How to 'break' Final Fantasy VI with a very neat glitch

[garyopa]

Pretty great glitch that doesn't require Game Genie.



With this bug, you can play as non-player characters, hack apart scripted events, and create all sorts of 'kooky' chaos. [SPOILERS] obviously!

Graphic design student Dawn Hosie, has found a pretty strange glitch that breaks Final Fantasy VI (aka Final Fantasy III in the US) for the SNES, in very interesting ways.

With this glitch/bug you can play as non-player characters, hack apart scripted events, and create all sorts of chaos. And nope, you don't need a Game Genie.

Here are the "instructions" on how to break Final Fantasy VI:

(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!)

1. First up, play through the game's intro until you're leaving the city of Narshe with Terra and Locke.



2. Save the game. Here's the annoying part: From here on out, you can't die. If you get a game over, you'll have to start the whole process again from step 1. (Hosie recommends you play on an emulator so you can use save states in case you do get a game over.)



3. Play allllll the way through Final Fantasy VI until you get to the Floating Continent. Lift off as normal.



4. When you get to this section of the Floating Continent, jump back on your airship.



5. Fly around for a while. Hosie recommends you do this for at least 30 seconds.



6. Lift back off and head to the Floating Continent again.



7. Die.



8. If you did everything right up to this point, you should wind up wayyy back where you first saved, with only Locke and Terra in your party. But there's one big difference...



9. You've got an airship.



10. Now you can break the game.

Yeah, with all the above, seems that you activate a trigger that allows you to keep the airship when you die...

I'm not a coder myself, so maybe this isn't entirely accurate and someone can correct me (or figure it out), but we believe that there is a bug with how the game handles your airship state. I'm going to explain this in layman's terms as best I can. When you board the Floating Continent, because you go directly from the airship to the Floating Continent, you never actually leave the airship. When you die, the on-airship flag is removed, like when you die in most airship encounters. However, by jumping back onto the airship from the Floating Continent and flying around, you activate another flag that says you're on the airship, effectively giving the "do you have an airship?" a value of 2. Therefore, when you die, that value gets decreased by one, giving you the "do you have an airship?" a value of 1. That way when you come back wherever you last saved, you keep your airship and can then explore the world.

This is all speculation of course. Nobody that I'm aware of has figured it out. I'm not sure why this only happens on the Floating Continent, either. Maybe it's because the game developers wanted to do a map change while technically being on the airship, because normally at the end of the Floating Continent sequence you reappear on the airship and it would save on game memory? I'd really love to find out exactly why and how. It's one of those enjoyable mysteries.

And here's what you can do when you have the airship this early in the game:

- You can head to Zozo with Locke and Terra and activate a trigger that substitutes the people who are supposed to be in your party—who you haven't met yet—with Moogles.



- You can break the Narshe defending sequence and transform all of your character sprites into weird versions of Terra with Celes's color palette.



- You can get to the World of Ruin before activating certain sequences, like the escape from Edgar's castle. You can then go back and activate that sequence, which somehow transports you back to the World of Balance.



- You can then activate the Banon raft sequence with a totally new party. At first this will seem normal as your new main character rides the raft. But then...



- He won't get off the raft.



- You can take your raft on the airship.



- And to other various locations.



- You can keep Banon in your party, bring him to the Opera House and make his sprite explode.



- You can keep Terra in your party for the Maduin event, then watch her make love to her own mother.



- And you can play as General Leo.



- In combat.



- On the field.



- Or at his own grave.

So, there you go. That is pretty funny.

You can do it by yourself by following the instructions above (although it could take you a little while). Also, go to the user's site below for lots of extremely detailed info about this amazing glitch!

NEWS SOURCE #1: How to break Final Fantasy VI (via) Kotaku
NEWS SOURCE #2: Breaking Final Fantasy VI (via) LP Archive

Our thanks to 'Gauss' for this news item!

[Bobbydigital]

In my opinion this is the best Final Fantasy game in the series, with FF7 trailing slightly behind it. Kefka is the ultimate villain he's even worse then Sephiroth in most cases.

[msanchez]

In my opinion this is the best Final Fantasy game in the series, with FF7 trailing slightly behind it. Kefka is the ultimate villain he's even worse then Sephiroth in most cases.

The only reason I hate Seph is for killing Aeris, aside from that the guy is not that bad. I don't really want to hate him though... Kefka on the other hand... well him I just can't stand.

Anyways, a save state would have been cool; I would definitely play through the whole thing again with this glitch active.

[Bobbydigital]

The only reason I hate Seph is for killing Aeris, aside from that the guy is not that bad. I don't really want to hate him though... Kefka on the other hand... well him I just can't stand.

Anyways, a save state would have been cool; I would definitely play through the whole thing again with this glitch active.

You could always play it on a emulator with the game genie codes on to run through the game to get to the point with the airship to glitch and then shut them off when you get there. That way you could run through the game AQAP.

[Signa]

Man, this is making me want to play it again, glitch or no glitch. Such a great JRPG adventure.

[JonathanD]

I could swear I have seen this glitch done before, or at least part of it.

Has it been newly discovered or is it just that it has been found to work on new versions of the game as well?

[msanchez]

You could always play it on a emulator with the game genie codes on to run through the game to get to the point with the airship to glitch and then shut them off when you get there. That way you could run through the game AQAP.

I've never used cheats, so I'd have to do so reading up on that. I know the emus usually have it, but the only 3 cheats I can remember using are Contra's 30 lives, Metroid's justin bailey password and Metal Gear 56nnn... password.

The only reason this interests me is because I always wanted to be able to fly around the FFIII world before I should have been able to to visit all the towns and such. It's a shame I don't have my original FFIII save game, cause that was a damn feat of awesomeness what I did there. My Shadow was a one man wrecking crew.

[billysastard]

I've never used cheats, so I'd have to do so reading up on that. I know the emus usually have it, but the only 3 cheats I can remember using are Contra's 30 lives, Metroid's justin bailey password and Metal Gear 56nnn... password.

how could anyone forget "xr3iturbonutterbastard" as the code for menace, ok, so maybe its less memorable for those in countries where the ford escort xr3i turbo wasn't sold (basically an overpowered hoonmobile designed to prove Darwin's theory )

[msanchez]

how could anyone forget "xr3iturbonutterbastard" as the code for menace, ok, so maybe its less memorable for those in countries where the ford escort xr3i turbo wasn't sold (basically an overpowered hoonmobile designed to prove Darwin's theory )

Hmmm, never heard of that game before, did some googling and saw that it's an R-Type ripoff... looks interesting though.

[billysastard]

Hmmm, never heard of that game before, did some googling and saw that it's an R-Type ripoff... looks interesting though.

it was a damned good rtype rip off, best version was on the amiga although it was on pc too

[msanchez]

it was a damned good rtype rip off, best version was on the amiga although it was on pc too

Oh sorry, didn't mean it in a bad way... I mean being an R-type ripoff can't be considered bad; although, I guess the game would have pretty big shoes to fill. The question is, is it as "pull your hair out, kick the cat, curse the developer" hard as R-Type? To be perfectly honest, I enjoy a challenge as much as anybody (I would say more than most), but R-Type is just annoyingly difficult.

[billysastard]

Oh sorry, didn't mean it in a bad way... I mean being an R-type ripoff can't be considered bad; although, I guess the game would have pretty big shoes to fill. The question is, is it as "pull your hair out, kick the cat, curse the developer" hard as R-Type? To be perfectly honest, I enjoy a challenge as much as anybody (I would say more than most), but R-Type is just annoyingly difficult.

not if you used the cheat

(but yes, it was damned hard without it)

[msanchez]

...(but yes, it was damned hard without it)

I guess it really was an R-Type rip then

[billysastard]

I guess it really was an R-Type rip then

well, it was made by dma design (lemmings, snes uniracers and now called rockstar north and most famous for a little game called GTA ) and published by psygnosis (barabarian, shadow of the beast, wipeout and now called sce studio liverpool) so it had a pretty good pedegree all things considered

try this out to see (and hear) what i mean

hope you enjoy it.