The History of Phantasy Star IV's Biggest Speedrun Glitches

Phantasy Star 4's speedrun is crazy.
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Music:
Axium Waves - Axis: axiumwaves.ban...
LoD - Hokes Village
PDS - Nomad
FFX - Moonflow
Kirby 64 - Shiver Star Select
Lufia 2 - Shrine
FFMQ - Spencer's Place
Kirby Super Star - Flying Through Outer Space
FFX - Hopeless Desire
Axium Waves - Absence: axiumwaves.ban...
DS3 - Yhorm The Giant
Arcana - Dark Castle Bintel
PDS - Rise and Fall
Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness - ONBS Building
SMB2 - Monkey Soccer
Baba is You - Crystal is Still
FFX - To the End of the Abyss
Front Mission Gun Hazard - Blue Sky
Check out the runners!
Veo: / @cyanveo1850
Jiseed: / @jiseed3028
BichPhuongBallz: / bichphuongballz
LadyStarBird: / ladystarbird
Mor_Mot: / mor_mot
TylerTheDriver: / @tylerm6811

[@DoctorSwellman]

Comment below if you stayed hydrated throughout the whole video

[@Kay_Sea251]

Huh. I just started watching with a bottle of water.

[@evilgibson]

been drinking nothing but salt water. lots of summoning salt feelings from this video so I feel it's okay to drink sea water

[@goblinbutler1313]

I stay hydrated with copium only anymore :)

[@Nusirra]

2 bottles of water, thank you

[@andr0sra-0h52]

Before, during and after cuz E

[@malgorzatakawken]

"Skip this planet" Yeah, I definetly would by the look of it.

[@ladyabaxa]

I find it funnier than I probably should have that the runners were stymied by being stuck in Piata when they had found a glitch that allowed them to move through impassable tiles. There's a warp to the Edge (and another to the Dezolis overworld) on the second floor of the academy just out of bounds. This was almost certainly for testing the game as the debug menu is also still present but access is disabled. It can be re-enabled through a simple PAR code. In fact that comment about "looks like debug menu text" in this video is spot on. That IS the debug menu text in the menu layout so they'd somehow called that with their glitching.

[@mmpsp693]

The best part of this run is it skips the heartache.

[@recreant359]

Bro first time a video game brought me to tears no lie

[@popejoeii]

Still miss you, Alys. Lol

[@sportakus3]

Your channel is those kind of channels where every video from them feels like sitting on comfortable couch with tea and watching into TV. Great to see your content thriving!

[@SunfishV]

This comment is the vibe.

[@Jgamesplay2]

I agree.

[@Leathal]

This video reminded me that I’m still mad at Sega for killing the Phantasy Star remaster project without doing 3 and 4.

[@RenoKyrie]

Phantasy Star series as a whole is very underapreciated in the west, and this video makes me happy there are still people that cared about it The original Turn based series are WAY ahead of its time for being a Scifi RPG(First game even based on Star Wars) While the Online series inspired games like Monster Hunter, God Eater, and the Souls series

[@yoso378]

It's really too bad more RPGs don't embrace this aesthetic cause it's really damn cool. I was really annoyed trying out the star ocean games because you usually get thrown into a typical medieval setting immediately in those lol

[@SirGriefALot]

I loved Phantasy Star 3. 🥰 I think it cost like $70 or something because it was so "big". I remember my Mom yelling at me to stop playing it, and me trying to explain that I was in the process of turning off the game but I needed to get back to the town, and I have no control over the random monster encounters.

[@stefanswiss3760]

I agree, I love the style and back when the DS came, I think they could have make a killer sequel in this style using the 2 screen and this battle system. Battle are so nice to do in PSIV, even for people who are not fan of turn base, they are swift and enjoyable, I wish a PSV were made

[@ikagura]

@@stefanswiss3760 Phantasy Star V is skies of Arcadia.

[@mikepic]

I love the PS series! Nei dying in PS2 was one of my saddest video game moments of all time. Even though the series came to a definitive end, I'd love nothing more than to see it be brought back to life.

[@StrykerMagnum]

My favorite part of this is Veo talking to Mor Mot as though his friend and partner in glitch hunting had never left; it really shows how much Veo held them in a high regard, to the point that when they figured something out, they viewed it as solving a mystery that Mor Mot had stumbled onto.Seeing that kind of bond and respect is always heartening!

[@apollolux]

Phantasy Star IV was one of those few games that we rented as kids that I decided to buy as an adult when I had money. Somehow, the copy I got off of eBay back then even had the Motavia map still intact!

[@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich]

Wait what?? You mean the unused item with the map?

[@apollolux]

@@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich No, a physical paper map of the game overworld like games used to include.

[@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich]

@@apollolux oh i see! That's cool. I had thought you managed to get some beta version of the game though lol

[@belstar1128]

This is so mind blowing that people figure out how to use all of these complicated obscure glitches.

[@raziyatheseeker]

Dang, PS4 was a blast but I had no clue how much one could break. Even if most of the tricks aren't useful for speedruns (by themselves), these are crazy to see that they exist. Then again, the game does punish you for over-grinding due to a glitch, sooo...

[@TheAuron32]

wait what? never played any of these games but what does it do?

[@TheAuron32]

@@42Haoli ah okay, thanks, thats some bull shit lol reminds of Star Ocean games where the level cap is like 255, that is a grind, a grind do not regret doing :D

[@Adrastia]

This might explain the dorc glitch I got in the bakery back in the 90s. I honestly don't know how it happened. But after speaking to the baker I left the menu and the word dorc appeared on the screen and it just froze. I never messed with the menu. Just codes. Like being able to use the vehicles anywhere via turning on warp codes. I used to have a table of what slot it was ok to have characters in when sequence breaking. Certain orders of getting characters will cause less glitches even if that order is still wrong. If you have the wrong party the game will lock up or glitch badly. For instance it hates you getting Seth at the wrong time. If you clone characters they all share the same stats, equipment and HP/TP. So if one gets wiped out the whole party dies. Two Runes is still kind of useful though. You can leave Piata via a hidden warp to Rykros beyond the boundary outside of the Academy. It looks to be a development leftover. There are some similar hidden warps in Phantasy Star 2. It's just that if if igglanova hasn't been beaten yet or the flag is still there for some reason, every time you go back to the Motavia world map you are instantly put back behind the Piata gate and the guards yell at you. The entire worldmap becomes a Piata warpzone. Also, some major menu and party glitches can occur from adding invalid items to the inventory. Essentially any value after the last valid item value on the list. This is how I first found out that Gryz had a knife attack animation. There's also stuff that adds a weird yes/no menu, huge menus, white menus, invalid macros, skills and inventory and characters and a bunch of weird glitchy techniques. Some of them might be enemy or weapon versions of those techniques due to the damage they use. I haven't looked at it in a long time though. Most of my old files are on a computer that died. I never tried to recover it.

[@dolphinboi-playmonsterranc9668]

If a planet was looking at me like that, I'd skip it too

[@ruzinus_]

This game was a favorite of mine as a kid and its great to see that people are still finding new ways to enjoy it.

[@trevise684]

liked it, but the biggest thing missing from alot of your videos is context. especially for games that are much less popular, its nice to have an overall explanation of the current or past routes. gymnast86 is a good example. and a little more in depth on the glitches, dont have to be pannenkoek levels, but a walkthrough is so much better than a still image of somebodys post. bismuth is good example. l know this is more a history channel, but i think the balance helps. the only other thing is there is very little breathing room between sentences, it makes it difficult to absorb, as there is no time to think cause it just goes too fast. sorry for big post of critisicm, but i enjoy these videos. keep up the good work king, looking forward to the next one!

[@Tomix4k]

Yeah! I guess this history videos would be more impactful if we knew how big of a breakthrough skipping an entire boss is.

[@MegaMasterX]

What?! No way! This is mindblowing that the Sega CD and hardware made a difference like that. Incredible.

[@arielconstante212]

One of the best RPGs ever made! ❤

[@angrywolfofficial2412]

1. Phantasy Star 2. Lunar: Eternal Blue and 3. Sonic

[@Man_Person_Best_Hero]

no one: PS IV speedrunners to the final boss: *Omae wa mou, shindeiru*

[@christianwise4227]

i love this game and im happy to still see people making videos about it, thank you

[@cyanveo1850]

it's funny because jiseed didnt post on the discord a whole lot, he mostly kept to himself and would post his findings on SRC. so it was literally exactly like this video says lmao, we're doing all our research and then *bam* new jiseed strats just dropped and changed everything again. also, to kinda explain the turn order thing a bit further, the reason it's looping through is because it's trying to find a specific set of values at specific position, which would tell it which character is the one it's looking for. when it doesn't find them, it just keeps going, and going and going until it eventually finds something it DOES think is the character, some random bit of RAM that by coincidence happens to match the set of values it's looking for. then it takes everything between the turn order section of RAM and whatever it thinks is the character, and moves it all back 4 bytes. this would crash the game in 99% of instances but it just so happens that there are some character/stat combos that actually set up these values in RAM, which ends up being what the turn order loop finds and thinks is the character it was looking for. so it ends up only shifting a relatively "safe" section of RAM, the stuff that makes up character stats, inventory, quest flags, etc.

[@M00NSIDIAN]

damn, the escalation on those time saves (i know that's nothin' in certain games, but it still looks like it just goes SUPER FAST from how this is all laid out)

[@recreant359]

OMG I SUGGESTED THIS AWESOME DUDE

[@iantaran2843]

This game blew my mind the first time I was NOT expecting what I found.

[@soully9568]

Didn't expect Dark Souls music lol. Cool vids, I don't know the game, but fun nonetheless!

[@loscadu]

The saddest thing about this is having to beat the run with Seth in your party. That mustache is the worst...

[@eben3357]

Alys and Seth with two Hahns completing the game is gold.

[@2Xexile]

13:50 images with threatening auras

[@dafire9634]

These videos are "I've never heard of this game, but sure I'll watch a vid about it"

[@1funkylionsfan913]

This game is awesome

[@XionSteel]

watching these videos just reminds me that i have games that i have yet to play that are actually pretty good. good video and now i get to check out the phantasy star games in the near future. 🤣

[@devingunnels3251]

I see your editing is improving. Keep up the good work!

[@aortaplatinum]

Never thought I'd see such a crazy speedrun of one of my favorite JRPGs and the best one on the Genesis. Use your Phantasy Star Online 2 money to make a new classic Phantasy Star game SEGA you cowards!!!

[@ikagura]

New Classic? Set where in the timeline?

[@aortaplatinum]

@@ikagura See that's the problem, it wouldn't really fit anywhere as a main game. I'd love to see a remake of 3 since 3 fucking sucks and I hate it and it makes my ears bleed. Maybe a spinoff? A prequel? Oh shit, maybe a Stranger of Paradise type thing where it's an alternate universe retelling of the first game that also acts as a bit of a prequel

[@stefanswiss3760]

@@ikagura The profound darkness disappearance doesn't get rid of all algo's problem : It is still a world plagued by poverty, biomonsters, climate hazard, ancien technology. Shall an ill intent group of people came to find a way to exploit biolabs, or the mech, you'd have enough reasons to come back to this universe

[@ikagura]

@@aortaplatinum Phantasy Star Online was planned to be set after Generations of Doom but because of the time gap and to not bother newcomers they removed the references to it. Sega just doesn't have to make a sequel to it like how they won't make any new episode sets within the Online or Universe series.

[@ikagura]

@@stefanswiss3760 Then a Phantasy Star without Dark Falz wouldn't really be a Phantasy Star, sure a new antagonist can be made but it won't be the same. Skies of Arcadia is a good spiritual successor to the original games.

[@EdMoffatt]

Such an interesting story, so well told. I absolutely love sitting down to watch your videos 🚰

[@nickdavidelijah]

played this as a kid, one of the best games ever. i remember hiring it for the weekend from the video store, getting stuck, and begging my parents to let me call the $4.95 per minute hotline to get help XD. ahhh pre-internet childhood

[@rjsmangitruns]

There is so much info in this video, well done! Another Doc banger!

[@Peannlui]

SNES Code explaining their speedruns: 'so I've been trying to match number values to get this game running again? The player is really muddling around with item numbers and resets-' Phantasy Star 4: * beats SNES Code around in an empty carpark, asking no one to carry a single thing *

[@brennanlable]

That Legend of Dragoon music hit so good also excellent vid!

[@InfernalRamblings]

Been catching up on the vids and just wanted to say excellent work as always.

[@deadair32101]

MMMM, The Legend of Dragoon's music is the best

[@BGDMusic]

i love this game so fucking much and watching people break the game more and more is something i love almost just as much

[@Lucas-nu4du]

Can we skip Alys's death??

[@GHeinz]

dunno how i am just now finding your channel. great stuff

[@NotFamousReal]

One of my favorite games of all time, thanks for this.

[@clarafedde8674]

Hydrated and well fed. I love to eat watching videos. Great vid. I love the science of how break a game. Can't wait to see more.

[@JaredTVW]

This is one of my favorite games. I’m excited to see this video.

[@Krristopher]

I stumbled on a glitch in Secret of Evermore for the SNES that was similar. It was during the puppet boss fight in the castle. I was randomly throwing out every spell I could and somehow the game glitched out and opened a save menu in battle. I thought that was cool and saved the game and the game crashed after. When the game reset it played the opening intro and I think never brought up the game select menu. I panicked since the game was a rental thinking I broke it and returned to the video store and never rented it again. Did anyone else ever have something like that happen with them?

[@iantaran2843]

Guess I know what I'm playing later 🤣 Dunno why but Ni No Kuni has been giving me headaches 🤷

[@croythehorse3071]

love the editing. it's so good!

[@jaydenstokes2759]

Love the videos dude

[@JnEricsonx]

I'm happy playing again at normal speed. Alys's death still hurts.

[@ecocodex4431]

Anyone else feel bad going To Zanarkand? 🥺 😢

[@beebs_magoo]

Why does Rykros look so demonic in this video...that's not how it looks normally, is it?

[@theapexsurvivor9538]

Okay, I'll hit the subscribe button, but if you don't overflow it, I'm legally owed one pack of 5 gum.

[@meidomiseri]

Oh man now this is a nostalgia trip

[@stingray024ify]

this is one of my favorite games!

[@1funkylionsfan913]

I love this game but this is ridiculous

[@madhatter8508]

I wonder if these glitches work in Phantasy Star Collection for the Saturn? It's not emulation, it's a port, so they may have fixed it.

[@Kyoslilmonster]

Another good Swelly vid with good tLoD music. Love it.

[@jamesevans1897]

This games a masterpiece, don't @ me

[@mmpsp693]

Rykros does not look like that, right?

[@DoctorSwellman]

It’s the only version of the planet I could find, the rest were half images

[@ladyabaxa]

That's not how it is presented in game when you are flying to it. If you want to know what it looks like in game it's an all-green planet with nothing weird going on other than color.

[@RenoKyrie]

@@DoctorSwellman Yeah thats the Phantasy Star Universe version of Rykross Which is a different thing than the PS4 Rykross

[@ikagura]

@@RenoKyrie PSU's 3 planet name were inspired by the classics but this one kept the name and is a massive Seed Hive

[@sirundying]

the only thing this video left me wondering is wtf is the turbo conflict

[@DoctorSwellman]

Unfortunately some folks were upset over the inclusion of turbo in this particular community. While there are many arguments to allow/disallow, it typically comes down to arguments that it removes the mashing skill from runs

[@evernewb2073]

bravo good sir! I think that was the cleverest version of "please like and subscribe" that I've ever seen...also now I kinda wonder where the overflow point is at, they obviously want to use the most efficient data type they can at any given point and something that gets handled _that_ often is almost certainly optimized but there's a gap in the values being used there of several orders of magnitude...off the top of my head I would guess that the actual answer is that it is set up to convert up and down if your channel gets within a margin set a bit below each overflow point. likewise for likes and various other forms of tracking data. on a related note as near as I can tell youtube will hold onto the data of what videos you have left comments/likes/likedcomments/etc on for longer than it will hold onto an inactive comment or video.

[@SilentVinyl]

Amazing

[@singletona082]

That realization the final boss is dead and yo udon't have to level grind for her.

[@joeybenedetto9419]

Love the legend of dragoon music. Nostalgia ❤️

[@frognik79]

One does not simply speedrun such a great game.

[@finalfanvii6822]

Lol Alien language?! Yeah like Magic

[@victormeursault]

great job man! keep it up!

[@JeremyNoblitt]

My favorite rpg

[@chuganoga1908]

Loved PS 4 probably one of my favorite RPGs ever made

[@mr.werb15md90]

I'm kinda curious if these sort of speedruns can be done with strange consoles like the Retron 5 or an AtGames Genesis (I bring up AtGames because I got PS4 excited to play it on my only genesis at the time only to find that when I tried to reload my save, the party characters were glitched and would just go black when selected). and if not, how would Speedruns work with these systems in mind.

[@Peannlui]

That's the thing, there's experiments going on with misc consoles so maybe we might see an update with the new Mini console (there's also the Sega collections on current gen consoles/PC as well.. .)

[@mr.werb15md90]

@@Peannlui oooo

[@Peannlui]

@Mr. WER [B15MD] I have Phantasy Star 4 on my Mega Drive Mini, but I've neither the time or the confidence to start tricking out a new game save with menu glitches and the like. ;;

[@mr.werb15md90]

@@Peannlui understandable

[@zachi2fox246]

have you looked into the .hack speedruns? I tried to learn to run it, but runs can die in the tutorial if you get 14 misses in a row in the battle intro. (along with other NPC ngl massive time losses) I dont think it has major glitches though, just RNG

[@menosay1912]

I don't get why people who break a game to pieces and use glitches to skip entire chunks of the game would have some bug up their ass about RNG manipulation.

[@jansenart0]

I really hope you purchased permission for those stock images. Spiffingbrit had a lot of problems with that.

[@Darxide23]

PS4 is in my top 10 all time favorites and there are reasons why I would never consider speedrunning the game. This video is reason #1.

[@oOoOoOwned3141592]

Great video m8

[@CoobyPls]

Eggs

[@justabearbrowsingyoutube4968]

sƃƃƎ

[@nisbahmumtaz909]

yo what's this PDS game in your description? and LoD?

[@DoctorSwellman]

Panzer Dragoon Saga and Legend of Dragoon

[@nisbahmumtaz909]

@@DoctorSwellman ye buddy, thanks for listing the songs you used. always a green flag among creators when they do this.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

This makes me wonder: Does Discord literally just delete all your posts if you quit a server? Can the server's mods even not access them?

[@DoctorSwellman]

I’m not sure if you can delete all your post history if you leave, but if you get banned the mods can select if messages are deleted or not

[@pigfish99]

PPMA

[@wtfsamusidk7574]

What is that in the thumbnail

[@ikagura]

Rykros (from Phantasy Star Universe)

[@hardbeefmaximum680]

the parts where the next few sentences you say appear as written words on screen for no reason feels like I'm watching a hypebeast channel please stop sir but the sharp drop shadows and rounded corners on floating elements still make me go hummina thank you sire

[@johnlerch7699]

but there is one spell i know is so op'ed that just casting that one spell is a 1 hit KO on the final boss there are parts you can't really skip it's the genertaions the main character is the dad of the next gen of characters and i think skipping that would crash the game and make it not passable.

[@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich]

You are talking about phantasy star 3

[@johnlerch7699]

@@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich not sure but i do remember that one spell i used it every time and 1 hit the boss

[@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich]

@@johnlerch7699 i mean the generation thing, that's from PS3, not this game... And there isn't any OP spell like that unless it is something really glitched but maybe you're thinking about the insta-kills techniques and skills some characters can learn and most of them come very useful at the very last dungeon of the game.

[@johnlerch7699]

@@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich its a sega game its in i know that for sure just not sure which it was in and no the generations is in the sega games i played it several times getting all different generations of characters combos think there were 2 possible choices for each male main character.

[@stefanswiss3760]

Instant Victory You can win a battle instantly if you have the following situation: 1. Surprise the enemy 2. A technique bearing character with fewer TP then what a spell costs (ie 4 TP for a res spell) Instead of fighting, choose the "single player command" option and have that character try and cast a technique they do not have enough TP for. You will get a message that states something like "Not enough tech points", then instantly emerge victorious. Very helpful for when weak and facing several enemies. This will not work unless you surprise the enemy

[@Wieprzek]

Waterrrr

[@OwGash]

I regret never playing this on the snes qq

[@UntouchablePlayers]

🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠

[@Malurth]

great vid. needs a better title tho IMO, every game is speedran in X minutes. u gotta up your clickbait game

[@codexofoverthinking]

I honestly think it would be better without the times in the video, so you don’t know where the journey is going to go.

[@goblinbutler1313]

E

[@onion_____]

Lol you butchered that name so hard

[@stevyduwe6251]

Love This one. The secret to success = P-R-O-M-O-S-M!!!

[@raynavillus4927]

Such a speedrun is meaningless. Maybe I'm oldschool, but glitching and cutting corners devalues the effort and time putinto beating the game. Sadly, I never played this game as a kid because I didn't havevthe necessary add on. I did however play it for the first time onthe Sega Megadrive collection on ps2 and boy what an experience it was. Such shenanigans totally spoil it!

[@raynavillus4927]

@@cyanveo1850 A speedrun where you glitch or cut corners is like making it a lie. I once started a video where someone was making a Sonic the Hedgehog speedrun but as soon as they initiated a wall glitch I'm like, "No, just NO" and I bow out of that video. I wanna see someone speed running by playing the game properly and not doing what is mentioned above.

[@googlesaurusrex]

@@raynavillus4927 Then go watch a glitchless run and don't complain lmao

[@raynavillus4927]

@@googlesaurusrex Is it complaining when you're pointing out accuracies in something. Consider the effort in making the game. As I understand it, you needed an expansion for the Sega Megadrive back in the day. The arework for the cutscenes is incredible and there is alot of stuff to click in battle and people will use a glitch to cut some of it down and its not just this game either... I was watching a speed run of sonic 1 on sega megadrive and the moment a gltch through walls glitch was used, it killed the whole thing for me. Racing again the clock is what adds fun to sonic games, its not for everyone, but it does add to the need to be fast and that is what sonics all about but glitching throughs kills the effort and makes mockery of his speed and ESPECIALLY ruins the challenge for those seeking it. No complaining here, just calling things for what they are!}:>]

[@long060]

Please include photosensitivity warnings in videos when relevant. Thank you.

[@BlaineBlast]

phantasy star 4 speed running? are we serious right now? this is like caring about an ant that found a skittle.. no one cares besides the five ppl who speed run this random game lol

[@DoctorSwellman]

34,000 people including yourself cared enough to click and watch. Seems like the ant finding the skittle is very interesting indeed :)

[@eben3357]

It's not in the obscure gaming category.

[@ladyabaxa]

@@eben3357 Even if it was in that category it clearly mattered a great deal to the runners who were trying to improve their times. I guess the OP above is one of those whiny "if it doesn't matter to me personally it shouldn't exist" types that are utterly insufferable douchebags.

[@KrGsMrNKusinagi0]

um so cheating still.. this isnt speed running rofl