Hey everyone! Ok, so I will try to explain this as best as I can even though there are some things I still don’t quite understand myself lol.
Before I begin, I want to say thank you to K, MatChariot, Killllme, and Samsara for their hard work and research into this game and its crazy glitches. This TAS wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. I’ve watched their speedruns and other videos showing some of the tech I adapted here in my route.
To set this up, a strong board is placed on the left side of the gap and the weak wood is placed on the right side. The weak wood needs to break while Emi is standing on it during battle, so exactly 4 steps need to be taken before then. It is important to position the party so that Emi and Akiko are on the weak wood together. Everyone temporarily disbands from the party. Kazuo gets into an encounter and calls Emi to join. Once Emi joins, she calls Akiko and Kazuo leaves. When Akiko is called, she takes the last step off of the wood and it breaks while Emi is standing on it, causing her to fall in the pit. Akiko doesn’t join the battle. This is where the game starts to break as the person you’re controlling is not intended to be in a battle state and an “I-need-to-be-rescued” state at the same time lol. Once Emi leaves the battle, you are still in control of her even though you are stuck and can’t move. However, you can still team back up with Kazuo. Once you switch to him, Emi will follow behind but will still appear stuck in the ground. Kazuo also rejoins Akiko. Taguchi comes over and rescues Emi while she is still in the party with Kazuo and Akiko. Now the game thinks that Emi is essentially in two parties at once! During this state, Taguchi is able to move Emi around remotely to have her bypass obstacles and grab items not accessible so early in the game. Getting that powerful sword at the beginning of the game is imperative. Probably the best thing about this is you can (and will) use Taguchi as extra storage! One wrong move while controlling Taguchi and Emi could get stuck. If Taguchi goes through a door, he will bring Emi with him as seen later on in the run. The board glitch is what makes all of the other glitches possible.
- Board Glitch Side Effects:
Of course there are side effects!! Emi now moves at twice the speed for whatever reason, which is awesome since this is a speedrun lol. Be careful when leading Akiko and Kazuo as they still move at normal speed. If Emi moves too fast with them following behind, they may go “off-grid” and the game can soft lock. Besides the theme playing most of the time now, battles themselves are now different too. Normally when you get into an encounter, you will always get the chance to attack the enemy first. Not anymore! The enemy will now attack you first. This can be a bad thing if the enemy gives a status ailment. To make sure you have first attack on an enemy, you have to save the game and do a soft reset. This is done a couple of times during the run. There are multiple copies of party members during a battle. For instance, Emi will show up twice during a round. It is important to note that only the second action will be recognized. For instance, if you use pray points during the first appearance and a regular attack on the second, only that regular attack will register. Even when Emi is alone, Akiko and Kazuo still will attack alongside as If they were there. You also can level up multiple times at the end of a battle, which is needed to getting into the final area quick. Glitched party members will often show up during an encounter either to help attack, level up, or even screw up your game! Sometimes when a glitched member attacks or levels up, it may cause you to not be able to switch party members anymore. Also, unwanted item-shuffling may occur. Item-shuffling? We’re about to talk about that…
Oooh, what is this? This is the key (pun intended) to getting some of the items you need for traversing the mansion and the final battle with Lady Mamiya. This basically allows you to glitch the important items into your inventory slots. I call it item-shuffling since items from one person can shuffle around and transfer to another (Taguchi might end up with Emi’s key, Asuka might end up with the med kit etc…). As seen in this run, a normally permanent item was shuffled into a regular inventory slot. Getting this glitch to work is VERY specific and even if you do everything right, sometimes it still doesn’t work the way you want, or you may receive items that aren’t helpful. You first need to make sure your party order is Emi, Akiko, then Kazuo. Kazuo should have the sword Emi picked up earlier. Save and reset to have first attack. You must get into an encounter with the torso-zombie. This glitch won’t work as intended if it is a different enemy. This was the most difficult part for me since every action and input you make during battle can (and will) change the RNG, giving you vastly different results. Even having certain items in your inventory prior to battle may change the results as well. Emi must call Asuka, Akiko must use her med kit, and Kazuo must use 1 pray point. Why? Don’t question it, just do it lol. When Asuka is called, I don’t touch any controls. Moving Asuka around into different rooms during this time may change the RNG or cause teleportation. If done incorrectly (or if you do any other actions besides those mentioned) you might end up in an almost-never ending battle, teleported somewhere else, or get stuck. Once the battle is successful, you will see a ton of level ups. I believe the glitched party members leveling up is what causes the item-shuffling to happen. Since Kazuo receives the diary, that completely cuts out a chunk of the game. Most of the time for me, Kazuo’s lighter gets replaced with a log or another useless item. Luckily I was able to have him keep his lighter saving a lot of time from my previous route. Taguchi’s inventory had the strongest pitchfork and Emi’s key which was extremely helpful. For whatever reason, Asuka and Kazuo disappear. You may soft lock the game if you switch to them by accident. Akiko also disappears temporarily. For now, you are unable to switch characters and can only control Emi. Next we do the door glitch!
The last hurdle is getting the gold key door (and the ice room) opened early bypassing a majority of the game. Once the encounter with the torso-zombie is completed, you are in a state where you can't get into any encounters. Recent testing revels that upon completing a battle with an "insta-enemy" (such as the bats, knights and assuming mirrors although untested) during a no-encounters state, causes doors to open and/or close. Emi walks down the steps and Akiko reappears behind her. You must get into two encounters with the bats. This is my method of doing this glitch. Speedrunner Killllme does a couple more encounters in his run to open an additional door. My route makes sure someone has a key so I just do two. It is a lot faster. Sometimes I get it to work, sometimes it just doesn’t work. If successful, once you go back up the stairs you will see the gold key door open. Let’s go inside!
I go straight to the mouse room and get the first blue candle. A quick pause and unpause when entering gave me good RNG in that room to clear it as quickly as possible. Just like most other RPGs, opening the menu, pausing, and what frame you move changes RNG. After placing the blue candle, Emi heads left to the ice room where she grabs a rope and second candle. The rope is VERY important! Like I said earlier, you are in a state where you can’t switch members. My theory is that the game thinks Emi is stuck. If she uses the rope on herself, she becomes unstuck and can switch to Taguchi again! As with other glitches here, sometimes this trick doesn’t work either lol. Now that you are “rescued” you can switch to Taguchi and have him give Emi back her key so she can open this door in front of her. Be careful, you will now get into encounters again so watch out! From here on out Taguchi is used a lot to bypass quicktime events, rope barriers and glass. Emi grabs the 2keys and heads for Lady Mamiya’s bedroom. Fun fact… Yamamura won’t ever appear anywhere else if you don’t trigger his first appearance while carrying the low key. Because we skipped over that whole portion of the game, you don’t see him and his cutscene isn’t shown. There is still some dialog, but it goes by way faster than in normal gameplay. After the fireplace is opened up, Emi heads into the dungeon to grab the coffin and mallet. You’ll find that the mirror is already smashed and can walk through. You have to be very careful here because the wall is not opened on the other side and there have been times where Emi got stuck in the wall. Emi says what’s up to Akiko again and gives her the coffin. Next grab the photo and last blue candle. Taguchi then moves Emi through the courtyard so she can get the amulet. Since Emi is pretty far away, it is faster for Taguchi to walk through the doorway and warp her here. From here it’s just the endgame. Make sure everyone’s inventory is filled with the essential items needed for the final battle. One last big Taguchi movement to bypass the doppelgängers and we’ve made it! Show Lady Mamiya the four items, pray and we’re done! Something funny is during the end sequence, Asuka’s sprite is missing but she is not dead as the best ending is shown! Hopefully she made it out ok haha. I’m sure there’s other things I forgot to mention, but I think I explained the majority of it.
- Closing & Future Improvements:
Sweet Home is one of my favorite games period! Playing it casually and speedrunning it. I hope more people get into this game and find how much of a gem it is. There is a whole lot of future potential in these glitches. Teleportation is one of them. After a battle sometimes you can be teleported to a completely different area of the mansion. Just the other day I found a way to open the fireplace early. I just don’t know how to implement it in a run yet. I think I did a pretty great job of step-count / encounter management, but there’s always room for improvement. I believe there could be a way to shuffle all or most of the important items in your inventory. It’ll be some crazy frame-perfect shenanigans, but it might be possible. Probably too complicated for me to figure out, but hopefully someone out there will take some interest in exploring these glitches some more. Enjoy the TAS! I had a lot of fun making it. It took me a long time to get it to this point, but I am looking forward to what may be the next crazy glitch…
Note: I did this TAS on FCEUX, but converted it to a Bizhawk file. It plays back perfect for me.
This is my first submission here, so don't be too mean to me if I did something wrong haha :)
Thank you,
Steven Q-Beatz
Samsara: Judging. File replaced with a version truncated to the final input, and replaced once again with a 1066 frame improvement, and replaced once again with a further 925 frame improvement, and replaced once again with a further 363 frame improvement.
