going to be obvious. I distinctly remember holding a record in a game where I was the top 1000's, and then coming back to it a month later to learn that an exploit had been found and people had substantially (unnaturally) reduced times and my position was kicked way far down. Hell, it's happened on this very forum several times. The quizzes the Escapist hosts have timers and those who get all the questions right are put on a leaderboard for the time they completed them - and yet you have people who have answered fifteen questions in under ten seconds. So perhaps you won't find all of the cheaters, but you could certainly cleave several off with a quick glance, and it could be the first part in a larger effort to eliminate the cheaters. Cancelling everything outright because a handful of people are douches really shouldn't be the first action one should take.

 

[Sectan]

Fix the exploit, clear the times and open it up again. A bit of a messier solution, but you still keep the contest open...

 

[Roxas1359]

Why does this feel like they basically said "I'm taking my ball and going home", because if the exploits are found then you can just patch them and then have the contest continue. I mean hell, speedrunners use exploits all the time to get best times or sequence breaks, look at the Metroid games which are well known for using exploits to get best times in.

 

[McMarbles]

One again, this is why we can't have nice things.

Captcha: yes, this is dog

such captcha
wow

 

[FalloutJack]

What? Because somebody found the Konami Code? No fair pulling it for THAT.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Why does this feel like they basically said "I'm taking my ball and going home", because if the exploits are found then you can just patch them and then have the contest continue. I mean hell, speedrunners use exploits all the time to get best times or sequence breaks, look at the Metroid games which are well known for using exploits to get best times in.

Speed runners don't exploit the clock though. That's the difference. This is more like a TAS honestly, and those aren't truly competitive, they're just entertainment.

 

[AxelxGabriel]

Once again, because of the actions of a few douchebags, they ruin it for everyone.

 

[ClanCrusher]

And in other news, Nintendo still refuses to issue patches or fixes of any kind for their games. I wish I could say I was surprised.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Cancelling the contest outright seems a bit excessive - why not just identify the obvious cheating times and disqualify them? That would probably actually be less of a hassle - especially considering there's guaranteed to be a wide time gap between the cheaters and legitimate players.

Because some people would cheat a little bit but just enough to seem like the fastest legitimate time. There is no appropriate stopping point.

 

[Baresark]

The easiest way to rectify is to require a video. Can't cheat that way. Or you know... update the game so when you are running a challenge you cannot pause it. So many ways to fix this that does not involve cancellation. Nintendo, c'mon, it's 2014. You can patch your games and even the shittiest cellphone around can take a video these days.

 

[Roxas1359]

The easiest way to rectify is to require a video. Can't cheat that way. Or you know... update the game so when you are running a challenge you cannot pause it. So many ways to fix this that does not involve cancellation. Nintendo, c'mon, it's 2014. You can patch your games and even the shittiest cellphone around can take a video these days.

You know what's even funnier? The fact that Nintendo once made a controller that basically could exploit this glitch on purpose back on the NES. Nintendo seems to be against patching certain things for some odd reason unless it's completely game destroying, which tend to be the bugs I've noticed in the latest Zelda games and then Pokemon X and Y.
For Zelda, Twilight Princess had the infamous cannon room glitch (this one got me T^T) and then Skyward Sword had the song glitch in which if you got the songs out of order then it'll lock you out of getting the other two, effectively forcing you to restart the entire game.

Patching in itself is not a bad thing, and Nintendo needs to learn that because as games get bigger and have better graphics there will be more glitches that might escape the QA testers, or might develop later on.

 

[Akytalusia]

sounds like a pseudo-tas. i wouldn't call pausing the game to emulate frame precision cheating, or exploitative. just genre savvy. no shame in that. as long as they're not using third party gimmicks, i'm siding with the players on this one.