Weirdest Super Mario World Glitch, someone know wtf happened?

I have been glitching around with games since I was pretty young and have done some quite messed up things with some badly programmed games (for example creating a New Game Zelda II file with all powerups, magic, heart containers, and I think items too, not certain about that part as it was ages since I last performed the glitch). Also did some nasty infinite XP glitches in a couple of JRPGs growing up. I have, needless to say, a couple of games that are pretty messy to say the least after some experiments...

However, one day a couple of years ago or so I encountered the weirdest glitch I have ever found, and in Super Mario World of all places, which I have never been able to replicate since and wonder if anyone here might have any idea wtf happened. The glitch basically was that the points I got was reduced in a weird fashion until it went to negative (yeah, earning negative points), which was impossible for the game to recreate causing a disturbing crash with music and sprites going wild on the screen (which was mostly black, except twinkling sprites). The first time I got a point was from taking a Yoshi coin, which gave me 1000 points (like it should) second I got points from jumping on a dino (first jump gave me 100 and the second in a row game me 10(!) points), then I took a super mushroom giving me 0 points, the next time I got points the game messed up extremely badly.

Do anyone here know wtf happened, and how to replicate this glitch so that I could record it? I have tried sometimes to experiment with the glitch to make it happen again, but to no avail as I have no idea what went wrong. :/

Is there any way to lose points in SMW? I don't think there is, but I'm not extremely familiar with it.

No, there isn't as far as I know, I suppose that is why the game crashed up and became a glitchy mess (nothing permanent thankfully)... O.o The question is why it started to do so to begin with.. D:

The second theory why it crashed and messed up is because it tried to divide 0 with 10......... But then we are back at it again, why did the game do so? O.O Any way, it is kinda weird, and I wonder how to replicate this glitch... :/

Not heard of this one... No mention of it on the Mario Wiki glitch list from what I can see, and nothing from Google about "negative points."

I would try the SMW GameFAQs board. Still somewhat active, and someone might answer over time with info.

Alternatively, you could try the Speed Demos Archive forums; a speedrunner who knows their stuff about SMW may possibly know this glitch.

Or... you could make a topic at NeoGAF. If you haven't got an account, I could ask for you.

( Edited 10.02.2016 02:04 by Azuardo )

My first guess was related to TASing. I think DangerDolan made a video explaining the glitch, but it has to do with the game's sprite limit and how only 8 sprites can appear onscreen at a time. They use a Yoshi to eat/spit things at the right time, swapping around Hex values on sprites, until they either crash the game, jump straight to credits, etc. Or hack in a Snake game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPcV9uIY5i4

It's always amazed me that people can program at that level.

Anyway, obviously you didn't trigger anything that bizarre, but since you were jumping on enemies and got a mushroom, it's possible something along these lines happened--and the glitching is going to cause a crash 99.999% of the time instead of doing something cool. Still, that's not going to generate random points, so I don't know if this really had anything to do with it.

( Edited 11.02.2016 23:17 by Anema86 )

Hmm... I remember Yoshi eating something funny (to say the least, a football player I think somehow). XD That must be it. If it is possible to program in Snake and Pong into the game making the scoring system act like crazy must be possible...

I'd watched one of the AGDQ runners do that sprite glitch before to beat it real quick, but this glitch sounded different so I didn't mention it. But you're right...it could be related to it somehow. Definitely a weird one, but I think the runners would appreciate you mentioning it to them, if you want to. Maybe it's a new one they don't know about.