Username:
B
I
U
S
"
url
img
#
code
sup
sub
font
size
color
smiley
embarassed
thumbsup
happy
Huh?
Angry
Roll Eyes
Undecided
Lips Sealed
Kiss
Cry
Grin
Wink
Tongue
Shocked
Cheesy
Smiley
Sad
1 page
--
--
List results:
Search options:
Use \ before commas in usernames
That trailing question mark should make it clear that I haven't recorded a run for this game yet, so if the title got your hopes up and you're now disappointed then I can hardly be blamed. Still, though, I've had a casual interest in speedrunning for a while now and I think that planning and recording (and watching) a decent run of this game would be interesting. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Japanese Final Fantasy III, for the Famicom, never released in the states (until the DS remake). It might be my favourite Final Fantasy game. I played it through a few times when I was younger, and again recently, and it's as good as ever. I really like this game's job system, challenging dungeons, and hidden treasure. If any of you are familiar with it, then you probably played the Jackson/Corlett/SoM2Freak fan translation, on an emulator, just like I will. Yeah I know, emulator speedruns are lame, but the only alternative is that I somehow get my hands on an original Famicom and Japanese cartridge, which isn't going to happen. At least you can trust that I won't cheat with save states or by messing with the framerate. I'm not a douchebag.

So... is this something that any of you are interested in?
Thread title:  
Obscure games ftw
Quote from Creaphis:
That trailing question mark should make it clear that I haven't recorded a run for this game yet, so if the title got your hopes up and you're now disappointed then I can hardly be blamed. Still, though, I've had a casual interest in speedrunning for a while now and I think that planning and recording (and watching) a decent run of this game would be interesting. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Japanese Final Fantasy III, for the Famicom, never released in the states (until the DS remake). It might be my favourite Final Fantasy game. I played it through a few times when I was younger, and again recently, and it's as good as ever. I really like this game's job system, challenging dungeons, and hidden treasure. If any of you are familiar with it, then you probably played the Jackson/Corlett/SoM2Freak fan translation, on an emulator, just like I will. Yeah I know, emulator speedruns are lame, but the only alternative is that I somehow get my hands on an original Famicom and Japanese cartridge, which isn't going to happen. At least you can trust that I won't cheat with save states or by messing with the framerate. I'm not a douchebag.

So... is this something that any of you are interested in?


I'm interested in any FF run that can be on the site, but if you check the rules, you'll see that emulated run are not accepted.  You might be able to get the required software/hardware on eBay, or by trading in the Trading Post.

However, for the casual speedrunning board, emulated runs are fine, but they won't be put on the site.
Yeah, I knew that this run wouldn't qualify to be hosted by SDA, but I figure it might still deserve to have its own thread in a forum somewhere.
I'd love to watch this run if you did it! Has it been run by any Japanese?
Good question! If it's out there I haven't been able to track it down.
Edit history:
zallard1: 2010-11-08 06:44:00 pm
B+Left, Left, Up+B, ★
I've seen reproduction cartridges of this game on www.nesreproductions.com but I'm not too sure if SDA allows runs on repro carts.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the repro cart is the English translation of the game.
Waiting hurts my soul...
Quote from zallard1:
I've seen reproduction cartridges of this game on www.nesreproductions.com but I'm not too sure if SDA allows runs on repro carts.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the repro cart is the English translation of the game.

gut reaction is that it's not allowed
Everything's better with Magitek
Looking on Ultima Garden, I found two speedrun records for FF3 on the Famicom.  One is a segmented run in with a time of 7:49, and the other is a single-segment completed in 4:47.  (The SS run was accomplished about a year after the segmented run, which could explain why it's faster.)  Both of those runs have written reports explaining what the runner did, but they're in Japanese.  You can translate them into English at translate.google.com, which may or may not be helpful.  Here are the pages where I found these records (the report is in the fourth column):

segmented: http://ultimagarden.net/ff_ta.html
single-segment: http://ultimagarden.net/ff_rta.html
I dug around a bit more, and didn't find any non-TAS speedruns, but these are kind of interesting:


This looks to be the first snippet of a "normal route" TAS of this game. It'd be interesting if this was finished some day, just to see what's possible when luck is always on your side. I'm sure that a good TAS run could skip most of the leveling that I'll have to do. Also, before I watched this, I had no idea that you could use potions/spells to skip encounters. By the looks of it, you always have to be on the square immediately before the encounter when you use the item/spell to skip that encounter, but that doesn't mean that this is a TAS-only trick. After "power cycling" my emulator, the first encounter in a dungeon always seems to be in the same place, so I should be able to use this trick to skip at least an encounter or two in every area.

http://www.archive.org/details/ff3-tas-feok-slashstardash
This is a TAS that beats the whole darn game in three hours, but relies on an "upgrade" glitch to put one character's XP through the roof and to get four full sets of Onion gear, the vastly overpowered easter egg equipment of this Final Fantasy. I already knew about this glitch before I watched this, and had already decided not to use it. I know we're supposed to use every glitch available to minimize our times, but... in my mind, sometimes the fastest run isn't the best one. This glitch would remove all challenge and fine strategy from the run, so it would be boring to make and boring to watch. Besides, in the various forums for this game, its fans often draw a distinction between play-throughs that use FEOKs (fully equipped Onion Knights) and those that don't, so considering runs that don't use this glitch as a separate category seems natural to me.


@Essentia: Thanks for the links! I just saw your post pop up as I was writing the above. What I'm able to understand of Google's unavoidably imperfect translations is actually quite helpful.
yeah thanks for links :>
there's a glitched version that gets 2:24:30?
http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/8623748
You would be surprised at how easy it is to obtain the Japanese cart. Actually, it seems that it almost always cheaper to get the Japanese cart over its American counter part (at least from personal observation it seems to be so). Additionally, if you have a nes, then it is possible to pick up a 72-60pin converter that will allow you to play Japanese Famicom games on a US NES console (though you may also have to disable the lockout-chip, which is easy enough). In fact, it seems that getting the ff3j game cart is easier/cheaper than getting the converter. I know that when I was visiting my Sister who was living in Korea a couple summers ago, the adapters could be had for considerably less (~$6).

Well anyway, don't discount the possibility of running the game on actual hardware, as it is almost affordable (I cant believe those converters are so rare/cost so much).
Edit history:
romscout: 2010-11-20 07:27:23 am
romscout: 2010-11-20 07:21:36 am
romscout: 2010-11-20 07:20:29 am
that Metroidvania guy
I got my Famicom and it came with Tetris, DQ3, and FF3 for about 50 bucks. I checked the individual cart prices of FF3 out of curiosity after that and the most expensive one I saw was 10 bucks. If you can buy a modern gen console game at release, you can afford to get the stuff to run this game.

This would be a fun game to run. I was always curious about whether you could get away with skipping Eureka and going straight to the end (from a survival standpoint, not a "does the game allow you to do this?" standpoint), and I'm guessing that glitched run does that. *watches*

edit: ok, I kinda get that you end up having one character go unchanged for a while, be killed off a bunch, and then at the end of the run you get an invincible tank out of it, but does anyone get how the glitch actually works? ...or can translate how it works? >.>
Edit history:
Creaphis: 2010-11-20 09:46:36 pm
Creaphis: 2010-11-20 09:22:17 pm
Creaphis: 2010-11-20 09:21:51 pm
Creaphis: 2010-11-20 09:10:57 pm
Hey cool, this thread is getting some posts! It's a shame I got bored of planning the run. >_>

Quote from Jadin:
yeah thanks for links :>
there's a glitched version that gets 2:24:30?
http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/8623748



Oh awesome! I'd love to watch this, but as far as I can tell you need to register to be able to watch videos on that site, and I can't decipher moonspeak. It seems like a couple of you have that site figured out, so if one of you wrote me an extremely thorough step-by-step guide on how to watch those movies I would love you forever!

EDIT: Never mind, I figured out how watch it, but I still feel like this site was designed by a lunatic, and that's not just because of the language barrier.

EDIT EDIT: Never mind the "never mind," I do still need help. It won't let me watch part 2 for whatever reason.

Quote from romscout:
If you can buy a modern gen console game at release


Heh, that's debatable...

Thanks for the info though - I always assumed that a genuine cart and a Famicom would be pretty much impossible to get.

Quote from romscout:
edit: ok, I kinda get that you end up having one character go unchanged for a while, be killed off a bunch, and then at the end of the run you get an invincible tank out of it, but does anyone get how the glitch actually works? ...or can translate how it works? >.>


I may be able to explain any glitches used in this run once I've finished watching it. Then again, a time of 2:24 is so ridiculously fast that I'm not sure that the item/character upgrade glitch and encounter skipping can explain it, and I haven't heard of any other major game-breaks.
I'm sure you've all been stumbling over each other for the chance to help me first, but don't worry, now I really do have my Nicovideo problem solved (thanks to a sneaky "Niko Player" that bypasses the registration requirement that I found in this thread).

The 2:24:30 run does indeed abuse what's known in English as the "item upgrade glitch," but this runner takes it a step further and uses it only to upgrade the first character. I don't understand the nuances of the glitch (I'd never figure out how to do what the runner does here) but I think I can explain the basics. First off, you need to get 99 of an item that can be dropped by monsters. Potions are the best choice because the monsters in the first dungeon drop them frequently, and they're cheap enough to buy in mass quantities. This runner plays through the game normally until he has enough cash to buy all 99. By contrast, the builder of the three hour TAS run chose to earn 99 potions mainly through monster drops, which is evidently a much slower tactic.

Then, once you have your 99 potions, the fun can start. Ninety-nine is, of course, the maximum number you can have of any given item. However, if you get a potion drop from a random encounter, the game tries to add a hundredth potion to your inventory. This causes a data overflow which can actually have surprisingly beneficial effects. In its most basic form, the "item upgrade glitch" is used to transform items. If you arrange your inventory in the right way, getting a potion drop can cause another item in your inventory to have its ID number incremented (changing it to another one of the game's 255 items). This makes it possible to get all of the game's most powerful gear early on. If you get multiple potion drops after a single fight, though, then the really weird stuff starts to happen. Apparently, the data overflow begins to affect the attributes of the first character, such as his experience, his level, and his job. It's these effects that this runner takes advantage of. Interestingly, this player has found a specific encounter (two bluewisps and three carbunkles*) and two different sets of luck-manipulating actions that allow him to gain either two or three dropped potions at will. (If you watch the text boxes at the ends of these fights very closely, you'll see that either two or three identical text boxes appear in succession. These are the potions.) However, he's still forced to reset his game whenever he doesn't get this ideal encounter, or when a monster behaves in a way that indicates that the random number generator won't give him the potions he needs. These extra resets aren't part of the glitch, but merely failed attempts at using it.

I still haven't finished watching the run, so you can probably expect a triple post from me yet Wink

* These are the names used in the English fan translation by SoM2Freak.
Okay, I just finished watching, so here's that triple post I promised! Cheesy

It turns out that I was wrong when I said that the runner "only" uses the upgrade glitch to upgrade his character. He also uses it to manufacture some key items! I assumed at first that the only reason he waited until after Nepto's shrine to start glitching was so that he'd have more spare cash, but it's also so that he can "upgrade" the water fang (item ID = 161) to Noah's lute (ID = 163). This is a very clever sequence break, allowing him to skip Salonia, Dorga's house and the Temple of Time. Then, during his second round of glitching, he transforms the fire fang (ID = 160) into the sylx key (ID = 164), letting him skip Dorga's house again, and he arms himself by transforming two boomerangs (ID = 64) into two full moons (ID = 65). This is all deduced, since I can't read the names of the items he's upgrading, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate.

I thought that sequence breaks of this sort might be possible, but the only thing I ever thought of doing was transforming some other items into the four fangs, and funnily enough, that would probably be completely useless. When this runner passes the four statues, he only has the earth fang in his inventory, and if all you needed was the earth fang, then you could probably get it faster by using the item upgrade trick rather than by enduring the Cave of Darkness. But, since this player chooses to go through that dreadful dungeon, it must be that you need to trigger some quest flag to be able to pass the statues, rather than actually have the fangs in your inventory.

The highlight of this run for me was when the player had to kill himself in the "supposed to lose" fight with the final boss. Up until that moment I had assumed that the player only had those 2500 visible hitpoints to work with. But no, apparently that first character has some extra life bars in reserve. How many extra? Who knows! Somehow that character got glitched past level 99. He has way, way too much health, and he gets more attacks per round and more spell castings than a level 99 character. I'm guessing that the game thinks he's level 255. This beast puts even Fully Equipped Onion Knights to shame.
Obscure games ftw
99+1=undefined=255, if I got that correctly.
That's epic.