The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time · Nintendo 64 · Inventory memory corruption · Saves: Enables warping directly to the credits · Documented: 2003
Placing a bottle on the B button causes Ocarina of Time to write item values outside the space reserved for the inventory — letting runners conjure almost any item in the game, and eventually warp straight to the end credits.
Ocarina of Time never expects a bottle to occupy the B button. B is reserved for the sword, and the game's inventory routine assumes as much. Bottle Adventure exploits the fact that this assumption is never enforced: by manoeuvring a bottle onto B, the runner induces the game to apply its inventory update formula from an unfamiliar starting point, writing item values into memory outside the region reserved for the inventory proper. The result is a controllable corruption. When certain bottled items or child trade items are placed on the C-right button, the game reads the quantity of a linked item and writes a new item onto B whose internal value matches that number. The canonical example: putting a Big Poe on C-right while holding exactly nineteen Deku Seeds places Nayru's Love on B. By adjusting ammunition counts, the runner effectively types a number into memory and receives the corresponding item — almost any item with a value between 0 and 50, with only a few exceptions such as the Fairy Slingshot, Bombchus, and Fairy Bow. The deeper variant, Reverse Bottle Adventure, inverts the process to write values rather than read them, and the two together render Ocarina of Time's inventory algorithm, in the community's memorable phrase, more fragile than glass. When a version of the technique was found that worked across all releases of the game, an entire world of inventory manipulation opened up. The destination was inevitable. Using Bottle Adventure, a runner can place Farore's Wind on the B button and cast it anywhere — not merely inside dungeons, as the game intends — creating a warp portal in arbitrary locations. With the ability to warp into scenes the game never meant to be reachable, there was only one logical conclusion: warp directly to the end credits. Bottle Adventure is the technique that turned Ocarina of Time from a fifty-hour adventure into a game that can be finished in minutes, and it remains one of the most elegant memory-corruption exploits ever found in a console game.
The B button in Ocarina of Time is meant for the sword, and the game's inventory routine is written on that assumption — but it never verifies it. Manoeuvre a bottle onto B and the update formula runs from an unfamiliar starting point, writing values into memory beyond the inventory's allotted space. The corruption is controllable: placing certain bottled or trade items on C-right makes the game read a linked item's quantity and materialise an item on B whose internal value matches that number. Adjust your Deku Seed count and you are, in effect, typing a number into memory and receiving the corresponding item. Nineteen seeds and a Big Poe yield Nayru's Love.
Once a runner can conjure arbitrary items onto the B button, the game's structure ceases to hold. The decisive application is Farore's Wind: normally castable only within dungeons, it can be placed on B via Bottle Adventure and then used anywhere, planting a warp portal in locations the designers never contemplated. From there the conclusion writes itself — if you can warp into scenes the game never meant to be reached, you can warp into the ending. Bottle Adventure, together with its Reverse variant, is what reduced a fifty-hour epic to a run measured in minutes, and it remains among the most elegant memory-corruption exploits discovered in any console game.