Speedrunners are at it again with one of the wildest tricks used to cut down run times: literally heating up the Famicom version of Dragon Quest 3 in order to trigger a bug that sets in-game party levels to 99. This comes just a month after speedrunners managed to set a new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess record by not doing anything for 17 entire hours, further demonstrating the lengths to which some will go for their speedruns.
Dragon Quest 3 is known to be a very difficult game to speedrun. Given that it is a JRPG, most regular playthroughs can take upwards of 30 or so hours and even the top speedruns for the game could take hours. That is much more than what is typical for your everyday speedrun, with most barely topping an hour and some, such as the recent Sephiroth’s Challenge speedruns in Smash Bros. Ultimate, taking just seconds. Given that Dragon Quest 3 is almost 33 years old, one would think that all of the bugs have been uncovered, but speedrunners have proven otherwise.
Somehow, Japanese player Hitshee has discovered that by heating a Famicom to a certain temperature while running Dragon Quest 3, a bug is triggered that allows players to start off at level 99, according to a tweet from VGDensetsu. Hitshee has managed to speedrun the game in just 22 minutes and 22 seconds by utilizing this bug, literally placing a Famicom on a hotplate and heating it anywhere between 50° C (122° F) and 80° C (176° F). Hitshee discovered the bug after noticing that reproducibility of another bug was different between summer and winter, leading to the discovery that temperature was a factor.
Of course, this method sounds dangerous, but Hitshee describes the process as safe, saying “I'm playing with a safety check. I've never broken an NES console, and it's not as dangerous as you might think. If the unit does break, I'm quick to repair it.” Other users on Japanese Twitter have since tried to emulate the speedrunner's success, some using other heat sources and one user even using ice packs to cool the Famicom. Some even joked about testing it on the Switch version of the game released last year.
All of this goes to show that, even if it seems like speedrunners have found everything there is to a game, another will come out and prove everyone wrong. With this Dragon Quest 3 trick though, one has to wonder if the speedruns that utilize it are technically TAS (tool-assisted speedruns) or not. A hot plate is technically an external tool, but this specific case has likely never been tested before (and for good reason). Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see what speedrunners come up with next. Perhaps some trick will be uncovered for the excellent Dragon Quest 11 S 30 years down the line.
Source: Hitshee (via VGDensetsu)