When I saw the display of the Super Mario clouds in the Whitney Museum, I immediately recognized it, but did not understand the significance of just having the clouds there. I thought it was perhaps a reference back to the start of gaming taking off. After watching the video, it is surprising to see how much history lies behind this work, with the advent of ROM hacking and what this implied about privacy of code.

The narrator pointed out the holes in Arcangel’s story of how he had used the original Mario Cart to extract the clouds. What was strange to me throughout the video was how obvious these mistakes were. For example, the difference in the blue color between Arcangel’s and the real mario cart is very noticeable. Also, he pointed out the way he removed the PRG with clippers destroys the mask rom, and his use of the number 37 instead of 38 to display the clouds. If Arcangel was making a whole how-to tutorial on how to do this, you would think he would be sure that there were no mistakes. There are also many references to Arcangel’s work on the mario clouds, and from what I could gather from the video it seems they were just bypassing these mistakes.

This video made me think about how things can be manipulated in this field when it is all about delivery of a final product. It also made me wonder why it was so significant to able to manipulate an original work, not just make a copy of it. Overall, it seems the use of rom hacking can take someone’s work to be used in a way they had not intended it for, bus also build off another’s creativity when inspired.