SethBling (born April 3, 1987) is an American video game commentator and Twitch video game live streamer known for YouTube videos focused around the 1990 side-scrolling platform video game Super Mario World and the 2011 sandbox video game Minecraft. He created original and derivative video games, devices and phenomena in Minecraft, without using Minecraft mods. He created an interpreter for the programming language BASIC and an emulator for the 1977 home video game console Atari 2600 in Minecraft. In addition to Minecraft builds that run without mods, he created plugins for the game.
SethBling wrote artificial intelligence programs that play Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Kart. He held a world record of 41.35 seconds for Super Mario World until June 2020, and a former world record for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He achieved the world record for Super Mario World by using a glitch that enabled him to execute arbitrary code and skip to the game's credits. In 2015, he was the first to do so on a home video game console. He injected code to play a Flappy Bird-like game within Super Mario World on a stock Super Nintendo Entertainment System. He was the first to perform this kind of arbitrary code execution by hand. In 2017, Cooper Harasyn and SethBling created a jailbreak by hand using exploits to save a hex editor onto a read-only memory cartridge, allowing for creation of mods.
Early life
SethBling was raised Jewish, but has since become an atheist. He decided that he was an atheist sometime around when he was in elementary school, but "played along" through high school. SethBling's nickname is derived from his AIM screen name in high school.
SethBling started out programming his calculator in middle school and wrote "lots of" games throughout high school, including an MUD. SethBling wrote in 2012 that C# was his favorite programming language.
SethBling worked as a software engineer at Microsoft for three years, where he worked on Xbox, and for four months on Bing. SethBling said that his work at Xbox had not been related to video games, and that he had worked on the Xbox version of Internet Explorer, and on Xbox SmartGlass, a mobile phone app for remotely controlling an Xbox console.
Video games
SethBling played Super Mario Bros. 3 when he was five or six. Super Mario World was "one of the hot games" of his childhood.:67 SethBling had the Sega Genesis home video game console, and played a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog on it.:68
SethBling started playing Minecraft around September 2010, after college, after his roommate told him about it. The sandbox aspect was "very appealing" to SethBling, as he played MUDs in middle school and high school. SethBling thought the game was "really cool" and played it for about a month, after which he was "done with this game". A few months later, he bought a new computer and decided to play Minecraft again. SethBling got into the technical community and was quick to discover redstone, a programmable resource in Minecraft, and began uploading videos of his creations to YouTube weeks later. SethBling was inspired to use redstone in Minecraft because he wanted to build a minecart station. Inspired by other YouTube videos about Minecraft, SethBling created his first few videos to "better get [his] money's worth" from the screen recording utility Fraps he bought. SethBling initially uploaded videos on YouTube in order to share his creations on Reddit. He did not expect to gain subscribers as a small channel with only a few videos. SethBling's YouTube channel greatly increased in popularity when Minecraft creator Markus Persson shared one of SethBling's videos on Twitter.
According to SethBling, he "almost never" played on consoles despite working at Xbox. Working at Microsoft, SethBling would spend almost all his free evenings and weekends playing Minecraft. SethBling quit his job at Microsoft around April 2012 because of his YouTube channel's success and has been independent since.:65
Minecraft career
Unless stated otherwise, all Minecraft builds mentioned in this section run on unmodded Minecraft, except modified block textures.
2011–2012
In 2011, SethBling recreated Duck Hunt using freshly introduced bow-charging mechanics in Minecraft. Engadget Jordan Mallory wrote that SethBling's replica "[manages] to capture the innocence and nostalgia of our 8-bit youths".
In February 2012, SethBling recreated the 1964 toy Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, which consists of a red and a blue robot, within Minecraft. Mike Fahey of Kotaku praised the mechanics and described the robots as "movable though somewhat janky".