I seem to remember having far less problems with an older shareware version of the game, this was the one with all the nasty apple messages against other game companies.
Anyway, I wonder if anyone would want to do the max score challenge? As far as I know, there is a limit to the game's score.
Now we need to know what FF04 is and why it increments. After reading a few articles online, I've learned that FF04 is the "divider register". It's basically a timer that runs independently of the rest of the game and increases at a fixed rate. Based on the short and consistent length of the loop that initializes the RNG pointers FF04 will always increment at such a rate that when C34B is initialized, FF04 will always be 9 greater than its value when it was used to initialize C30B.
BUT! The rate of this timer is dependent on the platform! Take a look at this page. With the SGB, the divider runs about 2.4 percent faster and it can even be run at double speed under the GBC. Dwedit, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this effectively acts as a "hardware RNG", although due to a tragic coincidence, it produces some not very random values when used to initialize the software RNG.
And to close out this post, I'll say that most of this is untested on my part. I know, I know, I should just sit down and force the SGB or GBC core, but I've done enough research for one night. Also, I just rebooted the game in the SGB core and I can't even find the damn RNG pointers in RAM watch. It's possible (or even likely) that although FF04 runs fast on the SGB, so too does the CPU by the exact same amount. Only differences in the relative clock speeds-- not absolute differences-- should free up the possibility to manipulate C30B and C34B independently of one another.
The divider only cares about clock cycles, and it's 256 clock cycles to change the value of the divider. The timing differences between SGB and GB won't change this, and it only runs faster in GBC mode if the game has intentionally turned on double speed mode.
However, the SGB does have a different bootrom that takes far fewer frames to finish. There are 70224 clock cycles in a frame, which does not divide evenly by 256, and by taking fewer frames to finish, the divider will be in a different position.
Does anyone know if the GBC's boot logo takes a different amount of time vs the GB's boot logo? That also throws off the divider.
"Playable" time is one of the silliest reasons to reject a run.
Look at the history of Super Mario Bros TASes, runs with longer "playable" time obsoleted the runs with shorter "playable" time because the total real time was lower.
Fortunately, it's not Sonic with those damn bonus times.
Why are people mentioning Game Boy games here? There are no PAL Game Boy Games at all. It's a 60Hz system, and there are only different regions of games instead. PAL is not shorthand for European region, it refers to the 50Hz TV standard the games released in the region use. No TV, no PAL.
Horrible music, and all you do is walk left. By the looks of it, the enemies don't even attack you; you get to choose whether or not you engage them, or just walk past them. I thought this was one of the crappy games from Action 52 until I looked it up and learned that you can free soldiers from rocks and trees... so I guess there's slightly more to this game than walking left the whole game. Of course, if you stop to free good guys, you have to listen to that horrible music that repeats every 10 seconds that many more times. Regardless of how well optimized it is, it's definitely not entertaining.
Try playing the game, you'll very quickly how differently it plays without ridiculous luck manipulation.
You're only seeing the king move left all the time because everyone has been manipulated to move out of the way, and only see fights getting won due to very low probabilities succeeding.
NES games tended to be developed in Japan or USA, but some were developed in Europe.
Many NES games got a really crappy port job, in which they did literally nothing, letting the game run slower, the music play slower, and one half-step lower. Obviously we don't want to see PAL TASes for those games, and this is probably the reason for the rule against picking PAL versions.
A minority of NES games (such as mid to late Capcom games) got a decent port that fixed the music pitch and speed, but did not fix the gameplay speed.
Then it occasionally happens the other way around too. Kiwi Kraze from Software Creations in UK got a NTSC port that increased the music pitch, but at least preserved the tempo. The NTSC version also runs faster, so that version would get picked for TASing rather than the PAL version, but I personally think the PAL version of that game is what the developers intended to create.
There are just so few NES games that got a change for the game physics for the PAL version to properly adapt it to 50FPS vs 60FPS. I believe if the game got a physics adjustment, it will have its own set of unique quirks, and should be considered for a separate branch for TASing.
I voted yes and also agree it should obsolete the current run. A faster run of the same category is a faster run; the version used doesn't matter as long as it's official.
PAL Super Mario Bros is NOT Super Mario Bros. The graphics match, but so many mistakes were made during the region conversion that it's almost like a separate game.
I'm watching the FFMQ race tournament on SpeedGaming2, and everyone is using the glitched route that would easily beat the current TAS.
Skips the two dungeons in the fireburg area and skips getting the thunder rock.
Reference: https://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/532476-final-fantasy-mystic-quest/faqs/68495 look for section V)GLITCHES USED IN THE SPEEDRUN
The RNG is very unfriendly for realtime play, but is very friendly for TAS play, as different keys pressed each frame varies the RNG result.
I bet the fireburg area skip alone would save over 10 minutes.
As I just mentioned, you can stick a GBC game cartridge into a GBA SP (second version with backlit screen), and it will output sRGB video.
As for what an actual GBC screen looked like, you either had the right angle to see the screen reflecting some yellowish indoor lighting, or you had the Worm Light shining a bluish white LED on the screen.
The GBA SP v2 and Game Boy Player will output the true RGB colors that the game specifies, as will the Super Game Boy.
What exactly are the palette choices? There's probably one that washes out the colors and makes white gray to try to simulate the original Game Boy Color, then there's maybe a brighter version of that, then there's probably also a True RGB color mode.
Has anyone tried splicing saves together? I bet you could get into Doom Castle very early.
Edit: It appears that you likely *can't*, as there are three separate saves per slot according to datacrystal. So much for that idea.
