How Speedrunners Destroy Illusion of Gaia

[@Hiro_sofT]

Very cool video! I appreciate that this community got more attention for the amount of work that was put into running this game. Being pretty close to some of the people appearing in this video, it makes me happy to see that someone actually did their research and gave credit were it was due (unlike the Kotaku article). It feels weird to find something like this, just playing one of your favorite childhood games like any other day (in a randomizer) and then suddenly you discover something weird happening. Then you decide to look deeper and try different things out and... here it is. I remember how the entire community started stirring and finding more and more to make this work as reliable as it does today. It was a crazy bunch of days. The most amazing part about this is that it involves something previously deemed useless as its major key component (not just the spiders but the ability, which was skipped previously completely). Man it was so crazy when I warped myself into Inca and me going like "what if this can be used consistently?". Yes, this works backwards as well and basically can bring you everywhere, with some limitations of course. It was really cool to see the others work and flesh out the process and setup to make this possible for speedruns and I am happy to be accidentally be part of this discovery . There are a lot of things that can happen in this room when doing things (From graphicial messes to crashing the game to a red jewel cloning process, making its textbox pop up for obtaining the item endlessly, however, sadly you are OOB and can't stop the message from appearing, making it not as useful). Just be WARNED if you try to reproduce it: Saving without having opened the item menu after you warped will save invalid SRAM into the file, which will lockup the game when trying to show your save in the loading screen. We had an accident with that and the person needed to remove their battery from their cartridge and flush the SRAM to make it playable again. I want also to drop some more names involved in this: +Solarcell007 - Great, entertaining and talented speedrunner, confirming it working on his NT console +Mr_Freet - Amazing speedrunner, extremely talented at finding strats for various games and a good lad +QueenAnneB - Amazing speedrunner and extremely good friend of the community +PhoeKun - Amazing speedrunner, who encourages me to go for things and is amazing to hang around with +Sye990 - Amazing speedrunner, fun sport and talented Kaizo newcomer +BOWIEtheHERO - For confirming it working on consoles +DontBaguMe - For creating the randomizer and bringing me back to the game, which lead to finding the glitch, amazing individual in general +Raeven0 - For giving us insight into some of the internal workings of the game and being part of the randomizer dev team +DLDarklink - Another amazing person who was involved in figuring the warp process out +Wilddin - Amazing IOG randomizer runner who was the first running into the saving issue, sorry for that but because of you, others are now warned +SmashManiac - For being involved into the process as well, as well as working on a TAS of this game And yes, for those who are interested, this also works with the Japanese version of the game (yet it’s a bit different as the room has more enemies in that version).

[@dontbagume5115]

Awesome shoutouts. Great community. IIRC: solarcell007, PhoeKun, and Mr_Freet were the ones doing most of the work playing with the warp, making it reliable, and documenting all the places you could end up. Took a ton of work, major kudos to all.

[@solarcell0075]

Such kind words, Hiro. :) Except I play on original SNES :D

[@Hiro_sofT]

@@solarcell0075 Oh pardon me... 😅 Accidentally spreading missinformation, whoops! Sorry!

[@BJGvideos]

Always good to see some love given to this game haha

[@fariesz6786]

_•sees «spiders are broken» in thumbnail•_ _•expects educational video on the biology of arachnids•_ _•gets surprised seeing footage of one of my favourite games•_ the world works in mysterious ways

[@LeHulk1]

Thanks a lot for giving attention to Illusion of Gaia! The wrong warp discovery was indeed a shocker and times for the new categories still need to be more optimized, but we're getting there. Nice to see Solar in the spotlight :)

[@nox_luna]

freedan pfp, havent seen him in years, i love this game.

[@selenawolf2466]

Found this because i LOVE IoG. Hear the soundtrack = instant chill. This was cool!

[@dontbagume5115]

Great video! It was crazy watching this all go down from inside the community. There have been a number of new optimizations and strategies that have come out of the randomizer community, but this is by far the most game-breaking. To be precise, I’m not sure this can be called a “wrong warp,” though, since it’s not redirecting an existing warp point but rather crafting one out of whole cloth. Not sure what the name of that would be, though. Basically there’s a section in memory that the game constantly watches for instructions to send the player to a new map. Normal map transitions like doors, exits and NPCs typically end with their actors populating that section of memory with instructions, then sitting back and letting the watcher do its thing. This glitch populates that section using memory overflow, basically bypassing the conventional methods for triggering a map transition. Thanks for the video! New subscriber here.

[@fghhjkd]

In the Cyber world I'd call it a buffer overflow attack, and I think it fits here too, although I don't think that name is glamorous enough for the speedrunning world. -Wilson

[@Jerm6201]

Love the fact that the SNES was busted out 2 days ago and my mother who has never played it before, is now playing this very game for the first time. Thank you for the great content, keep up the great work.

[@solarcell0075]

Very cool of you to cover this amazing game! The warp that Hiro found really did light a fire under everyone. For anybody who would like to get into the speedrun for IoG, shoot me or another runner a message, and we'd be more than happy to help out and get you started! Oh, and as for the All Bosses category only being about 9 minutes faster than All Bosses no WW, that's due to the limitation of the warp. We still have to collect all 50 red jewels to fight Solid Arm, because you almost always warp as Freedan, but we need Will to slide underneath the stairs in the mansion. Also, warping straight to Solid Arm crashes your game :D But it's true, with a failed warp attempt in that category, it can definitely be optimized, haha! Very happy to see Hiro getting the love for this! Great video!

[@dontbagume5115]

I’m still hopeful we can find a way to warp directly to Solid Arm without crashing the game, we just need more eyes on it.

[@DoctorSwellman]

Thanks for watching! Music and links are in the description!

[@SDCrusader]

Goddamn that music used in the intro is pure nostalgia It has always been the perfect 'village' VG music to me

[@magetsalive5162]

Someone get ahold of Nintendo and figure out who needs to be pestered for a Quintet Trilogy collection so I can play Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma.

[@RBMGamer]

Great content as always doc! great job

[@Puckanm]

Illusion of Gaia Holds a special Place in My Heart from Childhood! Love that this video was recommended. Thanks

[@Dancarnate]

One of my most nostalgic games, I wore out the shirt that came with it till it basically became a tube top then wore it as an undershirt under my football pads. Great stuff as always man!

[@ZetaCancri]

I've always loved illusion of gaia.

[@rushnerd]

This is such a thought-provoking and wonderfully put together channel.

[@DisdonnPlays]

I really need to re-play Illusion of Gaia, it's a good one

[@jon4715]

Love this game. The ActRaiser and Gaia boss rushes are pretty hard.

[@IsoYear]

This is one of my favorite all time games. Such a classic, reminds me of being a kid, being interested in the world

[@ReiniBlue]

Really appreciate you covering one of the more obscure game communities that deserves more attention

[@vaiyt]

Leaving a huge thanks to you for covering Quintet. I love their games to bits.

[@bizzybee3021]

This is one of my all time favorites. My parents got me this instead of secret of evermore. Already had secret of mana. Me and Alan tried 4 times ( 2 runs each) to get 50 jewels. The instruction book with the game showed you where they were,but not how to get them.

[@clarafedde8674]

Of the trilogy, illusion of Gaia/time is least favorite but still fun. Last time I played it was 19xx. Man time sure flies. Hope you do more quintet games. They were great.

[@SethAlden1]

Man I tried to learn the IoG speedrun about five years ago, its amazing to see such a massive glitch has been discovered

[@camwyn256]

I was like, "Wait, there's spiders in Illusion of Gaia?" Then started the video and realized I was thinking about Illusion of Mana

[@ZetaCancri]

So many memories with this game.

[@nox_luna]

this is one of my favorite games of all time

[@sagacious03]

Pretty neat learning about these weird methods of breaking stuff. Seems common on SNES. Anyway, thanks for uploading!

[@Celticers]

glad you're finally admitting that using glitches is cheating, you've grown doc!

[@budjoe2289]

If you did that intro and then went into a final fantasy speed run, I would still be laughing right now lol

[@DoctorSwellman]

I was seriously considering the bait and switch lol

[@aaronlefebre5060]

I loved playing this game as a kid!

[@luridus584]

Hey man, have You ever considered doing a breakdown of other game genres? I'm an Ultrakill speedrunner (althought not anywhere near the top names) and the history there is really something to behold. Anyway i enjoy Your videos greatly keep it up!

[@WannabeMarysue]

finally, a speedrun which doesn't STRING you along.

[@DoctorSwellman]

Holy moly what a pun. I approve

[@olipolygon]

too bad it costs an arm and an arm and an arm and an arm and a leg and a leg and a leg and a leg to perform...

[@KubesVoxel]

Interesting, I wish you went into more detail

[@ICountFrom0]

I clicked because I like Illusion of Gaia, I commented because you used Parasite Eve music.

[@dankmeats-kfpspeedrunner7139]

IS THAT MY BOY SOLARCELL007???

[@solarcell0075]

You found me :D

[@Hiro_sofT]

It sure is 🙂

[@IsoYear]

i LOVE this game and replay it almost every year lol

[@Kyoslilmonster]

BABE! NEW SWELLY DROP!!!!

[@mork6668]

Mas first RPG...it was called Illusion of Time in Europe!!

[@accountname1047]

Your reasons for making videos that you give exemplify exactly why a decentralized future where creators and audience incentives align is superior

[@Drumboardist]

Listen, you, I *already* subbed! (Also, you should do a video over Legend of the Super Saiya-jin. There's so many glitches that we don't even USE, it's silly.

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

0:34 why does that crossroads block remind me of solder pads for a computer chip on a motherboard

[@andr0sra-0h52]

Dank video.

[@novelezra]

Quintet's games are so idiosyncratic that I feel you could spot a Quintet game simply from its font alone.

[@Man_Person_Best_Hero]

see people? Spiders are useful

[@sigurdtheblue]

If people could not hack or read the data files of a game, it would be cool to see a wrong warp used to uncover unused content.

[@solarcell0075]

When we were mapping out all of the locations you could warp to, we did find a "Test Map", along with a form of a debug inventory screen, if that counts. 😀

[@minirop]

No explanation as to why the spiders send you to the multiverse?

[@DoctorSwellman]

tl;dr for some reason when memory overloads, the game calls a warp. It's not known how it exactly works

[@azinyefantasy4445]

My Best guess is because so many spiders are overlapping them, the game mistakes the mc for a spider so it teleports you to the max your string will go which is the final boss.

[@solarcell0075]

That room has an insane amount of enemies in it. Even playing casually, you can sometimes see a spider or two disappear, or their sprites remain while their soul just up and leaves, haha. Your character's physical position and timing of Aura Barrier dictate where you'll end up. I've gone through and mapped almost all of the possible warp destinations (watching Hamlet get roasted while Freedan is tied up is a little silly :D ). There's an address in RAM that warps your character to a screen whenever it's value changes, and almost every value from 00 to FF is a screen to go to. We can use the warp to feed that address one of those values, I believe because the registers get shifted from all of the loaded enemy data. What's nice from a speedrunning POV, is how checkpoints work in Gaia. Dungeons and other screens can create checkpoints for your character, but no such event happens when you warp. So you can literally warp to somewhere, collect what you need to, and then deathwarp straight back to Mt. Kress to warp again.

[@dontbagume5115]

The section that the game constantly checks for warp data happens to be right after the section that handles sprite data. You overload the game with sprites, magic happens.

[@Hiro_sofT]

It also has to do with the way how Aura Barrier works, since a lot of things in this game are handled over placed "objects". Things like abilities, effects and even palette changes of objects is handled over creating objects and removing them. Aura Barriers code is coded in such a way, when executed together with the spider strings, that it does something unintended do to the fact that it "erases" something and proceeds to do wierd stuff. Likewise, there are multiple known softlocks that include the spiders and their strings. When you use a will ability like pyscho slider or spin dash at the correct time, the game will delete a needed game object out of the room, which causes the whole game to halt (except the animations and the fact you still can do stuff like use the item you currently have). Effectively there is sadly no way out of it and you have to reset... this happend already during a marathon run and its heartbreaking... this room in kress is very, very special.

[@Storster]

🕷🕸

[@SchereGeist]

Nice video! But can someone explain Why Z4TOX isnt on the lists here?

[@DoctorSwellman]

He doesn’t run the featured categories, so I didn’t include footage from him

[@SchereGeist]

@@DoctorSwellman ah okay, thanks for answer, keep the content on

[@pigfish99]

Illusion of Gaia has better music than chrono trigger.

[@HighPriestFuneral]

It is more atmospheric at points (The Melody of Wind, Signs of the Past, and Dark Gaia still stick with me today) but the overall theme of Illusion of Gaia is rather melancholic and mellow, whereas Chrono Trigger has a greater variety of songs of all different emotions.

[@oOoOoOwned3141592]

Commenting for algo help, cheers mate

[@SabreFang121]

Illusion of time is an amazing game (can’t call it Gaia)

[@DecimusEX]

stopped watching when I was called an abomination

[@mikazuchis1767]

Hello first