I was watching this video on YouTube that made some claims I find a little suspect. I am wondering how true they are, and what is causing them. Since they are about an NES game I figured this was probably the best place to get some honest information.
So the video was listing offensive passwords that exist by happenstance, and it listed one for the original Metroid that went "ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER F***ER" (but without the asterisks of course, I'm sure you can figure out the rest of the code yourself.)
The video claimed that depending on what version your system was, it could crash the game and even fry your cartridge. It also claimed that if you played on the 3DS entering that password (if you didn't have a particular system update) would completely brick your system, rendering the system permanently inoperable. The only clue it gave as to how this happened was that the password logs in so many hours that is actually measures out to be over three centuries.
So, that's a long list of claims that I find suspect, some more than others. I imagine there is at least a kernel of truth to each of them, but I am wondering to what extent.
Password logs in over 300 years of gameplay:
I'm guessing that someone just did their math a little wrong, but I did a little math myself, and depending on what unit of time it measures your gameplay in, you could register that many hours with three or four bytes. I could see how adding in an extra byte could cause the memory to overflow and write the wrong data, causing problems, but I'm a bit uncertain as to how a password system would be blatantly open to that kind of an error. Adding bunk data, sure, adding values that exceed what is reasonable, sure. But to get to numbers that large, to my understanding, you'd have to add in an extra byte of information beyond what the system would be designed to handle. I can't see the password system doing that; either take specific data or cause the checksum to fail.
Can crash the game, depending on the system and/or emulator:
Sounds reasonable. A bit surprising, but stuff like that happened on the NES.
Can fry the cartridge:
...mmmmaybe? If it triggered some sort of loop where it overheated a chip on the board and you let it sit for an hour or something? But honestly that sounds like something that would happen on a knock-off cart with bad soldering, or at best an individual cart that happens to be defective. But I don't imagine it to be possible on a standard cart that Nintendo made and is up to the manufactured specifications.
Can freeze a 3DS:
Not out of the realm of possibility. I've had game consoles freeze so bad the power button doesn't work. It sounds a bit odd that an NES emulator would do that, but not impossible.
Can brick a 3DS if it hasn't had a particular update:
I highly doubt that. At best I'm thinking some kids thought their system was bricked because they don't know how to do a hard reset. But then again, I've been wrong before.
Well that's my take on those statements. But I don't know the truth nor the details, but I'm guessing someone here does.
So the video was listing offensive passwords that exist by happenstance, and it listed one for the original Metroid that went "ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER F***ER" (but without the asterisks of course, I'm sure you can figure out the rest of the code yourself.)
The video claimed that depending on what version your system was, it could crash the game and even fry your cartridge. It also claimed that if you played on the 3DS entering that password (if you didn't have a particular system update) would completely brick your system, rendering the system permanently inoperable. The only clue it gave as to how this happened was that the password logs in so many hours that is actually measures out to be over three centuries.
So, that's a long list of claims that I find suspect, some more than others. I imagine there is at least a kernel of truth to each of them, but I am wondering to what extent.
Password logs in over 300 years of gameplay:
I'm guessing that someone just did their math a little wrong, but I did a little math myself, and depending on what unit of time it measures your gameplay in, you could register that many hours with three or four bytes. I could see how adding in an extra byte could cause the memory to overflow and write the wrong data, causing problems, but I'm a bit uncertain as to how a password system would be blatantly open to that kind of an error. Adding bunk data, sure, adding values that exceed what is reasonable, sure. But to get to numbers that large, to my understanding, you'd have to add in an extra byte of information beyond what the system would be designed to handle. I can't see the password system doing that; either take specific data or cause the checksum to fail.
Can crash the game, depending on the system and/or emulator:
Sounds reasonable. A bit surprising, but stuff like that happened on the NES.
Can fry the cartridge:
...mmmmaybe? If it triggered some sort of loop where it overheated a chip on the board and you let it sit for an hour or something? But honestly that sounds like something that would happen on a knock-off cart with bad soldering, or at best an individual cart that happens to be defective. But I don't imagine it to be possible on a standard cart that Nintendo made and is up to the manufactured specifications.
Can freeze a 3DS:
Not out of the realm of possibility. I've had game consoles freeze so bad the power button doesn't work. It sounds a bit odd that an NES emulator would do that, but not impossible.
Can brick a 3DS if it hasn't had a particular update:
I highly doubt that. At best I'm thinking some kids thought their system was bricked because they don't know how to do a hard reset. But then again, I've been wrong before.
Well that's my take on those statements. But I don't know the truth nor the details, but I'm guessing someone here does.