Seeing is believing

[MrStarbird]

I never thought I would ever see the day that Phantasy Star IV can get as glitchy as Phantasy Star II, but the game is very much broken now from a speedrun perspective.

https://www.speedrun.com/phantasy_star_iv/run/y437p93z

This is a speedrun of someone beating the game in under 40 minutes. It is glitch heavy, but it is a real person doing the work and not a TAS. I realize that speedrunning isn't for everyone, and some people may frown upon glitches, but this is still a sight to see IMO.

[Zucca]

I'd like to read the technical side of things about that run.
I have soooo many questions in my head now.

[MrStarbird]

It's quite an undertaking mechanically. The menu glitch involves going to the battle or message speed menu, confirming, then on the right frame, pressing cancel. It's altamont to the macro glitch but a different frame. The rest is more byte shifting to trigger certain flags prematurely. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the best i can describe as I haven't fully run it yet.

[Zucca]

I guess someone will TAS the hell out of this sooner or later.

[MrStarbird]

probably, but as for now everything is RTA...

[Zucca]

Just watching this: http://tasvideos.org/3863M.html

I need to frequently collect my jaw from the floor...