Dragon Quest Speedrunner roast their classic consoles to cause glitches

A group of Japanese speed runners have found that this is the key to faster times in the all-time RPG classic Dragon Quest III is to literally control the temperature of your Famicom systems with hotplates and ice packs.

Dragon Quest IIIis, like many role-playing games, long. Playing through the game regularly can take dozens of hours, and even the fastest speed runs typically lasted more than an hour before A fatal bug was found in August 2020. If you go through a series of steps that include saving the game and quickly toggling the Famicom’s power button while holding the reset button, the game will restart in a buggy state which, when used correctly, will maximize the group’s statistics.

Since the discovery of the breakdown, Dragon Quest III Speedrunners used it to finish the long game faster than ever. Japanese gamer Hitshee posted a time of 10:48 PM in November before cutting his time down to 10:22 PM earlier this month. His secret? Raise his famicom’s temperature, usually in the range of 50 ° C (or 122 ° F) but sometimes up to 80 ° C (or 176 ° F), to improve his chances of the bug working properly.

According to a recent report by Denfa Minico Gamer

Players have found that the initiation of the Dragon Quest III Interference can be manipulated by a number of external factors, including the Famicom model they are using and the temperature of the console. This can make the internal memory more volatile. Where speed runners like Hitshee and Pirohiko Use devices that generate heat, such as hot plates. Another player named baku_zero used ice packs to cool his Famicom.

On the weekend Hitshee, Pirohiko, baku_zero and a fourth player named lime participated in one Dragon Quest III

run during a speed running event. They all used the on / off bug and, as far as I can tell, at least used Hitshee and Pirohiko hotplates, the latter setting a new world record of 10:07 p.m. It is unclear whether the Famicom’s temperature was critical to this featbut i am not over with the arguing extensive experiments Some of these players have implemented the strategy.

“Do not worry” Hitshee wrote on Twitter in response to concerned commentators. “I’m playing with a security check. I’ve never broken an NES console and it’s not as dangerous as you might think. If the device breaks, I can fix it quickly. Even if you don’t think it’s worth it, it’s an important research and presentation for us. ”