Executes arbitrary code (not total control though)
Encodes a message with an ancient cipher
Stair glitch
Certain staircases in Final Fantasy push a state on to the stack to keep track of where you have gone. Take enough of those and you can overflow the stack. Hitting start to bring up the menu triggers a glitch that jumps into a range of memory used when entering your party's names. There actually aren't many staircases that use this but one of them is in Castle Coneria right where you start.
Since it is the name entry that sets the memory up, multiple glitches can be executed by starting a new party, hitting reset and loading up your actual party. In some cases you don't need to reset because the savegame memory gets corrupted.
The Japanese version has a larger character set than the English version even though it only supports the phonetic Hiragana alphabet and a few other characters. Turns out that some of the character codes not available in English are needed to execute some of the more interesting glitches.
Welcotar posted this on the forums after Gyre [dead twitch link removed] found this out and used it to make some realtime runs. This run is basically a TAS-optimized version of Gyre's fastest method [dead twitch link removed].
The first plan was to jump right to the credits. Gyre figured out a way to do that by jumping to the memory of the item list. The item list had to be set up for this and even with some underflow glitches it still took a while [dead twitch link removed].
Another interesting but much longer plan involved gaining access to the final dungeon and completing it [dead twitch link removed]. The stairs glitch was used to corrupt one character's level to 102. At that level most normal enemies flee and bosses flee about 2/3 of the time. It took close to an hour but that was good enough to beat the current any% TAS by over 10 minutes.
The fastest method used here first uses that same level corruption trick. A second glitch causes the next NPC to trigger the final boss fight vs Chaos. As we already know, making Chaos run is good enough to get the credits to roll.
Easter Eggs
Only the second and last hero names matter. You need to name the first and third though. Since you can move the cursor one step without losing time I enter something besides just ああああ (aaaa). If I am getting this right the names sound like 'akasai' and 'waiwai'.
You need to step off the stairs and back on many times. It doesn't matter which direction so I felt like I had to do something to play with that. So I used the direction to encode a message. The message in the first stair glitch is the names of the authors and the second one is a special Final Fantasy-related message.
TheAxeMan's comments
Thanks to everyone who posted on the forums. Welcotar, Gyre and others did most of the work investigating the glitch. Inzult posted a mostly optimized run that I just cleaned up a little for this submission. I was finishing up my Ultima 4 NES run.
Noxxa: Walking up and down stairs repeatedly for five minutes is a repetitive affair, but results in an oddly comedic effect for this run. It's also nice to see how that action ends up breaking the game entirely. Accepting for Moons as a new branch.
The world is veiled in darkness. Winds don't blow, the seas are stormy, and the earth rots. All people can hope for is that the ancient prophecy will be finally fulfilled. "When the world is veiled in darkness, four warriors will come..." And indeed, they come - the four characters you have previously chosen. Their first quest is to free a princess from the evil knight Garland, and then the real journey begins.
Are you sure? I think it's more of a case where a group of people with a stairs fetish walks to exhaustion, then after taking a break they walk up and down again because up was good. Stairs brought you up. Stairs were good. Staaaaaaaiiiirrrrrssss.
Oh and someone tried to interrupt so they got rid of him.
Only the second and last hero names matter. You need to name the first and third though. Since you can move the cursor one step without losing time I enter something besides just ああああ (aaaa). If I am getting this right the names sound like 'akasai' and 'waiwai'.
Actually, the characters names are
-あかかき (Read as Akakaki)
-やどはら (Read as Yadohara, it is the best name among these four even if it is just a payload name, it just sounds like a real Japanese name =D)
-やゆやゆ (Read as YaYuYaYu)
-むご５こ (Which should be read as Mugo go ko I guess, maybe Mugo itsu ko since 5 can be read either as go or itsu, but I think it should be pronounced as go here... Anyways, I guess this character's name has no reason to be pronounced, it is just a payload, right? ^o^)
Anyways, that was not that bad, just a little boring at the start, but this deserves to be published ;).
Oh hey congrats, it's nice to see an optimized movie finally up. :-)
This game was very rewarding for me to study. It was the first game I got working in my first emulator ages ago, and I spent many months disassembling it. For all its bugs, it's full of brilliant stuff and still fun to play.
It was awesome to post on tasvideos and find other people who were not only interested in a stack overflow in a 30 year old game, but who then worked to come up with creative exploits and perfect them like this. Perhaps we will randomly encounter each other again sometime. :-)
Oh it has returned to the state of submission, has anything changed in the movie? A late improvement maybe? The submission text does not mention anything about that...
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Because ratings didn't agree.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I'm rather late to the party but I'd like to question the "Executes arbitrary code" tag on this one.
This is not arbitrary code execution, it's a semi-controlled jump.
Has this been a topic of discussion before? If not, I'd like to take this opportunity to arbitrarily enforce my expectations upon the community at large.
ACE should be a defined 'state'. Once you can overwrite any specified memory values with chosen values and can get the processor to jump there, the game has achieved ACE.
This does not do that.
(Note, I'm purely arguing about the ACE tag. The achievement in this game is still amazing, just not ACE)
