“But obviously, that’s just silly stuff.”

This 22-minute video by Karl Jobst describes a pretty wild discovery of a glitch called Crystal Storage Glitch, allowing to skip a certain level for much faster completion times in Mega Man X2:

I won’t spoil the glitch because it’s a fascinating combination of a corner case, a race condition, and even a dose of dumb luck. Its finding unveils almost like a scientific discovery over many years – first a theoretical possibility, then a first sighting done in a modified emulator, then confirmation made by a machine via a tool-assisted speedrun, and eventually actual performance by someone by hand. And a lot of this achieved by relative newcomers to the community, too.

There is certain poetry here in having to go slow to go fast – you’ll see what I mean.