How Super Mario Hackers Are Helping Researchers Protect Software from Bugs

Gamers specializing in exploiting glitches within video games may hold the key to unraveling the mysteries of buggy software, according to research by students at the University of Bristol.

Super Mario Speedrunners

Referred to as "speedrunners," these gamers excel in completing games swiftly by exploiting inherent flaws within the game's mechanics.

The study focused on four iconic Super Mario games and analyzed a total of 237 known glitches present within them. By delving into the intricacies of these glitches, the researchers aimed to determine whether they shared similarities with bugs found in more conventional software.

The Super Mario franchise, created by Nintendo, is a cornerstone of the gaming industry. The researchers selected four of the earliest Mario platforming games—Super Mario Bros. (1985), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), Super Mario World (1990), and Super Mario 64 (1996)—for their analysis. Despite their age, these games attract competitive speedrunners who constantly strive to set new records.

Dr. Joseph Hallett from Bristol's School of Computer Science emphasized the unique challenges programming games pose for older consoles. The hardware limitations of these consoles necessitated innovative optimization techniques, often leading to the emergence of unforeseen bugs.

The research team focused on categorizing the glitches discovered within the Super Mario games according to existing software defect taxonomies. This classification process aimed to shed light on previously unspecified weaknesses within the games.

Seven New Categories of Weaknesses

Dr. Hallett highlighted the significance of this research in bridging the gap between academia and the gaming community. By studying the techniques employed by speedrunners, researchers can gain valuable insights into the nature of software vulnerabilities.

"We found that some of the glitches speed runners use don't have neat categorizations in existing software defect taxonomies and that there may be new kinds of bugs to look for in more general software," Hallett said in a press release statement.

The study identified seven new categories of weaknesses previously unrecognized within existing software defect taxonomies. This discovery suggests that speedrunners may exploit unconventional bugs not typically encountered in traditional software development.

The research team plans to extend their investigation to Pokémon video games, further expanding their understanding of software vulnerabilities within the gaming domain.

"The cool bit of this research is that academia is starting to treat and appreciate the work speedrunners do and study something that hasn't really been treated seriously before," Hallett said.

"By studying speedrunners' glitches we can better understand how they do it and whether the bugs they use are the same ones other software gets hacked with. It turns out the speedrunners have some tricks that we didn't know about before."

The paper's study can be found here.