Recorded using Snes9x 1.43+ improvment7 Emulator sync setting:
  • Use wip1 timing
  • Allow left/right up/down
  • Volume envelope height reading
  • Fake mute desync workaround
  • Sync samples with sound cpu
About this movie:
  • Aims for fastest completion time
  • Manipulates luck
  • No programming errors used
  • No warps or passwords
I decided to make a movie for this game because it is wildly underrated and people should see how cool this game actually is. I would like to thank Dragondarch for his awesome movie over at the SDA, I learned a ton of stuff from his run of this game. I would also like to thank OmegaFlareX for his wip of this game which showed me a few tricks but mostly showed me how much luck manipulation can occur in this game.
Luck Manipulation: When watching this movie you will see my character pause for a few frames before entering battles, this is done to decrease the amount of enemies in that particular battle. You will notice delays in the battle itself, which means I am either trying to create a critical hit or change the enemies attack to something less devastating.
Items obtained: This run showcases how few spells and items can actually be obtained for completing the game. I decided not to pick up any new helmets, armors, or weapons, because they are not needed when you are able to manipulate enemy attacks. Also the only spells I obtain are the exit spell, the white spell, and the cure spell. Exit spell is insanely useful in this run because it allows me to not only exit buildings to eliminate backtracking, but it also lets my instantly remove any one enemy from battle. White spell is my primary offensive spell throughout the entire second half of the game; it is used in almost every boss battle. Finally the cure spell is obtained and is only really needed one time, for the Dark King Battle. I discovered something very interesting, and that is the lower your level is, the more damage the cure spell does to the Dark King.
Points of interest:
  • I accidentally found a way to gain infinite seeds, this is very cool but I do not benefit from it because I only needed a few seeds toward the end of the game.
  • The Minotaur gets spanked with the life spell, one hit kill
  • Enemy battles can be avoided by jumping over the sand in the bone dungeon.
  • Tristam's critical hit rate is awesome and requires little frame testing to get critical hits, Kaeli's critical hit rate sucks and as a result requires several seconds before I can get one out.
  • Skullrus rex is killed in one shot with the dragon claw (thanks to Dragondarch's movie for this)
  • Stone golum is owned by the exit spell (thanks to Dragondarch's movie for this)
  • The Dark King Battle went very well; I did not even have to heal myself at all. Because my levels were so low the cure spell inflicted ~27,000 damage to the king. White takes care of the rest.
  • I name the main character Hero


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15594
Location: 127.0.0.1
Former player
Joined: 9/1/2005
Posts: 803
Very nice, definitely a yes vote. bonus points for not naming the main character 'A' even. only bad things i can see were the fact that you didn't get the cure spell when you first went to foresta, since you had to backtrack all the way back which probably cost you a bit of time, and maybe the seeds, though i onyl checked twice, it looks like the first time you didn't take advantage of the glitch while the second you did (first time I checked you had 14 left, second you had 99). but yeah, other than those two things, impressive. didn't think it could be beaten so fast :)
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
thanks Atma, glad you liked it. The seed glitch may not be possible in fireburg, I havent yet checked. It would be usefull if it worked. The backtracking required for the cure spell was mimimized by the fact that I have the exit spell, but in future runs getting the cure spell early would be a good idea.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
ventuz
He/Him
Player (125)
Joined: 10/4/2004
Posts: 940
It's good, even better if you could redo with fix getting cure early, more precise menu control (ABABABABABAB thing, you could win 1 more frame here, 1 more frame there, 1 more here, 1 more there)
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1310)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
He does use ABABABABAB... It's the fastest way possible since he's pressing a button to advance the text on every single frame. I don't think any time was lost on it. (And even if it was, fixing it wouldn't help that the movie is over 2 hours long.)
Player (66)
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
I didn't know Stone Golem was vulnerable to Exit. Goodness... all these years I've been whaling on him unecessarily. So, I'm willing to overlook the obvious error of backtracking for the Cure spell because I'd like a movie of this game up for other people to compete with. But I'd like to do so requesting that other people maintain a similar attitude about future runs of RPGs and the like, because some of these games are reaching the point where they're never gonna get a run up. The first run keeps getting revised before it reaches a publishable state. (Of course, I'm guilty of that myself, what with my Lufia run in its 4th month of limbo, now.) Edit: sorry, forgot to mention... Yes vote.
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.
Ambassador, Experienced player (709)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Wow, this is pretty sweet. Your manipulation is great, but I suspect it can be even better in some places. So it's a definite yes but I'll hope to see an even better version in the future.
Former player
Joined: 6/26/2004
Posts: 139
Location: Kuopio, Finland
This gets a "yes" from me too. Btw, awesome soundtrack ! Battle music is the best in Final Fantasies. ever.
- mazzeneko
Former player
Joined: 8/17/2004
Posts: 377
Hmm, well, missing the Cure spell in the beginning is a pretty obvious mistake. However, I concur with quietkane's comment that long RPG runs tend to never get finished due to constant revisions, and I'd much rather prefer to see a run with some known flaws get published first to make way for a second version later on, than to never have a run published at all due to constantly revising it. So yes vote from me.
Former player
Joined: 9/24/2004
Posts: 177
Yes vote here, but leaning toward meh. The gameplay seemed to have gotten a tad sloppy starting at around the Mine - it didn't feel as if you manipulated enemy attacks enough, and there were a few battles where you could've ended things a half turn earlier had you manipulated the enemies into attacking different targets and/or using different moves. There were also a few instances around here where you used the Bombs to defeat a single enemy instead of using Exit, even though you would've easily had plenty enough White Magic charges, but then moved back toward Exit later in the dungeon as you seemed to have realized Exit was faster.. not really sure which was faster or not though, but either way it bothered me a bit. I think you could've shaved a couple turns off here and there manipulating more criticals, as well. Between those things and not picking up Cure earlier, this probably could've used a second version with better planning and foresight, but it's really not much more than nitpicky things, and knowing how much work it takes to do an RPG run, and how long they take, it really isn't worth trying to shoot this run down.
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 141
I voted yes, but there are some areas that needs some improvement. For instance, I've noticed that occassionally I've seen you completely skip your ally's turn to cast Exit on each enemy, when you can easily take one more out with mainuplated critical attacks from your ally. An example is in the Great Tree. You basically just had Kaeli use Aero on each skeleton, instead of having the Hero cast Exit and Kaeli using an Aero to take out a skeleton, giving you two kills each turn than just one. You can buy/glitch tons of Seeds, so why not use magic more to help you kill enemies faster? By the way, the first Cure you use against the Dark King will harm him, but the second time will cure him. However, the THIRD time you cure him, he will sustain SO much damage he will rapidly shift through phases and eventually die. You will of course have to hit him once to trigger him to change phases. But it is much better than constantly using White after hitting him once with Cure. Effectively managing your and ally's abilities to take out enemies as fast as possible, in addition of getting the Cure spell earlier, will probably save you quite a bit of time. Overall, this is a good start.
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
Casting exit is way faster than waiting for kaeli to obtain a critical. It sometimes requires serveral hundred frames before she can actually get a single critical hit.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Twisted_Eye
He/Him
Active player (398)
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 632
Location: Seattle, WA
quietkane wrote:
I didn't know Stone Golem was vulnerable to Exit. Goodness... all these years I've been whaling on him unecessarily.
Yep, and Skullirus Rex, too, it always made that final dungeon a little bit faster for me, hehe. But the Dark King's weakness to Cure was always a little random on my end, sometimes he was healed on the second Cure and sometimes only the third...Either way, after the first couple rounds he always skipped straight to his final form. This was the only Final Fantasy that I owned for YEARS, so watching this brought back great memories (like having to send in my cartridge to Nintendo because it'd glitch in the Basin and freeze every time...pfft). This run definitely gets a yes from me....If I could vote.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
This deservs a YES vote. But I do have some stuff that needs answering. 1. In the great tree you could have used the claw to move faster at one place I think. Can't remember what frame it was. But as I said. I think you can improve there as the claw movement is faster than your regular walking. 2. Some of the weapon switches didn't seem optimal. Can't remember if you have to stand still to switch weapons. But otherwise you could have switched weapons in a battle for example when your ally is doing a final blow or something. 3. I think you can finish the last boss quicker by abusing cure more. If I remember correctly it can go from the first state to the last state by casting 1-3 cures at him. My mind is a bit rusty since I haven't played this game for a while. But try fiddling around with it. 4. The backtrack to get cure was a PAIN! 5. I think more enemies and bosses are weak to the claw attack. Can't remember what enemies or bosses though. :D Cheers! Great run anyways! And as I said. A Yes vote.
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
1. Interesting, I will look into that because I thought I used the claw as soon as any grapple point was in range. 2. Weapons cannot be switched until you are at a complete stop. I think the only time you can switch weapons during battle it when you are giving the commands, not during the attack animations. 3. Good point, when I cured him a second time it would heal him. I will have to look into this. 4. Yea it sucked 5. Not to sure which enemies are weak to the claw, but I don’t think it would save any time unless I found a boss which could be one hit killed and I don’t think there is any. Thanks for the comments
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Joined: 8/13/2005
Posts: 356
Location: Canada
I have a couple of observations... 1) In the Doom Castle on the ice floor, I see you use the Dragon Claw to quickly advance 4 or 5 tiles. Then on the fire floor, I see you take an additional step towards a claw hook before using the claw. I guess this is already covered by what Highness said, but I wonder how many steps away you have to be to give yourself a time advantage? 2) If anyone does end up working on an improvement, they should consider using select to quickly put their ally on AUTO mode. If they take an action that's beneficial (ie. the one you would pick for them anyways), then you would save the time of selecting and targetting their action. This could add up over the course of the game. I think it could be especially useful with Reuben and Tristam (because they only attack) and Kaeli during her second appearance where she generally uses Aero on the enemies weak to Aero. 3) I'm sure you gave this some thought already, but are you sure that getting the Noble Armor wouldn't save you the second required to get it? 4) You backtrack to the Cure spell. (Just poking fun. :P) The play is entertaining and I think most the play looks great. I agree that this game deserves a bit more respect than it gets... it's not quite the epic that the other Final Fantasy games are, but it's a lot of fun to play. I'll be giving this a yes. I think that an improvement would certainly be on a scale of minutes rather than seconds, though.
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Nothing really impressive/awesome on the global scale, but a fair enough movie for this particular game. My vote is 'meh', but as a judge I accept this movie anyway.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15594
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [449] SNES Final Fantasy Mystic Quest by hero_of_the_day in 2:09:37.95
Joined: 3/17/2005
Posts: 67
Final Fatnasy?
Sir_VG
He/Him
Player (40)
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 1913
Location: Floating Tower
I was the reviewer of Dragon's movie over at SDA and you impressed me even with a couple tricks I never caught. 1) Fighting only the 1 turtle instead of the bird and turtle pair in Wintry Cave (just before the boss) 2) Falls Basin - avoiding those two battles on the right side. I first saw you pushing the platforms and was going...WTF is he doing?! Then I gave you a round of applause. Good work
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing