There are some GBA notes floating around. As far as I know the only one who has put some effort into it is Satarack : (see old resource site: https://sites.google.com/site/ff6speedruns/speedruns/english-gba-route), so if you want a potential starting point, you might be able to use that!

But for the most part it's fairly similar to the SNES with some glitches fixed, and some things not doable (there are some GBA unique glitches though). I think it has the potential to be interesting, but I think most people see it being a little too similar to the SNES version with some things removed via the things Dyne suggested.

I'm with you - I do enjoy the GBA version casually - and while the audio is objectively worse than the SNES version (GBA had a 8-bit audio channel and likely added compression on top of that), I think it's not as big of a deal as people tend to make it out to be. I only noticed it when playing on emulator - when I played on an actual GBA on crappy headphones when it came out - not like I could tell the difference.

Wow, thanks for putting in the effort. I'll give it a shot when I get some free time and try to test it out.

Typically, ZSNES is globally banned in speedrunning, due to it's notorious inaccuracy. Thus, not allowed for FFVI as well. For SNES Emulators, SNES9x is the most easily accessible SNES emulator, and anything over version 1.5 should be good - though there are others as well.

If you're looking for a good reference of what is generally allowed for emulators for most games, you can usually refer to: http://www.speedrunslive.com/faq/ "Can I play on Emulator" and it'll be accurate most of the time.

Just wanted to talk about my initial findings after playing the switch version.

It comes as the "Ultimate" version, and thus comes with all DLC on, and there isn't a way to disable it.

Loading times seem pretty average to good. There is some noticeable lag often (by someone who has put 500 hours into the game, would be harder to notice if you're playing casually), very noticeable lag occurs in a few spots.

Most of the skips/speed tech appear to work (cutscene skips, pre-umbra pause, Oengus skip, and stardust duping. Had trouble getting Finn Skip on first try; when I did get it, appeared to crash the game. Needs a bit of further testing to be sure.

2 Player support comes easy as it has Joycon support. I personally dislike controlling Igniculus via a joystick. In terms of control issues, that would be really the only thing that stands out, but that would be identical to any other version where you are playing the controller.

Tested using the dock, haven't tested dock-less.

Sure, why not, any game is runnable. I think some people toyed with the idea when it first came out, but I imagine the lack of documentation on it is due to lack of interest. Feel free to be the first.

Was linked to what I believe to be mochigome's PB - posted it on here. Got rid of the Turbo rule because I never really cared, and it doesn't matter that much.

Thinking about nixing the Turbo rule. There aren't many runners of this anyway and it seems a little disingenuous to not have the leaderboard be as complete as possible.

I'll try to add Mochigome's PB on here if I can find it. The video I linked above isn't his best time.

So there exists a TAS for this at 1:55:38. I don't believe it'd be RTA viable. It is played emulating GBC (there are some console differences).

http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/35608483

The main thing it does is fairly early (after Land Dragon) crafting of best possible weapons is done for Ashton and Celine, and crafting of the Field Actions of Run & Hover for Precis. I don't think it'd be possible to RTA to craft the weapons, it's done in a few steps, and the last step would be too hard to do at that low level. Additionally, there is some manipulation of getting rare drops from monsters.

I DO think it's RTA viable to craft the FA for Precis to Run/Hover. This allows us to not have to dump 1500 sp onto Celine so she learns hover (done after Aspara). And get's us hover a little earlier.

All in all, unless there exists reliable RNG manip for some of the things used many things in the TAS, I don't think I can adopt much. But I am going to some experimentation to see what I can get out of this.

I decided to remove Mochigome's run (the 2:58:43). JRTA rules tend to allow Turbo controllers, while that is often banned in the west. To keep that spirit, I decided to take it off the leader board. Also apparently he has a better time, but doesn't appear to have a recording (2:46:54).

I'll still post the video below so it can be used as reference.

9 Part Playlist: Requires a Nico account.

All quests would require you to actually complete Finn's/Oengus' quest that we end up skipping. Additionally, you'd have to do that side-quests from a few NPCs as well.

It does seem like it would end up being the same as Any%, with just going out of your way at a few points. Tristis isn't particularly great, and we don't get Gen long enough for her to be used IMO. But whoever would like to route that out and see, feel free to go ahead!

So far it hasn't gathered any interest. You're certainly welcome to. Right now the closest thing we've agreed on for a category similar to that is All Confessions/Quests, it's under the misc tab as no one has bothered putting serious work into it.

You're certainly welcome to make any rule set you would like for a particular run you're interested in. However not all categories will be listed on the leader board until the community agrees on them being listed.

Here is a permanent invite: ¤Edit, let's try this again: https://discord.gg/hugexRk

Shoutout to the French & German restreams for RPGLB. Much appreciated!

If I actually get around to routing expert, this is a no-brainer as we would want to pause before Umbra anyway, and this would just be an easy timesave.

Figured I'd talk about it here as I somewhat voiced my thoughts on discord. Normally, we would prep Oengus with a Citrine for the Umbra fight pre-Nox and just deal with not having an Emerald in Nox. This would allow us to give Oengus an Emerald before Nox, then do the Pre-Umbra Pause (lets call it PUP?), then during that time give Oengus a Citrine and do any level ups (really only Oengus & Robert give us useful levels).

Doing this takes roughly about 25-30 seconds. We could use this for Beginner-friendly strats, as it essentially makes the Nox & Umbra fights easier. If doing this can make Nox & Umbra take a combined 30 seconds faster, then obviously this will be the choice we would want to use.

Initial testing, it does appear to be a timesave. It'll be dependent somewhat on if we get some high tier Emeralds, but there is a pretty good chance we'll be getting that.

Also, I imagine this works for all versions of the game. It should work off the same principal that the old Oengus skip works, which works on everything.

I tried it out a few times. There is absolutely no reason we should use the old method. Everyone should just adopt this. It is just as easy. Free time save of around 20 to 25 seconds.

Thanks for bringing us new Tech AndySandford!

O wow. I'll have to look into that.

Basically it works bc of the way the game auto saves. We trigger an auto save while he is in our party, and when we leave the zone, it doesn't auto save again.

So when we flee from Cordelia, it loads the data from the the auto save (where Oengus is in our party) but places us right in front of the boss.

I'll assume this trick abuses auto saves in the same way. I'll have to look into this! Thanks for the post

Commentary on the French re-stream for SGDQ would be great! We have someone who will be able to provide some commentary for the German re-stream of RPGLB as well, maybe we can convince her to do it for SGDQ!

Sorry, I forget us Americans have a weird date convention. RPG Limit Break is May 9-15.