I see that the good ending route has Hyde pass Jekyll and proceed all the way to the end of the game. How does this work?

There's an infamous bug in Version 1.0 of the game where you can set a stop at the computer's untap phase, and you can tap their lands for mana, causing mana burn and prevents using those lands.

Does the speedrun make use of this?

I was trying to watch the video for the Slashers WR, but that video was removed from Twitch.

It looks like every other video from koffingrockz is gone too.

MAME version 0.245 was just released, officially supporting the game now. No more need for unofficial pre-release builds of MAME.

And one thing stood out in particular in the change notes:

• 9827: marblmd2.cpp: Removed divide-by-two on clock, running the CPU at 14 MHz like Batman, and hooked up EEPROM. [David Haywood]

That's basically a double CPU speed overclock for the game. That's gonna have a big impact on eliminating the slowdown that I see in all the playthroughs.

It's well known that on a real NES, you can power on the game, get into the ship, sail in the ocean, and you are guaranteed to get Kyzokus as your first encounter.

This is because many NES systems will end up with RAM $F5 and $F7 being initialized to value 0xFF.

But a problem arises if you attempt to play Final Fantasy on a flash cartridge. The menu systems of the flash cartridges will leave the RAM as some other value, and you won't get the correct encounters.

It's also a problem on some people's NES systems, they won't initialize the encounter bytes to 0xFF, and the Kyozku test fails.

I made a ROM hack that makes the game initialize the encounter bytes to 0xFF, you can find it here: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6239/ No other changes are made to the game.

I just want to know if use of such hacks would be allowed for speedrunning submissions. (Not for me, I'm not planning on running the game, just wondering in general)

I found out about this feature by watching the TAS for the game: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22696

After entering the Level Select screen (press select), you can hold Select, and press A/B to change an undisplayed Game Speed variable. A increases speed, B decreases speed. Pressing Select+A 34 times will select the highest possible speed, where the game becomes unplayably fast. (More than 34 times wraps back to very slow speeds)

And it also turns out that the game's Instruction Manual even documents this feature:

We all know that Dragon Warrior 3 lets you have three save files. Normally you'd expect one block of save memory to be allocated for the first save file, another block of memory for the second save file, etc... But this is not how the game actually works.

There are three physical SLOTS to hold saved games.

But it turns out that the save file numbers are stored inside of the save file, and the save file can be in any of the three SLOTS.

Whenever you: Continue a Quest, Begin a New Quest, or Change Message Speed, your save file is swapped with the first save SLOT. (Swapping with itself does nothing). Your Adventure Log number never changes, but its location in save memory does.

Additionally, file numbers within empty SLOTS are sorted when the game is reset.

You can see which save file is inside each save SLOT by looking at RAM values 63E8, 66FD, 6A12. (Save file numbers are values 00, 01, or 02, one less than the displayed number 1, 2, or 3)

Examples of actions you take, and what swapping looks like. Remember that your save file is SWAPPED with the first physical SLOT when you do anything (continue, new game, change message speed)

Erase all saves, then reset (empty save SLOTS are sorted)

• 1 2 3 Create a save in Adventure Log 2, reset
• 2 1 3 Create a save in Adventure Log 3, reset
• 3 1 2 Create a save in Adventure Log 1, reset
• 1 3 2 Change Message Speed on Adventure Log 2
• 2 3 1 Continue Adventure Log 1
• 1 3 2

So why does this matter? At bootup or reset, the game will initialize RNG to the checksum of the third SLOT. If you have a particular file in there, you will already have the correct RNG without needing to change message speed.

So if you create the "E?" file (female, speed 5) into Adventure Log 2, then get it placed into the third SLOT, the RNG will begin at seedlock every time you reset the game.

Really quick trick to see if you have the "E?" file in the correct SLOT already:

Change Message Speed on Adventure Log 1 Reset Continue Adventure Log 1 See if you have seedlock (watch townspeople).

If you don't have seedlock, then SLOT 3 contains Adventure Log 3 instead of Adventure Log 2.

To swap the two files:

Change Message Speed on Adventure Log 3 Change Message Speed on Adventure Log 2 Change Message Speed on Adventure Log 1 Reset

There are 8 tracks, in both Left-Facing and Right-Facing versions. (Your vehicle faces either Left or Right at the beginning of the race)

There's a sequence of 2 tracks, then 3 tracks, then 4 tracks, then 5 tracks, etc, until all 8 tracks are unlocked. Each sequence will alternate between Left-Facing and Right-Facing tracks.

The last track (Hurricane Gulch) becomes available at Race 34, and the opposite-facing version at Race 42.

There are 99 races total. After beating Race 99, you are kicked out to the High-Score screen.

Qualifying Races: Facing Left, Race 1-2: Fandango, Sidewinder Facing Right, Race 3-5: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out Facing Left, Race 6-9: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out, Big Dukes Facing Right, Race 10-14: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out, Big Dukes, Blaster Final Tournament of Champions: Facing Left, Race 15-20: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out, Big Dukes, Blaster, Cliffhanger Facing Right, Race 21-26: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out, Big Dukes, Blaster, Cliffhanger, Huevos Grande Facing Left, Race 27-34: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out, Big Dukes, Blaster, Cliffhanger, Huevos Grande, Hurricane Gulch Facing Right, Race 35-42: Fandango, Sidewinder, Wipe Out, Big Dukes, Blaster, Cliffhanger, Huevos Grande, Hurricane Gulch Races 43-99 repeat the tracks of races 27-42.

There are "Easy" tracks, and "Hard" tracks. The computer opponent basically plays unfair on "Hard" tracks, and exceeds your maximum speed without consuming any nitros. A good player can still win on the "Hard" tracks.

"Easy" Tracks: Fandango, Wipe Out, Cliffhanger, Huevos Grande "Hard" Tracks: Sidewinder, Big Dukes, Blaster, Hurricane Gulch

There is also a hidden "Difficulty" variable. The value starts at 32. On every race except for 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, the difficulty value increases by 2. By the end of the game, the difficulty value is at 220. So races 43-99 do get steadily harder over time.

(If you want to test the difficulty value, it's memory address 7E2. Try beating Fandango at 255 Difficulty!)

Trivia: If there was no 99 race limit, game difficulty would reach 256, and wrap back to 0 at race 117.

With the new glitch that lets you freeze Harry and Marv, I'm guessing that should be a separate category than the usual runs where you actually have to play the game.

I just noticed that the rules make absolutely no mention of the state of the difficulty switches. One switch makes the dragons bite faster, the other switch makes the dragons run from the sword.

The Wand of Create Traps is the easiest way to create Trap Doors, which can take you further into the dungon. Do any of the runs use this strategy?

I once cheesed through Castle 2 just by making trapdoors, savescumming at the end boss, then savescumming and escaping my way out of the dungeon. No clock running of course, it was just casual play.

What are the rules regarding use of the invincibility glitch?

Right now, there are two categories of the game:

• RNG Manipulation + RNG freeze + Memory Corruption (dead party glitch)
• RNG Manipulation + RNG freeze, but without Memory Corruption

The problem is that RNG freeze itself is a glitch. While it doesn't outright corrupt any memory, it does freeze a Linear Feedback Shift Register to no longer produce random values. So despite being called "glitchless", it still relies on the RNG freeze bug in the game.

Then there's Basic RNG Manipulation, where you use Change Message Speed on another save file to reset the RNG to something desirable. Should runs that forgo that get their own category?

I see a lot of race times that would beat out times on the leaderboard.

Just letting people know that Version 1.01 of the game has been released, and I have not successfully gotten out of bounds once. You may need to keep a copy of the old version around for speedrunning purposes.