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Speedrun notes

KadMony

draft

qui chemine.

© who cares about Copyright.

Qu’est-ce donc?
This set of notes is supposed to be taken as an anthology of RPG speedrun, providing comprehensive route explanation as well as being focused on both route/speedrun history and
glitch explanations on each game it gets interest into. The main objective of the project is to
provide a general class with good publication standards which will be useful to add more and
more chapers through times (the present file contains already of thousands of lines of code)
This version is a rough draft, we hope to get it public when the FF6 section will be filled. If
you speedrun an RPG and would like to add one chapter about your game -wanting the same
level of explanation and publication standards as already written chapters- feel free to contact
me and take part into the project.

iii

Contents
Qu’est-ce donc?

iii

1

Xenogears
1.1 General information Xenogears’ speedrun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Xenogears’ speedrun route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1
2
15

2

Final Fantasy VI
131
2.1 Prolégomènes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
2.2 Final Fantasy VI any% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
2.3 Final Fantasy VI 100% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

3

Romancing Saga 3
145
3.1 Prolégomènes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
3.2 Romancing Saga 3 any% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

iv

Versions History

version 1.00 -> 2.00 -> 3.00 -> 3.10 -> only Xenogears draft version (not public).

v

you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as
gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall
be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods.
Deus ∼ Ω 1

1
Xenogears

1.1

General information Xenogears’ speedrun . . . .

2

1.2

Xenogears’ speedrun route . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

1

1.1 General information Xenogears’ speedrun
1.1.1

History of the run

After contributing on Xenogears’ in several ways for some years -working mainly on script,
hacking and translation- I began getting some interest into Xenogears’ Speedrun in June 2012.
At that time a rather embryonic route of the game was held by several japanese runners. The
first set of these notes -which were at that time solely dedicated to Xenogears- was written
around 1 year and are the result of the study and enhancements of this japanese route. After
some more unpleasant months of training I finally got a satisfying time (18h27min in February 2014). Surprisingly a topic was opened at the very same time as i was finishing the first version of the notes and route on SDA by Rudyxx (www.twitch.tv/rudyxx) in order to gather
some information on an possible community routing of the game.
The first known Xenogears speedrun is attributed to M. Masahiro Kimura -reported in
Famitsu Weekly of the 29th of May, 1998- with a segmented run of 18h50min. Note that due to
the numerous dialog boxes, the run is around 3h30 slower in US version. The time remains still
amazing, notably since the game was then released for a couple of months only. It took more
than ten years for a consistent RTA route to emerge in the japanese community, the last contributor of the route being the runner UG. Considerable improvements were implemented in
the 2013 notes, including the desert skip, enhanced strategies for almost all bosses, money route
update, new Babel Tower route and camera optimization. There remain certainly new strategies discover and develop, lots of energy has been put on since 2014 -notably by Cordellium(www.twitch.tv/cordellium) but no substancial improvement has been brought up yet.
Still having some ideas to improve the run, I may try someday to look at it again.

2

1.1.2

What’s next?

I’ve been now focused on speedruns of other games for some time. Still there are some ideas
I have for some time which may enhance the current route of Xenogears’ speedrun. It seems
clear that either I or collaborators will investigate these at some point. The notes will be updated if anything worth is discovered.
1.1.3 Standard policies
When bringing up Xenogears’ speedrun out of Japan I decided to
follow the standards settled by the Japanese runners. The timer is
started when hitting the New Game button in the main menu, and
stopped once the Xenogears Episode V, the end has appeared,
at the end of the game. This does not match with the standard policies applied for RPG Speedruns outside of Japan, namely the usual New Game > last input
set-up. Sill this is what came out from Xenogears community and I like it, notably since the

Did you know?
Through the famous
control panel i was using for
my first modified runs, we
know that the

button is hit

about around 450 000 times in
a single Xenogears run.

last screen of Xenogears The End has a personal strong
emotional aspect. Usually Autofire is not allowed
for RPG speeduns out of Japan without further notice, and Xenogears is no exception to the rule. The
speedrun on the US version thus involves mashing
with bare hands. The big amount of slow textboxes in
the game makes a consistent mashing one of the key
ingredients to get a satisfying run of the game.

3

1.1.4

Versions and categories

Systems comparison
The game was initially speedran on Playstation 2, as many Playstation RPGs. Surprisingly the
Xenogears speedrun community was the first to brought up the non-trivial timing differences
which can occur with the different versions of the Playstation 2. Indeed playing Playstation
games on a Playstation 2 is done through a build-in emulator called PS-Driver which has several
versions depending on the version of the Playstation 2 you are playing on. Many issues appear
through the PS-Driver -notably the famous Deus glitch- and time difference between the fastes
and the slowest models of PS2 is of several hours.
Even though it remains hard to determine accurately the pace of a system many researches have
been done to determine the best version to run

Version Differences
US Version

The fastest system playing
Xenogears’ US version is
the old SCPH-7xxx version

the game. Of course another important parameter to determine on which system to run is the

of the Playstation 2.
It displays the game around

Deus glitch (see below for more detail). As for the
build-in PS-Driver emulator of the Playstation 2,

45 minutes faster than any
other system each run!

the platforms allowing to play the game through
its PSN version (Playstation 3, PSP, PSTV) also
include a build-in emulator called the POPSloader. Fortunately the POPSLoader is quite easy
to update through standard firmware updates, and thus the Deus Glitch was removed for the
first time on the PSN Version of the game during 2013 and the 6.XX firmwares of the PSP. We
refer to the upcoming Glitches section for a detailed account on the Deus Glitch appears and we

4






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