Micro 500 and the Evolution of Video Games

micro 500 was the first one to build a bot that would run tool assisted speedrun input into a nintendo controller slot on console and could sync such that certain speedruns could play back. Some games latch at different speeds some games do double latches at the start there's all this controller infrastructure stuff but the gist of it is that if you can play back the tool assisted speedrunner input on original hardware then you know that there is a ground truth.