I made a speed run for FFIV Advance 3hr 19min

[ZeeJustin]

I love speedruns. A speedrun is basically going through a game and completing it as fast as possible. Click on the below links for more info.
Wikipedia entry on Speedrun. Includes a few video clips of sequence breaking.
SDA, a site where you can download and watch hundreds of speed runs
TG - the official record keepers. Unfortunately they don't let you download the videos.
A site with Tool (Emulator) Assisted Speedruns that generally exploit severe glitches for unbelievably fast times

SDA has a speed run of Final Fantasy IV (the SNES version, which is called Final Fantasy II) in which the game is completed in 3 hours and 55 minutes. The game normally takes around 20 hours to complete.

At first I was just messing around for fun, but half way through the game I decided I wanted to actually complete the whole game as fast as I could. I played it on the GBA version which has some major differences that allow it to be played slightly faster. I finished the game in 3 hours and 19 minutes. I am pretty sure this is the fastest anyone in the world has ever completed this game. Here is a screen shot:

The Star listed by the time means the game has been completed

The time is listed as 3:38 because it includes the 19 minute long ending sequence.

This is by going through the whole game running from every single enemy encounter (except for 1 in the entire game), and fighting bosses drastically under leveled.

I assume many of you have played FFIV on SNES, but never on GBA, so here are the major differences:

1) Your run speed in towns and dungeons is significantly faster (it's also like this in the PS version).
2) The bug to skip the sealed cave by warping into the crystal room from the Dwarf Castle no longer works (this added about 10 minutes to my time).
3) After you beat the Giant of Babel, you can return to Mysidia and swap party characters. Cecil must always be in your party. The 5 returned characters are Edward (he's sooo useless even in the late game), Palom, Porom, Yang, and Cid.
4) The developers room is brought back (although this doesn't affect the speedrun in any way. There's no reason to visit it).
5) There is a glitch that I have not yet figured out how to exploit that can result in either skipping a characters turn, or giving a character an extra turn right after he acts. The glitch is EXTREMELY common, and it is impossible to go through the game without noticing it.
6) Virtually every enemy encounter has more HP, especially Bosses, some of which have more than double.
7) There are two additional dungeons that are intended to basically be a "bonus quest" available for you after you beat the game. The second one is quite long, and requires you to go through at least three times to complete it.

Although 2 and 6 work against me, 1 more than makes up for them. I also used 3 to save a lot of time.

The innovation of the SNES speed run in FFIV is harvesting mech dragons for experience. See segments 31 and 32 for this in action. He kills 32 dragons. In my speedrun, i was able to get by only killing 13 and leveling up Rosa. This also leveled up all of the characters waiting for me in Mysidia, so after switching party members, I had a high level party.

Here is a screen shot of my save in the Giant of Babel before any leveling is done. Contrast this with the other screen shot I posted. Note that Cecil has barely changed.

Note that if only 1/5 of your characters are alive, you get 5x the exp, but only for that 1 character. However, all of the characters not in your party that can later return also get 5x the exp. Obviously this worked greatly to my advantage.

I have purchased a Gamecube Gameboy player, as well as a DVDr, and I plan on doing another run and recording it to submit to SDA. In the run I played, I didn't take the early game seriously. I think I will be able to shave a relatively easy 10 minutes off my time. There are also some strategies I have to test that might help a lot. My goal is to get my time under 3 hours and 10 minutes. I'm pretty confident I can do that. If some of the strategies I have been brainstorming actually work, I might even be able to get it under 3 hours, although this will be extremely tough.

I leave for London tomorrow, and will start my speedrun when I get back. I will make another post here once it is uploaded on SDA. Hopefully that will happen before November.

So yeah, I know I'm a dork, but I love speedruns. I highly recommend spending some time at SDA and watching runs of the games you played as a kid. None of the runs on that site use emulators. They are all played straight up on the console they are listed under.