Ever since I heard about a Wizard of Oz JRPG, I was interested in the game's existence, and the possibility of speedrunning it. The game has JRPG battles with, not so much depth admittedly, but also an overworld section with free analog touch screen movement Mario 64 DS wise. At first, it felt like a pain to move around in, but I discovered some interesting interactions after activating a dpad movement cheat.

Here's the first glitch I've found because of it - skid cancelling:

When you turn around or try to stop during a run in RIZ-ZOAWD (just gonna call it that cause the english name is.... long), Dorothy goes into a really long skid animation. However, if you swipe to move left or right and then quickly move your stylus along the outer edge of the trackball to the bottom and come to a stop, the skid animation will be cancelled and Dorothy will instantly come to a halt.

It seems like it can be made consistent, and I'm already getting it more often than not. The main thing this game needs, however, is routing. And I am definitely not great when it comes to routing out JRPG games haha. Just thought I'd post what I randomly found and maybe spark some discussion on the game, as I can't find anyone anywhere who has even attempted to run this game.

Well, you've just found probably one of the only other people who's been looking at running this game!

Believe it or not, I was planning on getting to routing this game by the end of the week! I'm happy to see someone else has found out about it as well! Routing is my favorite thing in speedrunning, especially longer games, and especially for obscure games, so I'd already had this picked out as a personal project.

I've got a JP copy, and I've still got to play through the full story on an English ROM, but I've already done a little routing for what I've played. My plans were to play them side by side, make a good map for every zone, and get side-by-side screenshots for a guide given that the JP copy is much cheaper than the US copy.

I've legit had this on the shelf for about 3 months, I've just been getting intercepted by other runs and life stuff. I'm not letting any of that stop me now!

I've also not yet finished it on my english copy, but have been thinking about finishing it up recently after I noticed the price spiked by about $100 randomly haha.

I'm glad to see someone else is interested in the game, and someone with routing experience cause like I said I am definitely not great at that part lol. As for maps of every zone, good ones of them already exist which can be found on gamefaqs here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/947078-the-wizard-of-oz-beyond-the-yellow-brick-road/faqs

Oh, I didn't see those before somehow. I was using that walkthrough as I played, but somehow completely neglected to notice the maps. I was hoping to do some maps that match the exact twists and turns of each map, but these should be quite useful for right now.

The big routing thing I know already that will be important with this game is balancing our party's levels + when to try and get more skills. Each level seems to have quite a strong effect on combat ability at times, and exp isn't always that fast. The gear routing might end up being quite tight as well, so it's nice there's a good few free equipment items spread about the game.

And yeah, the English copies of this game are insanely pricey now. Secondhand prices have just gone way up in general on older games.

I've gone through and screenshotted relevant info and wrote down some strategy notes for the prologue section. Nothing's solid yet, but there's not much we can influence in it aside from picking our battles wisely. I did notice that between my two games, one of my files ended up a decent bit behind on EXP just because some encounters didn't spawn. It seems fully random how many encounter spots actually get used, which could prove to be an interesting challenge to route around.

There's 10 coins in the prologue, and the Moonfly Powder sells for 2, so we can buy Strawman or Lion a new weapon as soon as we reach Oz's palace. I'm going with Strawman for now, and I'll be seeing if this is a good investment soon, as his damage output is very strong and he doesn't get given a weapon for quite some time, I think. Dorothy gets one in Spring 1, Tin man gets one after we get the fire spirit with a bit of a detour back to Spring 1, and Lion gets some attack boosting armor in Spring 1 as well.

I already had some rough notes for the next two zones, so I'll run through them again and refine what I have there tomorrow. For the moment, a lot of the routing will be sort of guesswork until I've got time to test them out. I'll be making savestates along the way, so going back and testing should be easier.

Have done a bit more work since, and while buying Lion a better weapon sets him nearly equal to Tin Man in strength, it just feels like too much of a drain on resources. Lion's turn is usually going to go much later than the enemies, and will end up taking lots of damage throughout. On my go through Budding Highlands/Spring 1 with Strawman, I ran out of MP on Dorothy a little bit before the end of it- Lion will have to go through a lot more healing.

My conclusion is that it's probably best to buy his weapon after beating Budding Highlands/Spring 1, alongside some armor for Dorothy.

• Father Io isn't bad to beat as soon as possible, but I know for a fact he's a challenge if you try his later iterations too early. I'd say go for Io 2 after Spring 2.

• I've also been listing out the different enemies and their EXP drops, trying to figure out which encounters we skip and which ones we fight. Right now Hijinks are definitely worth avoiding completely (they deal so much damage), and I think I'd also recommend skipping the anemone encounters at the end of Spring 1.

Work's been a bit slow on it lately, but I'll pick up with it.