How Speedrunners Beat SMRPG in UNDER 3 Hours | Speedruns Explained Quick

known as one of the greatest rpgs of the 90s super mario rpg is beloved by fans and has developed a dedicated speedrun community that have pushed the time lower than anyone thought possible today we'll be looking at the tricks and routing that make the game beatable in under 3 hours so let's jump into it it opens with a manipulation right out of the gate the terrapin minute and it's worth looking into how it works when you start the game the rng counter begins to count up with each frame that passes while you're in world areas or battles it keeps counting and will only pause when you're in the overworld map or in the file select menu due to these properties some manipulations are able to take place and the first is the terrapin manip by taking a precise route to the first fight of the game you can guarantee that you will arrive in the fight on the same frame every time which means you can time your attacks to land on specific frames that don't have the terrapins attack you back you might be wondering why the entire run isn't manipulated since you could just map out the inputs and then execute them due to rng counting up each frame the instant you make a mistake you would be on a different rng value and all of your predetermined inputs would be off so one frame of improper movement or a mistimed input in the entire route you've developed would be scrapped meaning that a fully manipulated route is only possible for a task after you're kicked out of bowser's keep by exor you need to get to the mushroom kingdom which is where one of the most useful skills in the game comes in avoiding encounters when it comes to rpg speed runs the fewer encounters and less grinding you have to do the better and smrpg is no exception avoiding encounters can be done by memorizing enemy patterns and practicing the route in each area with a few exceptions we'll look at later it's worth noting that encounters don't outright kill a run as the current world record has one unwanted encounter but as they add up the chances of getting a better time diminish significantly there is one exception to not wanting to collide with enemies and that's when you have a star which allows you to defeat an enemy without a battle stars are located inside of chess and they are a big reason the run can avoid overworld encounters so let's have a look as to why when a character levels up you have the option to add a bonus to one stat hp attack and special with one of these getting a slightly higher boost than the other two at each level the routers for smrpg have created a careful experience route that has you select stats for each character that will maximize the chances of a successful boss fight this means that stars become the most important thing for leveling up in the game as you're able to use them to gain the only xp you'll see outside of boss battles enabling runners to execute an encounter free run the first star is found just before you fight croco one of the first bosses in the game and the earliest reset point all of croco's physical attacks can be perfectly blocked meaning they deal zero damage but those aren't the problem it's the bomb attack he has after leveling up with the star mario has enough hp to survive a bomb from croco with one point of health left since mario is the main source of damage this means that a second bomb or non-perfect block on any of krakow's attacks will end the run this won't be the last time we see croco and up next is the first main boss normally when you walk up the stairs in the throne room a cutscene will start that leads to the fight with mack but if you jump on this shy guy's head and then time another jump at the apex of his bounce you can jump over the trigger for the cutscene in the normal sequence of events you would talk to the chancellor after defeating mack which triggers another cutscene but since we're now able to talk to him before fighting mack the second cutscene starts with mack and his goons still in the throne room skipping the fight and earning the first of seven stars the next important piece of tech is the ability to perform wiggler jumps wigglers that spawn out of tree trunks are very important to the run for one reason jumping on them 10 times consecutively gives you coins on the first nine jumps and a frog coin on the 10th we've looked at the experience route but there's also an item route that factors in the best items to equip on your party for each section of the run and wiggler jumps are where you grind the money to afford your loadout later in the game we'll get to what we buy later but first we need to look at two things in movil our old pal croco and the minecart mini game croco makes his second appearance in the movie mines by stealing your items to get them back you have to chase him down and fight him the second encounter is much less of a run killer but it has the chance to be a run maker as croco has a 25 chance to drop the flower box an item that plays a big role later on which we'll discuss in just a bit but first it's time to go fast every major area in the game has its own mini game and while most of them won't cost major time if you play them poorly the minecart minigame in movil is one that requires perfection while the time loss can pile up in beautiful mode 7 graphics you're piloting a minecart through a maze of tracks with the ability to gather mushrooms which can be consumed for speed boost there's one catch if you take a corner too fast while speeding you'll fall off the track and lose about a second and a half you can control your speed by applying the brake making this mini-game a constant battle of speeding and braking with the margin of error being very small if your goal is to go fast when you're clear of the mines you'll arrive at boosters tower which has one of the best soundtracks in the game as well as some of the most demanding platforming as you climb to the top waiting for you at the top is a boss fight with great guy and knife guy but before we fight them we've got some explaining to do due to its volatility we're going to manipulate this fight and it uses the same principles as the terrapin manip just with a bit more setup since we arrive at the fight after climbing the tower we have no way of knowing what our rng value is luckily there's a save point two rooms from the fight rng is reset when the console powers off so by saving and resetting we can start off the save point at the same rng value every time with one caveat the save point oscillates up and down enough that it affects the time it takes mario to drop off of it which impacts the scripted fight so when you jump on the block you'll want it to be at the bottom of its oscillation with the save performed you'll want to start moving immediately after gaining control of mario and by following a specific path along the walls you can get to the fight on the same rng seed every time now that we're on determined rng we just have the fight itself there are three versions of what you can do here and they all involve rock candies so let's look at the fastest the four rc minip the game has a mechanic called freebie which will send an item back to your inventory after use in battle if it was used on a specific frame in normal gameplay you have no way of knowing what frame you need to throw the item on but since we know which rng value we started on it was possible to map out the fight and find the frames that would give freebies armed with this knowledge a runner named swinch figured out which frames you could throw on to get a freebie and then found audio cues in the battle theme to help you hit the frame windows as they came out this sounds easy enough but in practice the windows you have to hit the frame are very small and with only audio cues to go off of it takes a lot of practice to get good at this this trick is worth the time to learn as it saves 7 seconds over the second fastest strat and the reason it uses rock candies is because they do 200 damage to all enemies and for reasons we'll look at later it's imperative that you leave this fight with one in your inventory once you're beyond the clowns bosses get a lot more dangerous with the bundt cake being a notorious run killer armed with a slew of spells and deadly combos if he chains spells together a party wipe is likely and that's even with using the red essence item to make mario invincible for three turns if you do manage to get past him you have the most technical menu section in all of speedrunning to contend with the seaside store since runners play in japanese this is extra tough to learn and it's the part of the run where the earlier events come into play all the money you farmed at the wigglers will be used in seaside town the frog coins for the experience booster which will move around the party to help hit some needed levels and the coins for the bombs the wigglers don't give us all the cash we need so we sell off some equipment and items to maximize our inventory with ice fire and fright bombs it's a painstaking section and one of the most impressive to watch as a viewer since it's done entirely in another language the reason bombs are so important is because there are a lot of multi-enemy bosses coming up and the elemental damage they deal can be used to quickly dispatch a lot of them if croco dropped the flower box during your second fight with him you can sell it to get two more ice bombs and if you freebie the red essence against bunt you can sell that to grab an extra firebomb and in just a bit we'll see why these bombs are super important once you're fully loaded you'll head to the sea where you do the most fantastic glitch in the entire run skill swap if you open the menu when you jump to activate a star you're able to change the location of party members and for technical reasons if you switch two members and then a level up happens they will learn each other's abilities with this glitch you can have peach learn two abilities mallow shocker in the sea area and genoblast in the barrel volcano which sets her up to deal massive damage later in the run when you arrive at the ship after the skill swap you'll have the following for bombs with the firebomb seeing immediate use against king calamari and the bandana enemies and the ice bombs being used over the next two areas to the end of barrel volcano every freebie you get here will pay dividends later in the run as they make the later fights much faster in fact if you don't get freebies in these two sections achieving a world record is impossible we'll find out why in just a sec because the boss of the sunken ship needs to be beaten with one attack the super jump the fight with johnny is interesting as he spawns with four bandana blues and if they're all defeated he will challenge mario to a one-on-one duel where he then powers up when he drops below half hp all of this can be avoided with the use of mario's super jump attack an ability that allows you to do 100 consecutive jumps if you're skilled enough the super jump is a chain attack that works by pressing a button as mario lands on an enemy to keep the chain going the first 13 jumps have a frame window for successful button press that shrinks as it gets higher with every jump after 13 having a three frame window they come into play a lot during the late game but have a special purpose here it takes 96 super jumps to kill johnny but the goal is to hit 100 for one reason getting 100 jumps is a precondition to earning the super suit in monstro town which is a beast piece of equipment for the late game aside from its beefy stat increases it also reduces damage from all elemental attacks to zero and prevents all status ailments making it an essential piece of equipment to the run speaking of late game it's time to look at the last few areas there are some cool skips in nimbusland where you jump around enemies that are supposed to be unavoidable but once they're dodged you have one fight between you and the late game valentina she isn't a boss that you will normally die on but she can waste a lot of time by using spells with long animations what you want to happen is for her to use physical attacks on all of her turns which saves considerable time and if you roll high enough damage on your physical attacks you can even skip a round of combat saving even more time once val is defeated there's only one area left before we enter the late game barrel volcano this is one of the few areas that has rng when it comes to enemy spawns and it's from the cork pedite enemy that sends purple spinies into the air as you approach where they land varies and it's possible that they block the door which forces you to exit the screen and return to be able to proceed without entering a battle at the very end of the volcano are two boss fights the tsar dragon and everyone's favorite team of 30 year old pop culture references the axum rangers and this is unfortunately where world records come to die these two fights are where your bomb freebie count begins to come into play as having an excess of ice bombs will make the star dragon much faster with the axum fight being the focal point for freebies in the run if you have extra fire and ice bombs you can perform a very quick fight but there's another item that saves even more time the reason we needed to manipulate the clown fight is to ensure we had a rock candy for this fight it's the first item you throw and if it freebies here we're in great position for the late game as it saves having to use any bombs in this fight altogether there's one last piece of manip we need to do when going to bowser's keep another reset is done so we can get on a determined rng number all so we can manipulate topper's quiz topper's quiz is a section where you need to complete four of six trials all hidden behind doors and using audio cues to start the cutscene to bowser's keep we're able to determine which doors we get so that we can have the fastest combination possible the quiz manip serves one more function it allows you to perform a wrong warp in the factory that saves seven seconds and it's made possible due to the door order and actions that you took during the quiz with all of this done it's on to the final bosses where world record depends on two things the number of bombs you freebied and the last run killer countdown countdown is a pain in the butt due to his large range of abilities and the two ding-a-lings on top that have devastating spells capable of incapacitating party members in one shot his opening turn can be so catastrophic that a flowchart was created for what to do in each situation and since you're using the remaining rock candies here if they freebie you can save more time on future bosses so let's have a look at them the factory is essentially one large boss rush and the bomb freebies play an integral role in determining how fast you can clear it so we'll highlight a few of the bosses where freebies can make a big difference machine made uridovic can be made significantly faster if you have a rock candy freebie in your inventory as it will reduce the number of super jumps you need to do on him down to 20 instead of the 37 you would have to do if you had no freebies for this fight the inner factory is where the real time save comes into play and no two bosses have larger freebie flow charts than the final two gunnyolk and smithy there are seven different strategies depending on what freebies are in your inventory for gungyok with the range of time saved between the fastest and slowest being about 20 seconds in the current world record justin has one of the slowest fights having only a single ice bomb and rock candy meaning there's a free 20 seconds for him to save at the end of the run if he can come into the fight with three more ice bombs when gungyok is cleared there's one last thing smithy a two-phase boss battle the first phase has five different strats depending on your inventory but like the valentina fight you will more than likely get through this without dying the second phase is a lot more dangerous with the chance of a run-ending party wipe being on the table there is a time save if you have somehow managed to carry two firebomb or rock candy freebies in your inventory you can go for something called the chest head gamble during the fight smithy will change the form of his head after certain damage intervals in a set pattern below 2000 hp he will transform randomly and this is where the gamble comes in the chest head is weak to fire so if you have extra fire bombs or took the time to go and get them in the factory you can drop your second set of super jumps early and hope he transforms into the chest head using the elemental bomb saves time over continuing the super jumps but if you go for the gamble and he lands on a different head you'll lose time and have a bunch of bombs sitting in your inventory with no way of using them he has a 25 chance of morphing into the chest head so the gamble is likely to go wrong but the time save if you're fortunate enough to get it is about 20 seconds in justin's world record he managed to get the gamble but he only had one firebomb and it didn't freebie meaning he didn't get to take advantage of the full time save in the factory alone he has 40 seconds to save from gungyok and smithy but it requires playing two hours of speed run on pace with freebie luck to see if he'll have a shot at improving the record with the world record currently sitting at two hours 46 minutes and 24 seconds the 245 will likely be the last minute barrier the game ever sees unless new strats are found justin's current record had no freebies inside the factory meaning he currently needs to grind a full two hours before he will know if he has a run or not the question isn't if the 245 will happen but when as justin has currently finished 8 246 runs and over 30 247 runs execution alone isn't going to get this record you'll need some luck along the way and only time will tell who will be the first to get the coveted time one thing's for certain it won't be a freebie thanks for watching

Channel: Abyssoft

Views: 205,561

Keywords: smrpg, geno, super mario rpg, speedruns explained, speedruns explained quick, seq, abyssoft, glitch, speedrun, world record, mario rpg, skill swap, speedrun explained, trick, square, enix, snes, rpg

Id: 2BjDCquIKmE

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021