Submission #6489: ninespaces's SMS Phantasy Star in 1:55:56.04

Sega Master System
baseline
(Submitted: PS1-J.SMS JPN)
BizHawk 2.3.2
416825
59.9227510135505
95030
Unknown
Submitted by ninespaces on 8/20/2019 12:39 AM
Submission Comments

Game objectives: Beat Dark Falz and become Queen of Algol

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.3.2
  • Aims for fastest possible completion
  • Manipulates luck
The Phantasy Star series has enormous nostalgia value for me, and I wanted to try something a little heftier for my 2nd TAS, so here we are. I watched the previous TAS by nfq and was so impressed with the cleverness of the routing. Much of that routing remains unchanged here, but two key changes helped to bring the time under 2 hours.

Why the Japanese ROM?

  • Better sound
  • Less text
  • The cake (price) is (not) a lie

Notable route changes

  • Additional meseta gathered in Casba cave allows earlier Laser Gun purchase and eliminates some meseta farming
  • Experience lost from meseta farming is recuperated later from the more efficient Evildeads
  • Experience farming is now done in Bortevo cave to avoid lengthy battle screen transitions
  • A few other minor differences (e.g., skipping the 10 meseta chest in Odin's cave)

Gameplay changes

  • Heavy use of the magical Pause button to manipulate luck
  • Luck manipulation allows for semi-reliable control over: enemy selection, enemy numbers, turn order, which characters and enemies get hit, and damage rolls

Route information

  1. Iron Sword
  2. Roadpass and Passport
  3. Myau
  4. Odin
  5. Dungeon Key
  6. Cake
  7. Governor
  8. Noah
  9. Luveno
  10. Polymaterial
  11. Hapsby
  12. Luveno - get Spaceship
  13. Uzo - top left house
  14. Casba - right house above shops
  15. Hovercraft
  16. Flute
  17. Laser Gun
  18. Tarzimal cave
  19. Light sabers
  20. Meseta farm BARBRIAN
  21. Blue dragon
  22. Magic lamp
  23. Silver claw
  24. Experience grind EVILDEAD
  25. Doctor Mad
  26. Sell gear
  27. Ice Digger
  28. Eclipse torch
  29. Titan
  30. Laerma tree
  31. Ceramic shields and Zirconian armors
  32. Robotcop
  33. Darmor
  34. Light saber
  35. Gold Dragon
  36. Shadow
  37. Lassic
  38. Dark Falz
  39. Become Queen

Glitches and Notes

There are no bugs that I know of. Considering the inventory glitches in the later games in the series, I'm surprised. There IS, however, a bug in the Phantasy Star Collection GBA version of Phantasy Star. I read a lot of old forum posts talking about how, at certain character levels, a certain monster would always miss. But after some investigation, I found that the bug is a little more interesting than that. It seems that the variance in damage rolls is broken, and as a result, with the right defense values, you are guaranteed to dodge. I made a table that illustrates. Ultimately, I suspect this bug isn't all that useful for a TAS, but I wanted to document it here for posterity.
If anyone's interested, I also took a bunch of notes while making the TAS and looking into disassemblies of the ROM.

Masterjun: Judging.
Masterjun: Replaced movie file with one that has additional input to actually reach the credits.
Masterjun: Accepted to Vault as an improvement to the previous run.
Stovent: Processing...
Last Edited by adelikat on 11/1/2023 1:16 PM
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