Mario Kart's computers are known for cheating from increasing their top speed to driving through walls they used to do anything they could in order to win cheating was an expected part of the older games and it made it extremely hard for most players to win but in Mario Kart 7 that isn't really the case with a bit of practice most players find it quite easy to beat the CPUs often winning by large margins a occasionally however something happens that gives the computers a big Advantage something that looks completely impossible this is the story of how a computer player broke Mario Kart 7 [Music] the early days of Mario Kart 7 were quite interesting to say the least the first few months of the game were filled with shortcut discoveries and with how easy some of them were to perform online races quickly became a battle of who knew the most glitches this meant that when a video titled biggest glitch ever was uploaded to YouTube on the 28th of February it didn't really surprise anyone there were all already several videos like this on YouTube and most of the time they didn't have anything new new glitches were almost always discovered by well-known members of the community so when videos like this popped up on YouTube it was usually either just some small physics Quirk or a video of a glitch that had already been discovered but still the community had to check just in case there was something new and when they clicked on the video this is what they [Music] [Music] saw whoa what exactly happened there well the video starts with a lightning being used at the end of a lap on Daisy Hills in what looks to be a 50cc Grand Prix the player then respawned because of the lightning and just after respawning out of nowhere Bowser came flying across the screen we can see from this zoomed out perspective that Bowser gained speed at the exact moment of returning to a normal size he then bounced to the left a bit before bouncing back over to the right and shooting past the player and those bounces tell us everything [Music] you see when you fly over the lake at the end of Daisy Hills there are several hot air balloons that you can crash into crashing into any of these hot air balloons will cause you to bounce backwards and they work the exact same for the computer players but for whatever reason when Bowser returned to a normal size after having been shrunken by the lightning he must have hit a balloon at the exact same time causing a strange reaction to cause them to go flying forwards unfortunately due to how extremely unlikely that is to happen and due to their only being mushrooms and time trials it seemed really unlikely that this could be useful for human speedruns in September speedrunners did start to use the balloons bouncing off the back of them to save a little bit of time but compared to the speed gained in dwl y's video it was nothing it just seemed to be impossible to get that much speed in a time trial or at least it seemed that way for a while but then something happened that blew all preconceived notions out of the water on February 4th 2013 nearly a full year after the first video of this glitch a video called Daisy Hills ultimate balloon boost was uploaded to YouTube the video showed yet another Grand Prix of Daisy Hills although this time in in mirror mode but when the glitch happened this time there were a couple of key differences After experiencing the speed increase the computer was able to stay on the track and keep driving and most importantly no lightning had been used this was big for the glitch to just randomly happen like that it could only mean one thing this was possible for humans but as it turns out that was much easier said than and done it's been more than a decade since 6V Run's video of the glitch and in that time there have only been two more videos of this glitch the first was from 2014 and showed just how powerful this could be with the Mi character launching forwards and then just continuing to drive as if nothing had happened and the next video of it didn't come until 2023 when a speedrunner nearly lost to a CPU because of this glitch but nothing new could be seen from these videos and so despite their rest efforts nobody could figure out how it worked look here's the thing when a new shortcut is discovered by a human it's usually not too hard to recreate it there's almost always a video of the shortcut itself and being able to see exactly what was done helps tremendously when trying to figure out how it works but because this was done by a computer we don't have that luxury all we had were these four videos and it made it extremely hard to know where to start in fact some players have written it off entirely thinking that because the balloons in the Grand Pre mode are in different places compared to time trials it's just completely impossible and until now that's where the story ended an unsolved mystery with a disappointing ending but I have a secret to tell you because there's more to this story much more you see although nobody has said they've solved this mystery there is someone who has someone who figured out how this shortcut Works someone who now has the only known footage of a human performing this shortcut and that person is me okay let's back up a little I first heard about this shortcut back in 2020 when Noah sent a video of it to the Mario Kart 7 Discord server and from the moment I saw it I was fascinated I loved the idea that something that Nintendo programmed could discover a shortcut and over the following years I dreamed of one day being able to recreate it but my dreams in real ity were quite far apart because as I said earlier there really wasn't much information on it so I put it to the back of my mind and spent the next couple of years focusing on other tracks helping to break many of them along the way but that all changed when I started to make these YouTube videos you see it takes a lot of research to make these videos and one of the things that I ended up researching was this shortcut the idea of a shortcut that had only been done by the CPUs was just too cool to ignore but when I started to research it I quickly stumbled across something that I never expected to find because as it turns out humans had managed to do this glitch just not in the way you would expect [Music] that video was uploaded all the way back in 2012 and since then many other players have done the exact same thing bouncing off one balloon before clipping through another and being sent flying backwards and with all of those videos showing how the glitch worked there was only one piece of the puzzle left figuring out how to clip through a balloon forwards I kept researching late into the night but eventually I did have to stop and as I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep it finally hit me what if instead of clipping through the balloon behind us we bounced off it instead would it then be possible to clip through the balloon in front when I woke up the next morning I was full of excitement desperately hoping for this idea to work and after trying for a bit I got nothing no matter how hard I tried I couldn't even get close to the balloon every single attempt bounced me backwards to the left and as time went on I was starting to lose hope but I wasn't going to give up my desire to do this shortcut was just too strong and so I tried again and when I bounced off the balloon this time I finally got sent somewhere else bouncing over to the right instead this still wasn't what I was aiming for but it was at least something new all I had to do was bounce in the middle middle of those two places so I paused went to restart and then I stopped myself you see these aren't the only balloons on the track there were many other balloons over to the right and while I didn't know what could happen if I hit them I thought I should at least check so I unpaused and watched as my car bounced backwards moving closer and closer to those balloons and when it hit the balloon instead of seeing yet another failure I saw my C bouncing forwards forwards towards yet another balloon that was in front of me and then it happened the daisy Hills ultimate balloon boost [Music] seeing this happen for the first time was a truly surreal experience I had dreamed about this shortcut for years and to see it finally happen was an experience that I honestly cannot put into words it wasn't the first time that I had pulled off a crazy new shortcut but this one was truly special to me but there was still more to do because while I had managed to recreate the speed flying out of bounds definitely wouldn't be faster I took a moment to enjoy what had just happened and then I started to look for ways to make it faster with the angle I had staying on the track was out of the question there were only two options left to me clip through through a different balloon or try to modify what I was already doing unfortunately after trying for a while I wasn't able to clip through any other balloon but fortunately I did find a way to save time and the way I found was perhaps even cooler than just clipping through a balloon it was time to play Pinball [Music] while I don't know what will happen next the journey to get here is one that I will never forget even though the pinball Strat does lose time compared to a direct clip to have not only recreated this glitch but also make a crazy looking shortcut out of it is more than enough for me and I have no doubt that a faster way to do this will one day be discovered but for now this is where the story ends thanks for watching Back To Top