Game:

Ghoul School (1992)

Duration: 1:28

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4

This is a brief tool-assisted video I made to demonstrate a glitch I discovered in the NES game "Ghoul School." It allows the player to teleport inside walls and "zip" through them at a very high speed. As a side effect, it gives easy access to the game's "Warp Zone," which normally takes much longer to reach. This video demonstrates how the glitch can be used to pick up the items required to beat the game and get to the final area extremely quickly (fast forwarding through the boring parts).

Here's how the glitch works:

1. Equip the Sneakers and walk up to a wall. Make sure you're pushed as far against it as you can go.

2. Pause the game and select the Spring Shoes.

3. Hit Start, but as soon as the screen goes black, hold the direction opposite the wall you're facing. If the wall is on the right, hold left, and vice versa.

4. Now one of two things will happen:
a. You'll appear just inside the wall, but will immediately begin walking out of it if you keeping holding left or right.
b. You'll appear inside the wall and begin zipping as long as you hold the direction opposite that you wish to go.

To get to Warp Zone, zip through any dead end in the game. Almost every one will take you there. The few that don't will either take you to the other end of the room, as seen in the Auto Shop, or take you to a nearby room.

I believe this glitch occurs because when the player switches from the Sneakers to the Spring Shoes or Suction Cups, the game extends the character's sprite and collision box vertically. The problem is that instead of shifting the character up a few pixels to accommodate the extra space, the game adds the extra length to the bottom of the sprite. This means that whenever the player equips the Spring Shoes, the character's feet appear inside the tile they are standing on. Since the character is now inside a solid object, the game immediately tries to eject him, but there is a very small window of time during which the player is still considered inside the floor and can therefore zip through it. There is only enough time to warp one frame in either direction, but this is enough to get inside another wall and keep zipping. All of this occurs while the screen is still black after unpausing the game.

I don't know why this glitch will sometimes only put you partway inside the wall, though. Subpixel positioning, perhaps?

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