The Emerald Countdown Glitch: FF7 Broken

[antd]

Detailed information:
http://antdgar.com/final-fantasy-vii/the-emerald-glitch-final-fantasy-vii/


Quick information:

1. Change battle config to 'wait'. (Optional; however this makes it much easier to perform)
2. Find Emerald Weapon on Disc 2 and enter the battle. (Disc 3 almost always crashes, in my experience)

3. Inflict enough damage so that Emerald Weapon is left with a very low amount of HP.
4. Force an in-battle 'wait' by placing the cursor on a character, or by entering a menu.
5. Wait until the countdown timer reaches 10 seconds.
6. Deliver the killing blow to Emerald Weapon before the timer reaches 0. Ideally Emerald Weapon should turn red on the 8 second mark.
7. Start a new game or load a game from a memory card.

Killing Emerald too soon or too late will not reproduce the glitch properly.

Effects: High Stats / Weird limit breaks / Instant win all battles/bosses

 

[Vgr]

Holy hell! I can't watch vids right now but this looks insane! I'll keep looking on TASVideos your future TAS. I guess it's gonna be in the "Glitched any%" category though. Oh well. Good finding! I'm sure we could possibly find why so we could try to reproduce it.

 

[nfitc1]

I'm sure we could possibly find why so we could try to reproduce it.

My guess is that the Game Over flag and the Victory flag are both set before the other is cleared. Then the game just acts as if both are true and "acts appropriately" until the level up screen is complete and the Game Over flag is checked again. Then since the data doesn't get cleared from memory it causes all sorts of memory leaks when the next game is loaded.

 

[antd]

Long version showing graphical glitches:

 

[Vgr]

I just thought of something: If you make a TAS using that glitch, you'll have to beat Emerald inside the TAS itself. That might waste some time, especially if you want the fastest, in that case you'll need to beat it then start a new game. Or use it only for the remainder of the game.

Second thought: Could this possibly be done with the First Reactor? Exiting at the exact same frame as the countdown reaches 0. I can't think of any other countdown in the game.

Just pointing out my thoughts.

 

[nfitc1]

There are a few other timers (in the rocket getting the Huge Materia, on the train to Coral, etc) but nothing that gives you a Game Over when the time runs out other than the Emerald battle and the bombing mission failure.

I don't know that the bombing mission could generate this result since that's a field command. The Emerald battle flags the battle as lost when the timer reaches 0. If that happens after the battle is flagged as won (right before the victory dance) then this would occur.

The bombing mission starts a timer that gives you 10 minutes to reach a certain point in the field. When you reach that point the field stops the timer and plays the explosion FMV. When the timer hits 0 it triggers the game over field command. Even if the timer were stopped just as the game over command were executed it would still result in a normal game over.

It MIGHT work if you were in a battle when the time hits 0 though. Since it's a field timer it might just trigger the game over as soon as the battle is over. I don't think it would end the battle if it were in the middle of one. If it does it would possibly be susceptible to this glitch as well. Something worth trying out at least.

 

[Vgr]

When the timer reaches 0 the explosion FMV plays then the Game Over screen appears. If I'm not wrong, it first goes to the other field and then plays the FMV (much like the intro FMV does), but I wouldn't swear about it.

As for reaching 0 while in a battle (according that the battle is won at the same time) could probably do it. It's a bit earlier in the game, too! I think K7 made a video of it (or did he? can't remember if that was this exact same thing). If all else fail, I'll probably check it once I'm back home from work (yeah I'm supposed to be coding... haven't done a thing today yet... *shrugs*)

 

[nfitc1]

...(yeah I'm supposed to be coding... haven't done a thing today yet... *shrugs*)

Story of most of my days. Don't feel too bad about it.