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Heh shitty developers using underhanded tactics to make their games harder. I would love to see teardown of the PS3 version of Dark Souls for such tools - also crappy hitboxes and such
I notice when I play Mario Kart games I only get good power-ups when I'm in the last place, but when I'm in 1st place, I never get the star or lightning power-up
I applaude you for making this video when Nintendo is currently sueing anyone who displays even single screenshots of their games being played on anything other than their original console
Glad my Fly Cam Mod was put to good use! Great video! A few things to note: - There is a cheat code, which forces the CPU drivers to be "on camera" at all times, thus removing the majority of rubberbanding factors. It's incredibly boring tho, as human players will outrun them even with bad to decent driving skills. I can see why the developers opted to code them how they are. - 8:10 I would refer to the "paths" here as lanes, not to confuse them with the multiple paths on Yoshi Valley. They also are clearly coded differently, as the lanes are just the offsets to the sides of a path, defined by a varying width depending on the selected racing track. Homing shells also always travel on the center of said path. - Some of the CPU techniques can be exploited as well. For example: If a CPU leaves the view frustum while on an off-road geometry plane, they will keep the speed reduction until they come into view again. This is because the game doesn't run any collision detection on off-screen drivers. Thanks for reading!
In gta vice city, during a racing mission called 'Alloy wheels of steel' if you just steal one of the bikes from the opponents instead of getting your own. You'll find that it is much more speedy and has way better handling. Thus, it makes the mission way easier
@@Sherolox yes its always fun to do that. In Baldur's gate 3 there is a hidden deva's mace weapon which the devs keep trying to patch out but players keep finding new ways to get it. Last i remember, they hid the item from the enemies corpse. But if you just carry the body in your inventory and type name of the weapon in the search bar, it shows up 😄
I remember playing these games in 480p.. I guess I played them with component cables (Blue, Green, 2 reds, Gray).. Those red, yellow, and white audio/video cables had the worst picture and sound quality to me.. Even as a poor kid growing up in Alabama, I knew components cables were better..
@@kenrickeason the sound quality is identical between composite and component provided there isnt interference. but the yellow cable does have worse video quality than component since the red (red) green (luminance) blue (blue) cables dont carry audio so the gray and other red you had were for sending an audio cable, the same as white and red. interference can cause a reduction in sound quality with composite video but if cables are properly shielded and your tv set is made correctly this doesnt apply.
composite video combine the color, luminance and sync onto just two wires (one changing voltage, other is ground) and has just 4 mhz of bandwidth and while in the digital era of compression you can stream 4k on youtube with 32 mbps, analog has way more limitations and not only is the resolution 480i or 576i, the color resolution is reduced and theres less bandwidth for the luminance so you get blur and artifacts that component just doesnt have
@@AccelSternritter Doesn't matter that much, the cpu's get limited when you are behind so you can catch up again... the whole thing is an illusion of racing.
@@Planetdune That depends on the distance to the final line...so if they BS you at the last minute, it's not going to matter that they give you a handicap when they're beating your behind.
The banana slip grace period is for the player to brake and rescue himself so he doesn't spin out. Try it out: brake while you're sliding and you'll get a ♪ indicating a successful recuperation.
Another weird thing my mates and I realised decades ago was that sometimes even though the 2nd or 3rd placed AI characters would be able to match your 1st place pace regardless of how fast you were going, sometimes they would move past you into 1st place but continue at a "catchup" pace even though they'd already clearly gone past you. So despite you being in 2nd place with mushrooms, stars, blue shells, etc. the AI would still win by half a lap and there was nothing that could be done to catch them.
@@MegaManNeo IIRC the heavy characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong are the fastest. As @sirtimabob said, the lighter characters accelerate faster but can’t ultimately go as fast. Those were likely intentional tradeoffs in designing character balance. EDIT: I may have thinking more of Super Mario Kart (SNES) where I recall top-end speed being a notable contrast between the heavy and light characters. From looking up some wikis it appears they were brought more into parity for 64 where the heavy karts are still among the fastest but Toad and Yoshi edge them out a bit.
I really like Diddy Kong Racing, and I later found out it does not use rubber-banding. It is possible to lap racers if you are good and vice-versa. On the hard levels, you need to set your pace early else you’ll probably never catch up to the CPU, especially maxing out bananas early.
It makes me think about whether there ever could have been a class action suit brought against Midway and Capcom among others back during the arcade days. The games weren't really based on skill but rather figuring out exploits in order to beat the CPU cheating, that you had to pay enormous amounts of money to figure out. Some of those arcade games really were just machines that you would deposit money into for nothing in exchange!--which is illegal!
I was so pissed when on Wii computer catched up so quickly and sometimes it won despite me been first for the most part of the race. I thought it has to be some cheats, but always blamed the "randomness" of the boosters. Now I know that I don't suck just the CPU is bloody cheater 😅.
Ooh, can we have more videos like this if possible please? It's always interesting to know what is happening behind the scenes. Just to throw some suggestions in (But it does happen behind the scenes so we don't always know it's happening): Something like the Director on Left for Dead, or when you alert an alarm on N64 Goldeneye and you get suddenly swarmed. Something like that.
When I was a kid, I didn't know the CPU explicitly cheated, but I did catch on fairly quickly that for every cup there were two other characters who'd consistently score well in all of the four races. In retrospect, it's a simple observation, but I did feel pretty smart as a 7yo. Also, this was the only game in my 35 years on this planet that ever made me spike a controller against the wall; regret set in right away and luckily I was a weakling so it didn't break. I just thought "oh no, what'll I tell my parents when I tell them I broke my controller because the game was frustrating? Will they take the entire console away? Oh god please I hope it still works." Aah, to be that young again, when that was the worst I thought the world could get xD
I remember trying my hardest to snap my NES controller as a kid 😂 can't remember what game got me so angry though. Good thing those controllers were tough and could take a hard slam and laugh it off.
I remember one time my friend used Gameshark with Need For Speed Underground for his car to run faster and turn tighter, thus guaranteeing easy 1st place wins. The rubber banding on that game was so aggressive that we purposely stopped near the end of the of the finish line to see the CPU cars just flying like bullets and crashing with everything just to catch up. It was downright creepy seeing cars behave like this.😂
But, on the other hand, this does definitely make up for how stupid the AI in this game is. I can't count the number of times I've seen a CPU player toss a banana peel in front of themselves just to run straight into it seemingly without even trying to avoid it.
I still remember my dad coming home very late from work .. the day this game came out. I woke up after my parents went to bed and played it all night, even though we weren't allowed to play video games on school days.
rubber banding is what spoilt most of the racing games for me. Instead of winning through skill, I'd almost always just race slowly so the computer rubber bands them in front of me until maybe the last lap and then go for it. Turning multi lap races into a single lap race, almost always the computer ai would let me catch up to the front and then it was only a matter of a single lap of jossling for position, thus less change of getting knocked back along with frustration. I don't know if this works with Mario Kart, it's not a game I've played but it seems just as sus.
Same, I always get 1st in every single player racing game by intentionally staying in second or third until the final stretch of the race regardless of difficulty setting
In Mario Kart 8 i let the CPUs go a bit ahead, because they would start to destroy themself and than it was easier to take the first place after one or two rounds.
Rubber banding was used back in the days because uses less data then giving AI code to each racer. Therefore the game must “mimic” the game being competitive and smart while saving tons of megabytes by giving each CPU a rubber band effect. You could also notice that some karts copy the players behaviour in order to save vRAM+Compute.
So many racing games cheat and its frustrating to, i think it was need for speed underground 2 i had the near perfect race and clipped a last corner...and then so many over took me....cos the game would not allow me to get to far ahead, i think that what always frustrated me in driving games is that the AI and the way games are they do these cheating things rather than make the games in a way that feel more like a proper challenge in a fair way
As a racing game dev it’s just not that easy. I agree some games are far too egregious but it’s really hard to make competitive AI without giving them some conditional advantages
Oh, nfs underground was so bad at rubberbanding… AI flying by at at least 300 km/h, or that damn white van. It SOMEHOW always ended up in your way. When it crossed the screen from the right, and tried to take from the right, it slowed down. From the left, it accelerated. Or that one drag race when you must jump on a ramp, otherwise the train hits you. Or a Peugeot 206 which outperformed anything.
@@TheDeveloperGuy yup..burnout 3 is one of my favorite games of that era and had some of the worst rubber banding ever lol. Still love those EA games from that period!
@@SwerveStudios Rubber banding really is vital to racing games IMHO. I remember with the early Forza games I’d either be way out in front after the first corner or the AI cars would disappear off into the distance and I was never able to catch them. Something that keeps the race close ensures you aren’t bored with zero challenge or frustrated at being unable to catch up.
Probably every Mario Kart cheats. MK8 and MK8D have an extremely annoying Rubber Banding that prevents you from having fun at 150cc, but it doesn't support 200cc probably because the AI wasn't trained for it.😑
Idk most races against AI in 8 deluxe I just sit in 1st place and am usually never contested unless I get really unlucky with items at the end but I’m still usually far enough ahead for it to not be a problem. Not trying to brag (bragging about being good against the AI isn’t impressive lol) just curious.
I have the most experience with the original Super Mario Kart on SNES and the rival thing was there back then as well. It was pre-determined per character you raced as. I forgot the combinations, but let's say if you pick Mario, then Bowser would always be your rival.
Yeah if you play as Koopa Trooper then Luigi is always your rival. For years I thought it was the same for all characters and Nintendo did it like that because they didn’t want people to hate Mario for always trying to beat you. 😂
Before I even watch this, I would LOVE for someone to do this sort of thing with the OG SNES game. Those CPUs were DIABOLICAL. I can't tell you how many times I've shot a red shell, the CPU *jumps* over it, and it loops back around and hits ME instead. COUNTLESS TIMES.
Metropolis Street Racer featured one of the most frustrating rubber band AI that i recall. In the final races, I intentionally slowed down until the last lap to finish in first-place.
Finally, a comment I was looking for. I've played this game for almost 2 decades and let me tell you... with my tradition to 100% this game every year once, my rubberbanding A.I is just flat out broken. For some reason they literally improved than what they used to be. Earl, notorious for rubberbanding, I could beat him with perfect driving back then. Now? Im forced to not only get him into crash TWICE into something, but ALSO perfect almost frame drive with speedbreaker just to win. The first half of the blacklist, at least around Izzy and another blacklist racer later down the road, has legit broken races for me, where no matter how well im going to play, I just cant win against the rubberband. There are few notorious Speedtrap races that with the cars and stats the game provides, is legit NOT enough for you to beat some of those races, which I could back then. Its almost as if me beating the game so many times, increased the rubberband's difficulty. I say that, because I had a case with Earl where I think the rubberband just broke. Flat out! He crashed into things and spun out 3 times in the last sprint race, which than he couldnt recover. It was a weird experience. Either way, rubberband is just bad. Doesnt make you feel like you accomplish your wins, but rather the game told you, "you can win now." Its an illusion...
It also happened in Super Mario Kart, except I believe the rivals were set on a per character basis. I don't remember all the combos but for instance if you picked Mario then your rival would always be Luigi, if you picked Yoshi your rival would always be Koopa Troopa, etc. It also had little to no rubber banding; on longer tracks I could regularly lap the second place racer and often lap the eighth place racer twice before finishing.
@@lordhughmungus actually I think Mario’s rival was DK Jr. in SMK, always annoyed me how he has a much higher top speed yet that top speed doesn’t apply when you actually play as him :P
Just press brake when you start jiggling because of a banana peel to prevent spinning out. A note icon will appear if successful and you will barely lose any speed.
This is why I never liked Mario Kart 64. Everyone has it on their list of "top N64 games", but it's just not fun to me except for Battle Mode. I'm all for competitive racing, but if you're playing flawlessly and have perfect accuracy with your items, but the CPUs are still always right there with you regardless, how is that fun at all? Also, it wasn't mentioned in the video, but there's a few times in 150cc where if a CPU gets ahead of you and takes the lead, sometimes it is actually impossible for you to catch up to them
I LOVE these types of videos!!! When you show us some of the magic behind the curtain (ESPECIALLY when it's about games 'cheating' like this AND with games I know well) Seeing 'how the sausage is made' has always been a big interest of mine, in many areas, not just video games. So when you put these videos out and I see their thumbnail, I get all kinds of giddy and excited LOL THANKL MVG!
in the ps2 version of 18 wheeler, if you play versus and a player falls behind it gets a ridiculus speed boost, it gets maximum aceleration and top speed of 180 kms/h
When it comes to the oncoming traffic of trucks, my guess is they had to give the AI an exemption because they kept running into the trucks. I don’t think it’s a problem because it’s still easy to beat the AI even when they “cheat”.
I used to play this game all the time as a kid and definitely notices the CPU cheating. At 7:38. when slipping on the bananas you can tap B when losing traction and you won't spin out.
The bit at 9:10 confirms the weirdest thing I ever saw happen in this game. Decades back on Royal Raceway (the one with the big jump) I was playing as usual on the last lap when out of no where Donkey Kong, who was right behind me just before the jump, won the race. I'm guessing he flew off at a weird angle, landed in the water, then got picked up by Lakitu and put at the finish line. Great video!
GT3 endurance race when you play a race for an hour and have a big lead on the last lap but see the computer fly up the track and win. That's where the joy for me with GT disappeared
Never seen that happen. If you're not laps ahead of the CPU in an endurance race by the end, it's a literal skill issue. Also, I'm pretty sure each of the CPUs have a more or less fixed tempo and pit stop routine throughout the race.
150cc they deffo cheat and if your leading come 2nd lap blue shell 5 seconds after you hit the checker. It's a joke. You can predict it exactly now. Your better being in 2nd place until over half of 2nd lap
I noticed the rival thing in Mario Kart Double Dash for the GameCube. I used to play the game so much, that sometimes I played to not only get first in every race, but also trying to make the assigned rival not get second place.
I love discussions about rubber-banding in racing games because in my favorite one, Blur, you can *toggle* rubber-banding and even its strength, at least during splitscreen local play. It's been a while, so you may be able to do so in other places too.
That knowledge would have saved me from many holes in the wall from getting a blue shell Mirrored Toads Turnpike. Nintendo never intended me to win. Resistance was futile
You say that you're not against 'rubber banding' in racing games but tell me that after playing Burnout, where you can lead an entire race without crashing, crash once on the last lap (which isn't your fault because it was at a cross roads) and have the 3 CPU opponents overtake you at the end.
@@XanthinZardaI hate rubber banding. If I'm no good it's because I'm not concentrating properly or I don't know the track. I don't expect to catch up and win. Alternatively, if I'm awesome I deserve to have a substantial lead.
I understand that it can be cheap, but it feels like Nintendo went out of their way to make it challenging, but still doable. It's interesting to see the design philosophy and the evolution as the series progresses. Mario Kart solved the supposed issue that the most boring thing in a racing game is being constantly in first place, and has dynamic item drops to make it possible for turnabouts and upsets. I understand that fundamentally racing games need rubberbanding, but it feels out of place in "realistic" racing simulators, while feeling at home in a bouncy, semi-arcadey, cartoony and etc. Mario Kart.
RC Pro Am on NES had the 'Rubber Banding AI' with the yellow/orange car that would suddenly go ridiculously fast if you got too ahead and would lap you multiple times, resulting in a guaranteed sub 1st place spot. Man I hated that.
7:44 The little slide is for your advantage here. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's like a second chance. If you hit the breaks momentarily, you will recover from the slide and won't spin. It's a gameplay mechanic.
Yes, this is such a thing in Crash Team Racing. On higher difficulties you kind of need to constantly drift boost to stay ahead and hit short cuts whereever possible.
NPCs also cheat like crazy in GTA5/online. When you are driving to avoid the enemies in missions. The surrounding NPCs will purposely match your input and speed to crash on you. I seen 8 vehicles turned right at the same time after I turned right. These NPCs will stop acting weird the moment you let off the accelerator/break.
I find the rubber banding can have a runaway effect. If the CPU gets too far ahead, they'll keep that absurd speed and be impossible to catch up to. Happens to me almost every time I play Bowser's Castle.
I KNEW the Mario Kart games had a rival system! Even in MK8D, you can pick out one or two CPU players that will always come in first or second if you let them
The worst most infuriating rubber banding I ever come across was in the Crash Team Racing remaster. I've completed the game, but it was the most frustrating experience at the time. Just blatant cheating.
Well, that game was so advanced that already introduced quantum computing ideas: rules are only well defined when observed, otherwise they are just a probability.
When I think of rubber banding, one game in particular always comes to mind, and that's Banjo-Tooie. The rematch with Canary Mary in Cloud Cuckooland is brutally difficult.
I remember my friends and I arguing if this existed or not, and with NBA Jam. We were just kids, but it's cool decades later to finally learn the nuts and bolts about it.
I knew that the NPCs had catch up and that your item quality was effected by what place you were in. I've even seen the NPC's clip through cars. The rest of this is all new to me.
I remember getting quite frustrated at Mario Kart Double Dash since the same rubberbanding thing was used and the AI was extremely aggressive in higher CC's on that game. Ultimately had to resort to using Diddy Kong and Paratrooper as my characters so I could have access to triple red shells to slow the opponents down and giant bananas to create bottleneck traps at certain chokepoints in the various courses.
This is the reason of why I never got attached to any Mario Kart games, it always felt like it's luck based rather than player skill. Except when you play with friends. I always preferred Diddy Kong Racing and it will always be my favorite racing game.
Another annoying thing that happens in MK64 is when you play in 150cc, if you lose sight of the main rival you'll never see it. I guess the boost it gets doesn't deactivate causing it to get a bigger lead. No matter what items you get, at least if you're playing regularly, you'll never be able to catch up to it
I Love these kinds of deep dive videos, going into deeper depth of how certain game mechanics work, n why they were implemented into the game, fascinating stuff!!
I remember from this game how sometimes in 150cc and Extra (these days known as mirror mode) if CPU got away from player, it easily could keep driving faster than you can, impossible to catch it, thus resulting you easily could loose a win, if by bad luck, lets say hit a car in Toad's Turnpike. I always had feeling that CPU cheats but it going to THIS level, revealed a lot more
I'm a big fan of Forza Horizon, especially FH4, and that series also has cheating AI opponents. I've often dominated races, crossing the finish line with 30 seconds or more ahead of the second driver. But when the results screen comes up, almost all the AI drivers have much faster lap times.
It is very rare for the N64 to have 7 different 'enemies' on the screen at the same time. It has to be not just "lazy" AI programming. Imagine the processing demands on Toad's Turnpike if collision with the traffic was being computed for every racer and every car on the road at all times. It would be a slide show trying to play that on native hardware.
Just Yesterday I went on a rant about rubberbanding in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe after I was once again cheated on by the ai in the last corner of the race. Thanks for this video!
I absolutely used to hate some Forza Motorsport (the first one on the Xbox) races because of this. There were some races were you'd be forced to use the same car as all other opponents (the Shelby Cobra one is etched into memory) and even if you'd draft behind a CPU opponent, on hard difficulty they would just go farther and farther from you, as if they had better acceleration even though they were facing all the wind and driving the same exact car. I'd get so pissed, it took me ages to get past the Road America race because the AI would constantly gain on me and slam into me whenever it could. By far the hardest racing game I finished because of all this. I also recall NFS Underground 1 also having atrocious rubberbanding on Hard.
We used to abuse the rubber banding in the old Need For Speed games in vs mode to get crazy high best lap times. Set the total laps to 2. Have one player get ahead and complete those laps but don’t cross the finish line. Then get an impossibly high lap time as the other player lol.
If I wrote a game like this I would simple delay the computer player for the average time a real player would take in similar crash. No playing out of events, no one can see.
I wonder if the same applies to obstacles as well. I could swear that the Bob-omb cars in Mario Kart Double Dash!! deliberately swerve into you if you get too close to them...
Sega GT 2002- that game’s legendary rubberbanding is singlehandedly responsible for me not playing racing games seriously to this day. When you just spent $500k on powertrain upgrades and the AI doesn’t even let you feel faster cause the other racers are neck and neck no matter what, I just stopped caring.
I think this is all good careful design. This stuff all happen off screen and you don't even notice. The only thing you notice are the rivals because the competition for points always becomes close by the end. In more recent entries, like even MK8, getting gold becomes trivial as an opponent who got first in one race will probably come last in the next, letting you get gold even if you arriving in second or third in most races. MK64 ensures that your rival will come close to the lead in every race and you do need to stay ahead of it.
It's kinda dumb tho. I already noticed when playing Super Mario Kart(which is barely a racing game because the CPUs play by such wildly diffrent rules than the player) that 5th place and beyond may as well not even be there because the probability of any one of them even getting a single point is basically 0).
One thing a friend and me always hated about Mario Kart DS was how it always felt like one AI was always a pain in the ass and the rest were a bunch of bumbling idiots. We figured it was rubberbanding but it only ever using 1 AI kinda ruined the fun
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Heh shitty developers using underhanded tactics to make their games harder. I would love to see teardown of the PS3 version of Dark Souls for such tools - also crappy hitboxes and such
I notice when I play Mario Kart games I only get good power-ups when I'm in the last place, but when I'm in 1st place, I never get the star or lightning power-up
No
I applaude you for making this video when Nintendo is currently sueing anyone who displays even single screenshots of their games being played on anything other than their original console
I know everyone is obsessed with membership models still. But this really makes more sense to offer a one time fee, and have repeat customers.
Glad my Fly Cam Mod was put to good use! Great video!
A few things to note:
- There is a cheat code, which forces the CPU drivers to be "on camera" at all times, thus removing the majority of rubberbanding factors. It's incredibly boring tho, as human players will outrun them even with bad to decent driving skills. I can see why the developers opted to code them how they are.
- 8:10 I would refer to the "paths" here as lanes, not to confuse them with the multiple paths on Yoshi Valley. They also are clearly coded differently, as the lanes are just the offsets to the sides of a path, defined by a varying width depending on the selected racing track. Homing shells also always travel on the center of said path.
- Some of the CPU techniques can be exploited as well. For example: If a CPU leaves the view frustum while on an off-road geometry plane, they will keep the speed reduction until they come into view again. This is because the game doesn't run any collision detection on off-screen drivers.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for your fly cam mod! You contributed to this video indirectly, so it's cool you commented!
Thanks for commenting. Can you make more tutorials about how you make mods like this?
In gta vice city, during a racing mission called 'Alloy wheels of steel' if you just steal one of the bikes from the opponents instead of getting your own. You'll find that it is much more speedy and has way better handling. Thus, it makes the mission way easier
That's amazing. I love the idea of being able to steal enemy-only weapons and vehicles and keeping them forever.
@@Sherolox yes its always fun to do that. In Baldur's gate 3 there is a hidden deva's mace weapon which the devs keep trying to patch out but players keep finding new ways to get it. Last i remember, they hid the item from the enemies corpse. But if you just carry the body in your inventory and type name of the weapon in the search bar, it shows up 😄
@@gavinjones that's a hilarious workaround hahaha; even more incentive for me to go try the game out i reckon 😄
the vehicle handling is in the handling.dat ,so the bike must have higher stats
I just looked up the wiki and it says that the stats reset if you stash the bike in a garage. So I guess i must have misremembered :/
Caught in 240p 😂
Actually the proper resolution for these old consoles.
📼 Bro Caught on VHS Capture
I remember playing these games in 480p.. I guess I played them with component cables (Blue, Green, 2 reds, Gray).. Those red, yellow, and white audio/video cables had the worst picture and sound quality to me.. Even as a poor kid growing up in Alabama, I knew components cables were better..
@@kenrickeason the sound quality is identical between composite and component provided there isnt interference. but the yellow cable does have worse video quality than component since the red (red) green (luminance) blue (blue) cables dont carry audio so the gray and other red you had were for sending an audio cable, the same as white and red. interference can cause a reduction in sound quality with composite video but if cables are properly shielded and your tv set is made correctly this doesnt apply.
composite video combine the color, luminance and sync onto just two wires (one changing voltage, other is ground) and has just 4 mhz of bandwidth and while in the digital era of compression you can stream 4k on youtube with 32 mbps, analog has way more limitations and not only is the resolution 480i or 576i, the color resolution is reduced and theres less bandwidth for the luminance so you get blur and artifacts that component just doesnt have
9:15 The CPU get's picked up by Lakitu immediately, but when the player drives of, you have to watch your character tumble down the whole cliff!
Yeah you get enough time to make a coffee while that thing pulls you back up, but not for the CPU though
@@AccelSternritter Doesn't matter that much, the cpu's get limited when you are behind so you can catch up again... the whole thing is an illusion of racing.
@@Planetdune That depends on the distance to the final line...so if they BS you at the last minute, it's not going to matter that they give you a handicap when they're beating your behind.
Nintendo has a patent on the game cheating you in racing games. Their ninjas are ready if anyone tries these techniques
The banana slip grace period is for the player to brake and rescue himself so he doesn't spin out. Try it out: brake while you're sliding and you'll get a ♪ indicating a successful recuperation.
All you need to recover is a tap on the brake, but if you steer at all during the grace period, you spin out
All you need is a very quick tap on the break without turning and you recover.
Another weird thing my mates and I realised decades ago was that sometimes even though the 2nd or 3rd placed AI characters would be able to match your 1st place pace regardless of how fast you were going, sometimes they would move past you into 1st place but continue at a "catchup" pace even though they'd already clearly gone past you. So despite you being in 2nd place with mushrooms, stars, blue shells, etc. the AI would still win by half a lap and there was nothing that could be done to catch them.
Noticed this happens if you fall out of bounds, it's almost like it doesn't realise you've dropped behind
same shit in nfs games
That explains why Toad always used to piss me off so much, that little piece of sh*t!! 😂
He's also the driver with the highest speed.
I can totally relate there.
Well, the top acceleration, that is...@@MegaManNeo
@@MegaManNeo IIRC the heavy characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong are the fastest. As @sirtimabob said, the lighter characters accelerate faster but can’t ultimately go as fast. Those were likely intentional tradeoffs in designing character balance.
EDIT: I may have thinking more of Super Mario Kart (SNES) where I recall top-end speed being a notable contrast between the heavy and light characters. From looking up some wikis it appears they were brought more into parity for 64 where the heavy karts are still among the fastest but Toad and Yoshi edge them out a bit.
I tried for YEARS to get my friend to see rubber-banding in racing games! I'm SO sending him this clip. Thanks MVG!
Then all of a sudden the response will be "who cares?" cuz that's how the prideful operate.
I really like Diddy Kong Racing, and I later found out it does not use rubber-banding. It is possible to lap racers if you are good and vice-versa. On the hard levels, you need to set your pace early else you’ll probably never catch up to the CPU, especially maxing out bananas early.
I feel like filing a lawsuit against the Nintendo corporation for robbing my childhood.
I won those races after all.
It makes me think about whether there ever could have been a class action suit brought against Midway and Capcom among others back during the arcade days. The games weren't really based on skill but rather figuring out exploits in order to beat the CPU cheating, that you had to pay enormous amounts of money to figure out.
Some of those arcade games really were just machines that you would deposit money into for nothing in exchange!--which is illegal!
If that's gonna show them how we feel about them going nuclear against the emulation communities...🤟👍
It's feels like we are finally getting to watch CCTV footage of a conspiracy.
I was so pissed when on Wii computer catched up so quickly and sometimes it won despite me been first for the most part of the race. I thought it has to be some cheats, but always blamed the "randomness" of the boosters. Now I know that I don't suck just the CPU is bloody cheater 😅.
I hate rubber band cpu in racers
Rubberbanding was the worst in MK64
The cheating by the CPU on Mario Kart Wii was just absolutely atrocious. Just decided never to finish it.
I knew I was getting screwed 😂
yea it's very similiar to IRL rubber banding - taxes
@@SoyAntonioGamingyeah, but that doesn't apply once you're in top position.
Just look at how the billionaires have increased their treasure hordes.
Why do the rich get tax breaks and not us? that sounds backwards doesnt it
Ooh, can we have more videos like this if possible please? It's always interesting to know what is happening behind the scenes.
Just to throw some suggestions in (But it does happen behind the scenes so we don't always know it's happening): Something like the Director on Left for Dead, or when you alert an alarm on N64 Goldeneye and you get suddenly swarmed. Something like that.
When I was a kid, I didn't know the CPU explicitly cheated, but I did catch on fairly quickly that for every cup there were two other characters who'd consistently score well in all of the four races. In retrospect, it's a simple observation, but I did feel pretty smart as a 7yo.
Also, this was the only game in my 35 years on this planet that ever made me spike a controller against the wall; regret set in right away and luckily I was a weakling so it didn't break. I just thought "oh no, what'll I tell my parents when I tell them I broke my controller because the game was frustrating? Will they take the entire console away? Oh god please I hope it still works."
Aah, to be that young again, when that was the worst I thought the world could get xD
I remember trying my hardest to snap my NES controller as a kid 😂 can't remember what game got me so angry though. Good thing those controllers were tough and could take a hard slam and laugh it off.
I remember one time my friend used Gameshark with Need For Speed Underground for his car to run faster and turn tighter, thus guaranteeing easy 1st place wins. The rubber banding on that game was so aggressive that we purposely stopped near the end of the of the finish line to see the CPU cars just flying like bullets and crashing with everything just to catch up.
It was downright creepy seeing cars behave like this.😂
NFSU rubberbanding is brutal
Yo! Those aint cars my friend!
They have jet engines installed. XD
But, on the other hand, this does definitely make up for how stupid the AI in this game is. I can't count the number of times I've seen a CPU player toss a banana peel in front of themselves just to run straight into it seemingly without even trying to avoid it.
I still remember my dad coming home very late from work .. the day this game came out. I woke up after my parents went to bed and played it all night, even though we weren't allowed to play video games on school days.
That's a good memory to have. I recall having a broken leg and sneaking onto the computer at night on a school day. My mother once caught me.
rubber banding is what spoilt most of the racing games for me. Instead of winning through skill, I'd almost always just race slowly so the computer rubber bands them in front of me until maybe the last lap and then go for it. Turning multi lap races into a single lap race, almost always the computer ai would let me catch up to the front and then it was only a matter of a single lap of jossling for position, thus less change of getting knocked back along with frustration.
I don't know if this works with Mario Kart, it's not a game I've played but it seems just as sus.
Same, I always get 1st in every single player racing game by intentionally staying in second or third until the final stretch of the race regardless of difficulty setting
In Mario Kart 8 i let the CPUs go a bit ahead, because they would start to destroy themself and than it was easier to take the first place after one or two rounds.
Of all the racing game of that era I've played, Mario Kart was by far the worst for this crap.
Ikr?! Rubberbanding is just a cheap way to say "restart and play again a**hole!"
In short: Fake Restarts.
2:03 wario driving like he has free car insurance
Rubber banding was used back in the days because uses less data then giving AI code to each racer. Therefore the game must “mimic” the game being competitive and smart while saving tons of megabytes by giving each CPU a rubber band effect.
You could also notice that some karts copy the players behaviour in order to save vRAM+Compute.
So many racing games cheat and its frustrating to, i think it was need for speed underground 2 i had the near perfect race and clipped a last corner...and then so many over took me....cos the game would not allow me to get to far ahead, i think that what always frustrated me in driving games is that the AI and the way games are they do these cheating things rather than make the games in a way that feel more like a proper challenge in a fair way
As a racing game dev it’s just not that easy. I agree some games are far too egregious but it’s really hard to make competitive AI without giving them some conditional advantages
Oh, nfs underground was so bad at rubberbanding… AI flying by at at least 300 km/h, or that damn white van. It SOMEHOW always ended up in your way. When it crossed the screen from the right, and tried to take from the right, it slowed down. From the left, it accelerated.
Or that one drag race when you must jump on a ramp, otherwise the train hits you.
Or a Peugeot 206 which outperformed anything.
@@TheDeveloperGuy yup..burnout 3 is one of my favorite games of that era and had some of the worst rubber banding ever lol. Still love those EA games from that period!
@@SwerveStudios Rubber banding really is vital to racing games IMHO. I remember with the early Forza games I’d either be way out in front after the first corner or the AI cars would disappear off into the distance and I was never able to catch them. Something that keeps the race close ensures you aren’t bored with zero challenge or frustrated at being unable to catch up.
Probably every Mario Kart cheats. MK8 and MK8D have an extremely annoying Rubber Banding that prevents you from having fun at 150cc, but it doesn't support 200cc probably because the AI wasn't trained for it.😑
Idk most races against AI in 8 deluxe I just sit in 1st place and am usually never contested unless I get really unlucky with items at the end but I’m still usually far enough ahead for it to not be a problem. Not trying to brag (bragging about being good against the AI isn’t impressive lol) just curious.
Yeah usually if I lose it was because I didn't get enough coins.
@@Devin11246 it's not bragging,. MK8 is just a very easy game overall.
I appreciate your commitment to using only original resolution game footage for this video, it makes things feel more authentic
I have the most experience with the original Super Mario Kart on SNES and the rival thing was there back then as well. It was pre-determined per character you raced as. I forgot the combinations, but let's say if you pick Mario, then Bowser would always be your rival.
Yeah if you play as Koopa Trooper then Luigi is always your rival. For years I thought it was the same for all characters and Nintendo did it like that because they didn’t want people to hate Mario for always trying to beat you. 😂
Before I even watch this, I would LOVE for someone to do this sort of thing with the OG SNES game. Those CPUs were DIABOLICAL. I can't tell you how many times I've shot a red shell, the CPU *jumps* over it, and it loops back around and hits ME instead. COUNTLESS TIMES.
Metropolis Street Racer featured one of the most frustrating rubber band AI that i recall.
In the final races, I intentionally slowed down until the last lap to finish in first-place.
These videos are always great! When I found out how Mortal Kombat 2 cheats hard af I was like “I knew it” 😂
GTA Online is a modern game that cheats. You can watch enemies rubber band on missions. It's not just races. But in races it's called "catch up."
When I was a kid this was too obvious I can't believe I noticed it it's crazy glad I wasn't insane
Yes, but why is the Peach cpu in particular so evil in this game?
What do you mean?
Do you mean peach hitting you whenever you recover?
Peach IS evil, she cheats on Mario with that ugly stinky dragon wannabe called Bowser.
its because she is a woman, what did you expect?
@@AccelSternritter 😂
Another well-known game that's notorious for its rubber banding AI is Need for Speed Most Wanted 2005
Need for Speed Underground as well. I saw a similar video of the AI cheating off camera it also pulls the same kind of BS.
Finally, a comment I was looking for.
I've played this game for almost 2 decades and let me tell you... with my tradition to 100% this game every year once, my rubberbanding A.I is just flat out broken.
For some reason they literally improved than what they used to be.
Earl, notorious for rubberbanding, I could beat him with perfect driving back then. Now? Im forced to not only get him into crash TWICE into something, but ALSO perfect almost frame drive with speedbreaker just to win.
The first half of the blacklist, at least around Izzy and another blacklist racer later down the road, has legit broken races for me, where no matter how well im going to play, I just cant win against the rubberband. There are few notorious Speedtrap races that with the cars and stats the game provides, is legit NOT enough for you to beat some of those races, which I could back then.
Its almost as if me beating the game so many times, increased the rubberband's difficulty. I say that, because I had a case with Earl where I think the rubberband just broke. Flat out! He crashed into things and spun out 3 times in the last sprint race, which than he couldnt recover. It was a weird experience.
Either way, rubberband is just bad. Doesnt make you feel like you accomplish your wins, but rather the game told you, "you can win now."
Its an illusion...
NFS went to shit with UG. The shit AI is just another part of that.
The rivals system makes so much sense now - I remember wondering why specific characters were out for me and not just anyone in the race :P
It also happened in Super Mario Kart, except I believe the rivals were set on a per character basis. I don't remember all the combos but for instance if you picked Mario then your rival would always be Luigi, if you picked Yoshi your rival would always be Koopa Troopa, etc. It also had little to no rubber banding; on longer tracks I could regularly lap the second place racer and often lap the eighth place racer twice before finishing.
@@lordhughmungus actually I think Mario’s rival was DK Jr. in SMK, always annoyed me how he has a much higher top speed yet that top speed doesn’t apply when you actually play as him :P
Just press brake when you start jiggling because of a banana peel to prevent spinning out. A note icon will appear if successful and you will barely lose any speed.
Brake and break have two very different meanings.
@@jeffs1571 Thanks for pointing this out, I have fixed the typo!
In NFS:U, the CPU also cheated like crazy
This is why I never liked Mario Kart 64. Everyone has it on their list of "top N64 games", but it's just not fun to me except for Battle Mode. I'm all for competitive racing, but if you're playing flawlessly and have perfect accuracy with your items, but the CPUs are still always right there with you regardless, how is that fun at all?
Also, it wasn't mentioned in the video, but there's a few times in 150cc where if a CPU gets ahead of you and takes the lead, sometimes it is actually impossible for you to catch up to them
i sort of knew this as a kid playing this, always p ssed me off
I LOVE these types of videos!!! When you show us some of the magic behind the curtain (ESPECIALLY when it's about games 'cheating' like this AND with games I know well) Seeing 'how the sausage is made' has always been a big interest of mine, in many areas, not just video games. So when you put these videos out and I see their thumbnail, I get all kinds of giddy and excited LOL
THANKL MVG!
in the ps2 version of 18 wheeler, if you play versus and a player falls behind it gets a ridiculus speed boost, it gets maximum aceleration and top speed of 180 kms/h
6:24 Me when I'm late for work.
6:31 caught in true 240p
Oh so the Wario Stadium shortcut was just evening the playing field.
The Wario Stadium jump was the ideal place to ruin cpu's chances. Very easy on any class
I feel like I watched this exact video a long time ago, complete with the examples of clipping in Bowser's Castle
When it comes to the oncoming traffic of trucks, my guess is they had to give the AI an exemption because they kept running into the trucks. I don’t think it’s a problem because it’s still easy to beat the AI even when they “cheat”.
I used to play this game all the time as a kid and definitely notices the CPU cheating.
At 7:38. when slipping on the bananas you can tap B when losing traction and you won't spin out.
The bit at 9:10 confirms the weirdest thing I ever saw happen in this game. Decades back on Royal Raceway (the one with the big jump) I was playing as usual on the last lap when out of no where Donkey Kong, who was right behind me just before the jump, won the race.
I'm guessing he flew off at a weird angle, landed in the water, then got picked up by Lakitu and put at the finish line. Great video!
4:25 use this to skip the sponsor
Doing honest work.
Its chaptered.
I hated that 3 minute sponsor should had been a minute at least
I like how this feels like an exposé
GT3 endurance race when you play a race for an hour and have a big lead on the last lap but see the computer fly up the track and win. That's where the joy for me with GT disappeared
Never seen that happen. If you're not laps ahead of the CPU in an endurance race by the end, it's a literal skill issue. Also, I'm pretty sure each of the CPUs have a more or less fixed tempo and pit stop routine throughout the race.
Reminds me of Gradius 3, the technical limitations inform the balance.
They programmed this game like it costs quarters to play
I don't doubt that this is the case for Mario Kart 8 on the Switch as well.
In 150cc, they don’t cheat, but they definitely cheat in 200cc.
They cheat just differently
150cc they deffo cheat and if your leading come 2nd lap blue shell 5 seconds after you hit the checker. It's a joke. You can predict it exactly now. Your better being in 2nd place until over half of 2nd lap
I noticed the rival thing in Mario Kart Double Dash for the GameCube. I used to play the game so much, that sometimes I played to not only get first in every race, but also trying to make the assigned rival not get second place.
I love discussions about rubber-banding in racing games because in my favorite one, Blur, you can *toggle* rubber-banding and even its strength, at least during splitscreen local play. It's been a while, so you may be able to do so in other places too.
That knowledge would have saved me from many holes in the wall from getting a blue shell Mirrored Toads Turnpike. Nintendo never intended me to win. Resistance was futile
You say that you're not against 'rubber banding' in racing games but tell me that after playing Burnout, where you can lead an entire race without crashing, crash once on the last lap (which isn't your fault because it was at a cross roads) and have the 3 CPU opponents overtake you at the end.
Or teleporting cops in the Need for Speed games.
@@XanthinZardaI hate rubber banding. If I'm no good it's because I'm not concentrating properly or I don't know the track. I don't expect to catch up and win. Alternatively, if I'm awesome I deserve to have a substantial lead.
I hate rubber banding in games. Some modern games still doing this which i hate. Like all recent nfs games etc
I understand that it can be cheap, but it feels like Nintendo went out of their way to make it challenging, but still doable. It's interesting to see the design philosophy and the evolution as the series progresses. Mario Kart solved the supposed issue that the most boring thing in a racing game is being constantly in first place, and has dynamic item drops to make it possible for turnabouts and upsets.
I understand that fundamentally racing games need rubberbanding, but it feels out of place in "realistic" racing simulators, while feeling at home in a bouncy, semi-arcadey, cartoony and etc. Mario Kart.
RC Pro Am on NES had the 'Rubber Banding AI' with the yellow/orange car that would suddenly go ridiculously fast if you got too ahead and would lap you multiple times, resulting in a guaranteed sub 1st place spot. Man I hated that.
What a weird coincidence that another channel I follow did a video on the same subject, recently
7:44 The little slide is for your advantage here. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's like a second chance. If you hit the breaks momentarily, you will recover from the slide and won't spin. It's a gameplay mechanic.
Yes, this is such a thing in Crash Team Racing. On higher difficulties you kind of need to constantly drift boost to stay ahead and hit short cuts whereever possible.
NPCs also cheat like crazy in GTA5/online. When you are driving to avoid the enemies in missions. The surrounding NPCs will purposely match your input and speed to crash on you. I seen 8 vehicles turned right at the same time after I turned right. These NPCs will stop acting weird the moment you let off the accelerator/break.
Im dying when you hit youself with the red shell @5:21 lmao
Ugh, I hated rubberbanding in NFS games, and I hate it here.
I find the rubber banding can have a runaway effect. If the CPU gets too far ahead, they'll keep that absurd speed and be impossible to catch up to. Happens to me almost every time I play Bowser's Castle.
1:21 It is assigned based on your character.
But can change under some circumstances of them losing horribly
Diddy Kong Racing forever.
Well... if you hit a banana peel you break and you just don't spin out.
I KNEW the Mario Kart games had a rival system! Even in MK8D, you can pick out one or two CPU players that will always come in first or second if you let them
The worst most infuriating rubber banding I ever come across was in the Crash Team Racing remaster. I've completed the game, but it was the most frustrating experience at the time. Just blatant cheating.
Well, that game was so advanced that already introduced quantum computing ideas: rules are only well defined when observed, otherwise they are just a probability.
When I think of rubber banding, one game in particular always comes to mind, and that's Banjo-Tooie. The rematch with Canary Mary in Cloud Cuckooland is brutally difficult.
I remember my friends and I arguing if this existed or not, and with NBA Jam. We were just kids, but it's cool decades later to finally learn the nuts and bolts about it.
I imagine the developers did a ton of play testing and fine tuning to keep it as fair as possible while remaining competitive.
The “caught in 240p” is what got me 🤣
I knew that the NPCs had catch up and that your item quality was effected by what place you were in. I've even seen the NPC's clip through cars. The rest of this is all new to me.
I remember getting quite frustrated at Mario Kart Double Dash since the same rubberbanding thing was used and the AI was extremely aggressive in higher CC's on that game. Ultimately had to resort to using Diddy Kong and Paratrooper as my characters so I could have access to triple red shells to slow the opponents down and giant bananas to create bottleneck traps at certain chokepoints in the various courses.
This is the reason of why I never got attached to any Mario Kart games, it always felt like it's luck based rather than player skill. Except when you play with friends. I always preferred Diddy Kong Racing and it will always be my favorite racing game.
Another annoying thing that happens in MK64 is when you play in 150cc, if you lose sight of the main rival you'll never see it. I guess the boost it gets doesn't deactivate causing it to get a bigger lead. No matter what items you get, at least if you're playing regularly, you'll never be able to catch up to it
I Love these kinds of deep dive videos, going into deeper depth of how certain game mechanics work, n why they were implemented into the game, fascinating stuff!!
AI in F-Zero GX was the hardest ive experience personally.
I remember from this game how sometimes in 150cc and Extra (these days known as mirror mode) if CPU got away from player, it easily could keep driving faster than you can, impossible to catch it, thus resulting you easily could loose a win, if by bad luck, lets say hit a car in Toad's Turnpike. I always had feeling that CPU cheats but it going to THIS level, revealed a lot more
I'm a big fan of Forza Horizon, especially FH4, and that series also has cheating AI opponents. I've often dominated races, crossing the finish line with 30 seconds or more ahead of the second driver. But when the results screen comes up, almost all the AI drivers have much faster lap times.
It is very rare for the N64 to have 7 different 'enemies' on the screen at the same time. It has to be not just "lazy" AI programming. Imagine the processing demands on Toad's Turnpike if collision with the traffic was being computed for every racer and every car on the road at all times. It would be a slide show trying to play that on native hardware.
Just Yesterday I went on a rant about rubberbanding in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe after I was once again cheated on by the ai in the last corner of the race. Thanks for this video!
I absolutely used to hate some Forza Motorsport (the first one on the Xbox) races because of this. There were some races were you'd be forced to use the same car as all other opponents (the Shelby Cobra one is etched into memory) and even if you'd draft behind a CPU opponent, on hard difficulty they would just go farther and farther from you, as if they had better acceleration even though they were facing all the wind and driving the same exact car. I'd get so pissed, it took me ages to get past the Road America race because the AI would constantly gain on me and slam into me whenever it could. By far the hardest racing game I finished because of all this. I also recall NFS Underground 1 also having atrocious rubberbanding on Hard.
Wow this feels similar to the video from abyssoft
Thank you for not pulling back the curtain on MK64 back when we were kids... I'm SO DISILLUSIONED!
We used to abuse the rubber banding in the old Need For Speed games in vs mode to get crazy high best lap times. Set the total laps to 2. Have one player get ahead and complete those laps but don’t cross the finish line. Then get an impossibly high lap time as the other player lol.
The amount of additional "help" is much greater than I have suspected. This clears years of getting not what I had deserved 😅: 1st place
If I wrote a game like this I would simple delay the computer player for the average time a real player would take in similar crash. No playing out of events, no one can see.
4 minutes and 25 seconds to get to the actual video. Quality content.
SHOCK: Mario Kart cheats!
I wonder if the same applies to obstacles as well. I could swear that the Bob-omb cars in Mario Kart Double Dash!! deliberately swerve into you if you get too close to them...
I should apologize for blaming myself that I thought I was bad against CPU racers.
Sega GT 2002- that game’s legendary rubberbanding is singlehandedly responsible for me not playing racing games seriously to this day.
When you just spent $500k on powertrain upgrades and the AI doesn’t even let you feel faster cause the other racers are neck and neck no matter what, I just stopped caring.
I think this is all good careful design. This stuff all happen off screen and you don't even notice. The only thing you notice are the rivals because the competition for points always becomes close by the end. In more recent entries, like even MK8, getting gold becomes trivial as an opponent who got first in one race will probably come last in the next, letting you get gold even if you arriving in second or third in most races. MK64 ensures that your rival will come close to the lead in every race and you do need to stay ahead of it.
It's kinda dumb tho. I already noticed when playing Super Mario Kart(which is barely a racing game because the CPUs play by such wildly diffrent rules than the player) that 5th place and beyond may as well not even be there because the probability of any one of them even getting a single point is basically 0).
One thing a friend and me always hated about Mario Kart DS was how it always felt like one AI was always a pain in the ass and the rest were a bunch of bumbling idiots. We figured it was rubberbanding but it only ever using 1 AI kinda ruined the fun