SethBling | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() SethBling in 2016 | ||||||||||
Personal information | ||||||||||
Born | [1] [2] | April 3, 1987|||||||||
Nationality | American | |||||||||
Education | California Institute of Technology [3] (B.S. Computer Science) | |||||||||
Occupation(s) | Software engineer and speedrunner [4] | |||||||||
Website | sethbling | |||||||||
YouTube information | ||||||||||
Also known as | Seth | |||||||||
Channel | ||||||||||
Years active | 2011–present | |||||||||
Genre | Let's Play | |||||||||
Subscribers | 2 million [5] | |||||||||
Total views | 641 million [5] | |||||||||
| ||||||||||
Employer | Self-employed [9] | |||||||||
Last updated: February 7, 2024 |
SethBling (born April 3, 1987) is an American video game commentator and Twitch video game live streamer known for YouTube videos focused around the 1990 side-scrolling platform video game Super Mario World and the 2011 sandbox video game Minecraft . He created original and derivative video games, devices and phenomena in Minecraft, without using Minecraft mods. He created an interpreter for the programming language BASIC and an emulator for the 1977 home video game console Atari 2600 in Minecraft. In addition to Minecraft builds that run without mods, he created plugins for the game.
SethBling wrote artificial intelligence programs that play Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Kart . He held a world record of 41.35 seconds for Super Mario World until June 2020, and a former world record for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild . He achieved the world record for Super Mario World by using a glitch that enabled him to execute arbitrary code and skip to the game's credits. In 2015, he was the first to do so on a home video game console. He injected code to play a Flappy Bird -like game within Super Mario World on a stock Super Nintendo Entertainment System. He was the first to perform this kind of arbitrary code execution by hand. In 2017, Cooper Harasyn and SethBling created a jailbreak by hand using exploits to save a hex editor onto a read-only memory cartridge, allowing for creation of mods.
SethBling was raised Jewish, but has since become an atheist. [10] [11] He decided that he was an atheist sometime around when he was in elementary school, but "played along" through high school. [12] SethBling's nickname is derived from his AIM screen name in high school. [13]
SethBling started out programming his calculator in middle school and wrote "lots of" games throughout high school, including an MUD. [9] [14] [15] SethBling wrote in 2012 that C# was his favorite programming language. [16]
SethBling worked as a software engineer at Microsoft for three years, where he worked on Xbox, and for four months [17] on Bing. [9] [18] [19] SethBling said that his work at Xbox had not been related to video games, [18] and that he had worked on the Xbox version of Internet Explorer, and on Xbox SmartGlass, a mobile phone app for remotely controlling an Xbox console. [20]
SethBling played Super Mario Bros. 3 when he was five or six. Super Mario World was "one of the hot games" of his childhood. [21] :67 SethBling had the Sega Genesis home video game console, and played a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog on it. [21] :68
SethBling started playing Minecraft around September 2010, after college, after his roommate told him about it. [9] [18] [22] [23] The sandbox aspect was "very appealing" to SethBling, as he played MUDs in middle school and high school. [24] SethBling thought the game was "really cool" and played it for about a month, after which he was "done with this game". [18] A few months later, he bought a new computer and decided to play Minecraft again. [18] SethBling got into the technical community and was quick to discover redstone, a programmable resource in Minecraft, [lower-alpha 1] and began uploading videos of his creations to YouTube weeks later. [18] [22] SethBling was inspired to use redstone in Minecraft because he wanted to build a minecart station. [23] [25] Inspired by other YouTube videos about Minecraft, SethBling created his first few videos to "get [his] money's worth" from the screen recording utility Fraps he bought. [18] SethBling initially uploaded videos on YouTube in order to share his creations on Reddit. [25] [26] He did not expect to gain subscribers as a small channel with only a few videos. [18] SethBling's YouTube channel greatly increased in popularity when Minecraft creator Markus Persson shared one of SethBling's videos on Twitter. [22]
My roommate was talking about it and I thought the idea of a completely moldable world was really cool. I actually played for several hours without looking at the wiki because I didn't want to spoil the game, and my roommate came home to see me huddling in a dirt castle. I hadn't figured out how to craft. Needless to say, I looked at the wiki shortly thereafter.
— SethBling, inSam Gutelle, "SethBling Teaches Minecraft For A Living" (2013), YouTube Millionaires, Tubefilter [9]
According to SethBling, he "almost never" played on consoles despite working at Xbox. [27] Working at Microsoft, SethBling would spend almost all his free evenings and weekends playing Minecraft. [22] SethBling quit his job at Microsoft around April 2012 because of his YouTube channel's success and has been independent since. [9] [28] [21] :65
Unless stated otherwise, all Minecraft builds mentioned in this section run on unmodded Minecraft, except modified block textures.
In 2011, SethBling recreated Duck Hunt using freshly introduced bow-charging mechanics in Minecraft. Engadget 's Jordan Mallory wrote that SethBling's replica "[manages] to capture the innocence and nostalgia of our 8-bit youths". [29]
In February 2012, SethBling recreated the 1964 toy Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots , which consists of a red and a blue robot, within Minecraft. Mike Fahey of Kotaku praised the mechanics and described the robots as "movable though somewhat janky". [30]
In March 2012, FVDisco and SethBling created Super Pirate Battle Royale, a Minecraft minigame for two teams where the goal is to sink the other team's ship using TNT. [31] Also in 2012, SethBling created SkyGrid, a Minecraft map consisting of blocks only on every fourth coordinate in each axis. [32]
In September 2012, SethBling and survival map maker Hypixel, the creator of the popular server Hypixel, recreated gameplay, maps, and the eight player classes from the first-person shooter (FPS) Team Fortress 2 , within Minecraft. Each player class has its own perks, and can be changed during the game. [33] [34] [35] Minecraft creator Markus Persson called the recreations "the most fun and impressive" in a 2013 interview with CNET. [36]
In February 2013, SethBling made a mechanical bull in Minecraft. [37] Also in February, SethBling recreated the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong and its introductory cutscene in Minecraft. In the original Donkey Kong, players have to avoid falling barrels, but in SethBling's version, they have to avoid minecarts. [38] Three months later, SethBling created an air hockey minigame for two players in Minecraft. It consists of a rink and an endlessly sliding object made of many minecarts. [39]
SethBling's minigames have been featured on Minecraft Realms. [40] One of them is Blocks vs. Zombies, a 2013 co-op tower defense minigame in which players shoot arrows to defeat incoming zombies in a trench. As players gain killstreaks, they may purchase upgraded weapons, arrow-shooting towers, barriers and traps for zombies. The game ends when a zombie pushes another zombie over the front edge of the field. Julian Benson of PCGamesN said that the minigame takes the "stronghold mentality" of Plants vs. Zombies , the traps of Orcs Must Die! , and the upgrade system of the FPS Killing Floor . [41]
SethBling recreated the incremental game Cookie Clicker , released earlier in 2013. [42] In 2014, SethBling recreated the sandbox video game Goat Simulator [43] and the puzzle game Bejeweled in Minecraft. [lower-alpha 2] [44] SethBling also recreated a spinning Stargate, a moving sand wave and the Microsoft Office assistant Clippy. [42] In early 2014, SethBling wrote a pickpocketing plugin for Bukkit called BlingPickpocket. [45] In May 2014, SethBling created a Minecraft portal which renders a portion of the other dimension behind it. [46]
In late 2014, SethBling and Minecraft YouTuber Cubehamster created a minigame called Missile Wars where players from two teams spawn missiles to break through the opposite team's wall. The idea came from having a fight between two Cubehamster's Mega Gargantuas, giant robots with cannons and "missile launchers". The robots could shoot flame arrows, launch TNT blocks and shoot down incoming missiles. After the Mega Gargantua fight, Cubehamster wanted them to "turn [it] into a game which focuses on firing missiles at each other and trying to blow them up". In Missile Wars, players receive items which they can use to spawn missiles, and blow up, stop and defuse incoming missiles. Players can jump on missiles and ride them across the playfield. Cubehamster said that "subtle techniques" involving missile mechanics had made the game popular. According to Cubehamster, Missile Wars was built in two weeks and thoroughly tested afterwards. The game was featured on Minecraft Realms. [47]
As a nod to Microsoft's 2014 acquisition of Mojang, SethBling recreated basic functionality of Minecraft in Microsoft Excel, which included navigation and crafting. [48] [49] [50]
In 2015, SethBling created a Minecraft version of Splatoon 's Turf Wars mode. [51] The Splatoon minigame is similar to the Wii U game, in that two teams of up to four players compete to paint as much of the ground and walls as possible in three minutes. [52] [53] SethBling got help from PyroPuncher because he had never played Splatoon on console. [51] [54] The Minecraft version features three of Splatoon's main weapons. [51] [55]
In 2015, SethBling worked with Verizon to create a web browser and to introduce text messaging and video calling functionality to Minecraft. [56]
In 2016, SethBling made an interpreter for the programming language BASIC in Minecraft. Programming many Minecraft command blocks [lower-alpha 1] to run the interpreter took him two weeks. The interpreter is slow and its speed declines with continued use; that is because Minecraft has a clock rate of 20 ticks per second. For example, printing a single character with the interpreter takes 20 seconds. [60] The build features a virtual keyboard; a whiteboard, which displays the code; and a programmable turtle, which can mine and place blocks. [61] [62]
In late 2016, SethBling built an emulator for the 1977 home video game console, Atari 2600, in Minecraft. [63] The emulator has 64 kB of functional random-access memory (RAM) which can be edited on the fly, and a functional 8-bit microprocessor based on the MOS Technology 6502; it also has functional and importable read-only memory (ROM). [57] [64] SethBling had the emulator run the original Atari 2600 read-only memory cartridges for the games Space Invaders , Pac-Man , and Donkey Kong . [58] The ROM cartridge contains four kilobytes of data; each bit of RAM and ROM is represented by a Minecraft block. [64] More than two thousand command blocks [lower-alpha 1] comprise the emulator's processor. [65] The emulator is slow: the Assembly-based processor can complete only 20 instructions per second; in contrast, Atari's processor can execute 510,000 instructions per second (0.51 MIPS). [64] While the Atari 2600 renders graphics at 60 frames per second, SethBling's emulator renders graphics at 60 frames every four hours on a virtual screen. [65] The emulator does not have a controller, so games cannot be played on it. [57]
SethBling created a resource pack for Minecraft Pocket Edition Alpha, which was released in October 2016. The "Add-On" was titled Castle Siege Battle and was criticized by Kotaku's Robert Gurthrie for causing glitches. [66]
In January 2019, SethBling sped up the Atari 2600 emulator to a rendering speed of one frame per second. It then took him around fifteen minutes to "technically" tie the world record of 5.57 seconds for the racing video game Dragster . [67]
Until June 2020, SethBling held the world record of 41.35 seconds for the Credits Warp Any% speedrun category of Super Mario World. [68] [69] [70] Players can use glitches to modify the game's RAM values, allowing them to write assembly code. When executed via arbitrary code execution, the code allows players to skip directly from the first level to the credits without having to defeat the game's boss. [4] [70] In 2015, SethBling was the first to execute the Credits Warp glitch on a home video game console, with a time of five minutes and 59 seconds, after Twitch streamer JeffW356 had successfully executed the glitch on an emulator. [71] SethBling executed the glitch for the first time on console minutes after a Super Mario World world record was set without using arbitrary code execution. [72] By successfully executing the glitch on a Super NES console, SethBling validated the faster, emulator run by JeffW356. [71] [73] SethBling used four controllers via two Super Multitap devices to finish the game in under one minute. [71] [74] He left specific buttons on the controllers pushed down to manipulate memory bytes and write certain code. In the game, SethBling executed certain actions and pixel-precise moves like duplicating Yoshi blocks and launching a red shell at a specific pixel. [4] [75]
SethBling holds a former world record for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild without use of in-game unlockable bonuses enabled by Amiibo figurines, saying in 2017 that using the unlockables is "seen by casual audience members as 'cheating', but they also currently don't affect the run that much." [76] [77] In 2017, SethBling told Kotaku, "When I touch a game, I want to understand it." [77]
In June 2015, SethBling wrote an artificial intelligence (AI) program called MarI/O that plays Super Mario World . [78] [79] The program is based on neuroevolution of augmenting topologies; [78] thus, it generates neural networks using genetic algorithms. [80] MarI/O is only given the level layout and the positions of obstacles, [80] and is incentivized to emulate the fitness function moving as far to the right as possible, [78] and as fast as possible. [80] [81] MarI/O tries 300 genomes per evolutionary generation, separated into species. [80] Each genome produces a neural network, and only the most fit genomes are bred into the next generation. [78] [80] SethBling ran the program, and after 34 generations, [78] [81] which lasted 24 hours, [82] [83] MarI/O finished a level by spin-jumping through the entire level and avoiding all power-ups and enemies. [79] [83] [84] MarI/O displays a graphical rendering of its underlying structure. [85] A week later SethBling trained MarI/O to play Super Mario Bros. [86] The program was not able to complete the first level of Super Mario Bros. because of complicated spatial movements required to jump over obstacles. [86] MarI/O continuously played Super Mario Bros. for over 17 days. [86]
In November 2017, SethBling built a recurrent neural network to play Super Mario Kart . He trained the program, MariFlow, with video footage in which he plays Super Mario Kart so that the program learns how to recover from dead-end situations. The video footage used for training MariFlow contains interactive sessions in which SethBling occasionally takes control of the character. MariFlow's goal is to emulate the video footage as closely as possible during gameplay. [87] [88]
In March 2016, SethBling injected Flappy Bird -like code written by p4plus2 into unmodified Super Mario World RAM on a stock Super Nintendo Entertainment System with a stock cartridge, in under an hour. [90] [91] SethBling first extended the level timer [91] and used a power-up incrementation glitch to allow external code to run. [92] [93] He added code to display Mario's x-coordinate which acted as memory locations in the code he was writing. [92] [93] SethBling then created a bootloader to be able to launch the Flappy Bird-like code that he would later write into unused memory with precise Mario movements and spin-jumping. [91] [92] [93] SethBling used two Super Multitap devices in order to use multiple controllers, [90] which had several buttons pressed down. [93] The arbitrary code execution setup that SethBling used was discovered by MrCheeze. [94] Super Mario World had been modified to emulate other games before by automatically feeding pre-recorded controller input into the console via a computer, but SethBling was the first to do it exclusively by hand. [89] [92] [94] [95] [96] [97]
SethBling and Cooper Harasyn placed a full hex editor and gameplay mods onto a stock Super Mario World cartridge in May 2017, only using standard controller inputs. Harasyn discovered an exploit that lets a player write data to 256-byte save files that are permanently stored on a Super Mario World cartridge. The data can be arranged so that the game is jailbroken every time it starts up. Harasyn and SethBling used the exploit to create a compact, on-screen hex editor, loadable from a save file. [lower-alpha 3] A player can edit the system RAM through the hex editor to alter the game state. In-game mods, such as support for the Super NES Mouse and giving Mario telekinesis powers, can be written to a save file using the hex editor. [95] [98] [99]
On December 5, 2015, SethBling acted as a coach in "Clash of Karts: Mario Kart 8", a one-hour eSports special on Disney XD. [100]
Princess Peach is a character in Nintendo's Mario franchise. She was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and introduced in the 1985 original Super Mario Bros. game as Princess Toadstool. She is the princess regnant and head of state of the Mushroom Kingdom, where she resides in her castle along with Toads. Since her debut, she has appeared in the majority of Mario video games as the main female character and the romantic interest of Mario. She has been voiced by Samantha Kelly since 2007.
Waluigi is a character in the Mario franchise. He plays the role of Luigi's arch-rival and accompanies Wario in spin-offs from the main Mario series, often for the sake of causing mischief. He was created by Camelot employee Fumihide Aoki and was voiced from 2000 to 2022 by Charles Martinet, who described Waluigi as someone with a lot of self-pity. Waluigi's design is characterised by his tall stature, thin and lanky frame, and his purple and black outfit with purple hat, which displays an inverted yellow "L".
Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in Japan and North America in 1996 and PAL regions in 1997. It is the first Super Mario game to feature 3D gameplay, combining traditional Super Mario gameplay, visual style, and characters in a large open world. In the game, Bowser, the primary antagonist of the Super Mario franchise, invades Princess Peach's castle and hides the castle's sources of protection, the Power Stars, in many different worlds inside magical paintings. As Mario, the player collects Power Stars to unlock enough of Princess Peach's castle to get to Bowser and rescue Princess Peach.
Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and exploit glitches that allow sections to be skipped or completed more quickly than intended. Tool-assisted speedrunning (TAS) is a subcategory of speedrunning that uses emulation software or additional tools to create a precisely controlled sequence of inputs.
A tool-assisted speedrun or tool-assisted superplay is generally defined as a speedrun or playthrough composed of precise inputs recorded with tools such as video game emulators. Tool-assisted speedruns are generally created with the goal of creating theoretically perfect playthroughs. This includes but is not limited to the fastest possible route to complete a game and/or showcasing new ways to optimize existing world records.
Kotaku is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier.
Minecraft is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, it was developed over the span of two years, with many public test builds being released from May 2009 until its full release on 18 November 2011. After the game's full release, Persson gave Jens "Jeb" Bergensten control over the game's development. In the years since its release, it has been ported to several platforms, including smartphones and various video game consoles, primarily by 4J Studios. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Minecraft has become the best-selling video game of all-time, with over 300 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active players as of 2023.
Flappy Bird is a 2013 casual mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen, under his game development company .Gears. The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them. The player's score is determined by the number of pipes they pass. Nguyen created the game over a period of several days, using the bird from a cancelled game made in 2012.
Amiibo is a toys-to-life platform by Nintendo, which was launched in November 2014. It consists of a wireless communications and storage protocol for connecting figurines to the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch video game consoles. These figurines are similar in form and functionality to that of the Skylanders, Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions series of toys-to-life platforms. The Amiibo platform was preannounced to potentially accommodate any form of toy, specifically including general plans for future card games. Amiibo use near field communication (NFC) to interact with supported video game software, potentially allowing data to be transferred in and out of games and across multiple platforms.
Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development Division, abbreviated Nintendo EPD, is the largest division within the Japanese video game company Nintendo. The division focuses on developing and producing video games, mobile apps, and other related entertainment software for the company. Nintendo EPD was established in September 2015 after merging their Entertainment Analysis & Development and Software Planning & Development divisions.
Splatoon 2 is a 2017 third-person shooter game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It was released on July 21, 2017, as a direct sequel to Splatoon. As with the previous installment, Splatoon 2 consists of online multiplayer alongside a single-player campaign, all featuring combat based around ink. An expansion pack for the single-player mode titled Octo Expansion was subsequently released as downloadable content (DLC) on June 13, 2018.
Splatoon is a third-person shooter video game franchise created by Hisashi Nogami and Shintaro Sato, and developed and owned by Nintendo. Set in the far future on a post-apocalyptic Earth inhabited by anthropomorphic marine animals, the series centers around terrestrial cephalopods known as Inklings and Octolings – based on squids and octopuses respectively – which can transform between humanoid and cephalopod forms at will. They frequently engage in turf war battles with each other and use a variety of weapons that produce and shoot colored ink while in humanoid form, or swim through and hide in solid surfaces covered in their own colored ink while in their cephalopodic forms.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a 2018 crossover fighting game developed by Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the fifth installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, succeeding Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (2014). The game follows the series' traditional style of gameplay, in which players control one of the various characters and use attacks to weaken their opponents and knock them out of an arena. It features a wide variety of game modes, including a single-player campaign and multiplayer versus modes. Ultimate features 89 playable fighters, including all characters from previous Super Smash Bros. games as well as newcomers. The roster ranges from Nintendo characters to those from third-party franchises.
Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) is an online subscription service for the Nintendo Switch video game console. The service is Nintendo's third-generation online service after Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and Nintendo Network. Following an interim period which began with the launch of the Nintendo Switch where Nintendo offered online multiplayer free of charge and the launch of the Nintendo Switch Online Smartphone App on July 21, 2017, the subscription service officially launched on September 18, 2018.
Pearl and Marina are a duo of characters from the Splatoon video game series. They were first introduced in Splatoon 2 (2017) as members of a pop music act known as Off the Hook, who perform a variety of songs which is utilized as in-game music. The characters are also used by the developers to convey content updates and announcements to players of Splatoon 2.
2b2t (2builders2tools) is a Minecraft server founded in December 2010. 2b2t has essentially no rules and players are not permanently banned, known within Minecraft as an "anarchy server". As a result, players commonly engage in the destruction of other players' and groups creations, colloquially called "griefing", as well as hacking using modified software to gain an advantage. 2b2t is the oldest anarchy server in Minecraft, as well as one of the few running 2010 Minecraft servers of any variety. The server is permanently set to hard difficulty and player versus player combat is enabled. It has seen over 780,000 players explore its procedurally generated map, increasing its file size to over 20 terabytes. 2b2t has been described in news media as the worst Minecraft server due to its toxic playerbase and culture.
Steve is a player character from the 2011 sandbox video game Minecraft. Created by Swedish video game developer Markus "Notch" Persson and introduced in the 2009 Java-based version, Steve is the first of nine default player character skins available for players of contemporary versions of Minecraft. Steve lacks an official backstory as he is intended to be a customizable player avatar as opposed to being a predefined character. His feminine counterpart, Alex, was introduced in August 2014 for Java PC versions of Minecraft, with the other seven debuting in the Java edition of the game in October 2022. Depending on the version of Minecraft, players have a choice of defaulting to either Steve or any other variant skins when creating a new account. However, the skin is easy to change from the game itself or website.
Emulators of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's current eighth-generation video game console, have been in development since 2017, less than a year after the console's release. Multiple emulators have been in development, the most well-known being the now-defunct Yuzu, and Ryujinx. Switch emulators have been widely noted by video games journalists for the swift and significant progress of their abilities to accurately emulate the console, as they are already able to run existing and new titles for the console in a playable state, sometimes within days of their release, as well as able to run on a variety of devices, including PCs running Microsoft Windows and Linux, and the Steam Deck.
It was my AIM screen name in high school. My actual last name was taken, so I figured "Bling" would do.
I started out programming my calculator in middle school, wrote lots of games throughout high school, and got a bachelors degree in computer science in college.
Before that I worked as a software engineer at Microsoft, working on products like Xbox and Bing.
Perhaps uniquely among such bots, MarI/O displays a graphical representation of its logical structure, making the underlying scripts of its inhuman performance immediately visible.
Super Mario World has been turned into other games using tricks like this before, but SethBling reckons this is the first time it's ever been done exclusively by human hands.
As Bling explains in the video, this has been done before by feeding pre-recorded controller inputs into the game through a computer, but he has now done it without that assistance, becoming the first human to ever do it on an unmodded SNES console.
While such projects have been done before with computers and pre-recorded inputs, this is the first reported time such a feat has been accomplished under human handpower.