#743 THE WORLD IS ENDING AND I AM TERRA!, Random pointer land.

A bit more info:

In the American SNES "Final Fantasy III" - NOT the Japanese version, NOT the Playstation version, NOT the GBA version, and, heck, not even all American copies - there exists a glitch when Sketch fails. Not every time it fails, but often enough to be notable. Thanks to a wild pointer, it will start screwing with the data a lot.

Now, Sketch's base hit rate is partially determined from the physical hit rate formula. Invisible targets can't be hit with physical attacks, so Sketch will always fail (and in the correct version, trigger the glitch). It also happens against certain "special" targets that aren't supposed to be Sketchable (Gau himself triggers it when returning on the Veldt, for instance), and sometimes just due to random bad luck.

The glitch usually crashes the game - dramatically so. Graphical glitches like the ones seen in the comic are common. It will mess with the status and even identities of characters. It will often force the command menu into the "cross" style, and sometimes not let you pick commands.

If you manage to get your characters to run from the battle (or complete it normally, if the game lets you), then most of the glitchiness will resolve itself, but your inventory will be scrambled. You will always end up with an insane number of Dirks (in multiple inventory slots) and will usually end up with piles of other items you shouldn't have. If you can get out of the battle at all, that is.

The items are nice, but the Sketch glitch can be bad otherwise. Wild pointers are bad news in computers (some modern programming languages limit your ability to use pointers for that very reason). It's been known to crash or screw up emulators - no joke here.

And this glitch doesn't happen in Final Fantasy IV; there's no Sketch command there. You meant VI, perhaps?

It also helps if you play Final Fantasy III Instead of IV.

(American SNES III)

Yes, but he would have been playing FF2.

Here's a YouTube video of the various effects.

So realistic that it made my computer crash when I tried to play it.

(I need to get around to getting a new computer).

Well, see, I was GOING to say VI, but I realized that if I said that I would have been incorrect.

It's not the only one. FF VI managed to make it out to the masses with a slightly staggering number of glitches and mistakes...

Very true, but none of them are quite as destructive and easy to accidentally pull off than the Sketch Glitch (remember, it only requires Sketch to miss to trigger - Vanish guarantees the miss, but it's not actually necessary - and the conditions for its trigger are hardly arcane.)

(NOTE: I said destructive AND easy to pull off. The Evade glitch is literally unavoidable to at least some degree, but it's not "destructive" in the slightest.)

This post has been edited by HeroicJay on Nov 28 2011, 07:13 AM

Whoops! Yeah, I meant Final Fantasy VI (3). Can't believe I made that error. And yeah, as it was mentioned, not all games have this. Guess I was just lucky.

If I'm not mistaken, only the earliest versions of the game had the glitch. So if you bought the game late in it's life cycle, you would be fine.

I had the Sketch Glitch trigger in the Ultros fight once - nay, TWICE IN A ROW. You know, in that battle that (normally) doesn't end until you Sketch, and you can't run from it because it's a boss battle.

Third time I just decided the gloves were off and Vanish/Doomed the stupid octopus. I normally don't utilize that bug*, but I didn't feel like sitting through the battle again.

People can talk trash about the GBA version all they like, but with fewer (and harder-to-trigger) game-breaking bugs and what I feel is a superior translation**, I think it's the best version available.

* - Yes, Vanish/Doom is a bug. It causes minor errors in the plot and major errors in gameplay (mostly against Phunbaba), and the GBA version removed it entirely, at least against targets that are supposed to be immune to instant Death. Magic is supposed to have a 100% success rate on invisible targets, but not if they're immune to the spell!

** - Anyone who tells you the GBA version made Kefka a serious character lied to you. Anyone who tells you it's dry and emotionless lied to you. They might have played the fan retranslation, which DID suck, but the GBA's version was basically "Woolsey's translation with some of the stuff he couldn't fit in added back, and some of the mistranslations and out-of-character moments removed".

This post has been edited by HeroicJay on Nov 29 2011, 02:09 AM