Unsolved issues 11

At Battle Speed 1, with a party that does nothing and nobody under Regen, Poison or Seizure, Storm Drgn can use the same attack on the same target turn after turn. The battle's random numbers run in a cycle of 256, and this idle loop comes back to the same point every time. Any action by the party breaks it. A fix would change the order of every random roll in every battle, so I deemed it too intrusive and risky for a fault that someone playing normally would most likely never meet.

With many enemies and effects on screen, the game tries to draw more than the 128 sprites the console can show, and a party member can vanish for a few frames. A fix would be a deliberate limit, but that would have to change about eleven routines that draw sprites. I deemed it too uncommon, and a fix too intrusive and risky.

In the mountains north of Narshe and in the Ancient Castle, each dragon settles into the same loop and stays in one part of its map. Both still walk into the party and start their fights. Giving them steps of their own would change the steps of every wandering NPC in the game, which feels like going overboard for something that does not hurt a normal playthrough.

Nine tiles along the cave's paths let the party step off them down or sideways but not back up, so a few steps take a detour of 3 to 13 tiles. The party never gets stuck. Every fix tried so far had side effects, such as letting the party walk outside the intended play area, so I have shelved this for now.

Battle animations still slow down: over the 398 effects benchmarked, 43% of the original game's slowdown remains. The only leads left are risky and promise little, so I have left things where they are for now.

A 2016 screenshot RedDrgn put on the Final Fantasy Wiki shows one soldier on the Narshe cliffs drawn as a mix of Terra's and Sabin's sprites. The screenshot's colours point to the Snes9x emulator, then at version 1.53, or one built on it. The scene has been played hundreds of times in Snes9x 1.53, in two other Snes9x builds of 2016 and in a cycle-accurate emulator, following the wiki's steps and switching parties at every moment the original game allows, with every write to the sprite slots logged, and the soldier was always drawn correctly. The one tool-assisted run of the game that passes the scene could not be replayed that far in any of those emulators. The three parties have also been put on the screenshot's exact tiles, facing the same way, and the soldier was still drawn correctly; the scene itself does not allow dashing, with or without Sprint Shoes. Of all the issues on this page, this is the one where someone is most likely to help. What would help most: the emulator and its version, whether the ROM carried a patch or a cheat code, and whether a save state was loaded shortly before the scene.

JD_Cyr's 1998 FAQ says to take Terra, once she is back from Zozo, to Narshe's secret entrance and press the switch instead of talking to the gate guards, but does not say what happens then. The RPGClassics glitch list, whose eleven items match his one for one, adds that the game freezes, so the two are one witness. The scene that plays there in Terra's scenario, when she arrives with Edgar and Banon, would indeed wait for ever if it ran again without Banon. As far as I can tell from the game's script, it should not run again: the switch it sets is never cleared, and after Zozo the entrance stays shut until the meeting with Banon. I have not been able to make it freeze, in the original game or in this ROM hack.

A 2009 post by eclewlow on the Neoseeker forums and Mog Meltina's article on FFSKY each say that, later in the first half of the game, the house in Narshe where Terra woke up shows party members who are already in the party or on the airship, Sabin and Gau among them. The Japanese list eclewlow translated is a list of Game Boy Advance bugs, and Mog Meltina's item names no version, though Meltina's own walkthrough on the same site was played on an SFC. I have not been able to reproduce it in the original SNES game or in this ROM hack. There they stand in the house only earlier, while the story has them wait in Narshe, and as far as I can tell from the game's script, the reunion on the airship clears them all from the house and nothing puts them back.

A Japanese player remembers that, in a random battle on the way down the Fanatics' Tower after beating MagiMaster, Celes, still an Imp, flew off on Palidor, never came back, and the game was still frozen ten minutes later. Part of this is real: when Muddle turns Palidor onto the enemies, it lifts them instead of the party and could leave Celes unseen for the rest of the battle, and this ROM hack fixes that. But in the original game the battle still went on and could be won, and she was back on the field afterwards. Hundreds of randomly played tower battles on the Japanese release and the original game, with Celes an Imp, Palidor summoned by her and by others, Muddle, Imp and Stop from the tower's enemies, and every battle speed in both Active and Wait, never froze. I have not been able to make it freeze, in the original game, the Japanese release or this ROM hack. The party, the floor and the enemies are what is missing.

Leet Sketcher's Multiple Events readme says that the hidden copies of Gogo and Umaro the game leaves on the map when they join can affect the ghost in Zozo who teaches about Espers. This ROM hack removes those copies, as his patch does. In the original game the ghost freezes only with one more NPC on the map than play can leave there: with both copies present it still wanders, in every run. I have not been able to make it freeze in a state the original game can reach.

A Japanese player remembers that, after a hard fight to beat MagiMaster at the top of the Fanatics' Tower, the Super Famicom froze in a battle on the way back down. No party, floor or enemy is named. The one known freeze at the top of the tower, caused by Gogo and Umaro joining with a full party, is fixed in this ROM hack, but it stops the party before MagiMaster, not on the way down. Several battles on the way down have been played in the original game and in this ROM hack without a freeze, and so have hundreds of randomly played battles in every group of enemies the way down passes, on the Japanese release and the original game. I have not been able to reproduce it. The party, the floor and the enemies would be the first things to know.