Hello!

[DentedRazor]

Hey everyone! I've enjoyed these games ever since I first played them in the early 90's. About five years ago, I got into playing the randomizer of Soul Blazer a lot (have been in a few races). Also, I have been speedrunning Soul Blazer a lot recently (got WR for Any% US and Japanese versions, Low% for Japanese version). Not really intending to speedrun IoG or Terranigma, but I do enjoy playing them a lot as well.

My hope in joining this forum is to try to learn more about the history of the speedrunning of Soul Blazer. I have found posts in Speed Demos Archive, TASVideos.org, the Quintet Speedrun discord, and Speedrun.com, and have been trying to find the earliest recorded speedrun. The earliest I have found is the TAS by Kaz in 2006. The history is fun to keep digging into.

Hope y'all are well, glad to be here.

[psychokind]

Hi there and welcome! quite an achievement, hope to see you in a summoning salt video sometime

I myself am a very bad game especially considering I play games for about 33 years now non stop.

that being said, maybe I hold the world record in most Terranigma 100% playthroughs?

[Jason Tandro]

My god, new blood?

Is that even allowed? What mortal walks through this graveyard of early 2000s memories (read: cringe).

But in all seriousness, welcome! Time was this was a thriving hot-belly of a forum but we're in a bit of a slump. Only for about, oh... the past fifteen years or so. However, we've had a slight resurgence lately as some of the old regulars seem to be hopping about (yours truly included).

To the point: Speedrunning is dope. I have a mad respect for it even though I'm a terrible runner myself (my only challenge claim to fame is a Pokemon Red Nuzlocke). I'm not sure what the nature of speedrunning is even like for these games. I can imagine some of the unskippable story beats in Illusion of Gaia would make it kind of annoying to run. Conversely, Terranigma is probably a joy to speedrun because of its combat system.

I second psychokind's comment about SummoningSalt lol.

As far as information here, each game had a pretty big pool of threads to peruse, but as they are all over a decade old, take the information contained within with a grain of salt. In particular if you are interested in IoG, Shiva Indis did an entire series of translations back in the day which you may find interesting.

Anyway, babble over. Welcome to TerraEarth and I hope you enjoy your stay!

[DentedRazor]

I haven't tried the speedruns for Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma, but I want to eventually, since I love the games by Quintet.

The Soul Blazer Any% route is really fascinating, it has evolved a lot over the years. The big details are clearing just enough to get through, while also picking up some key items to keep up the speed, like the Power Bracelet. There are some great resources to learn the run (I decided to take it on after playing the randomizer for about 4 years or so).

One of the difficult parts of the run (and most random) is the Area 6 boss, the Winged Demon, Demon Bird, Swooper, whatever you want to call them. The quick strat relies on a sideways movement (2 are required in the US version, 1 in the Japanese version due to lower HP), but the diagonal movements (swoops) are usually dodged (since it is tough to avoid the damage) and add 4 seconds each time. Ideally, you get no swoops and enough sideways movements to beat the boss, but sometimes it decides to give all the swoops (very frustrating on a great run). My current high score is 14, but a couple other runners got up to 22.

Thanks for the welcome, these types of sites definitely hit me in the nostalgia, and I am glad this one is still around. I hope to contribute in some fun ways, maybe posting about resources to help others get into the speedrun and/or randomizer, or about the 5 different versions of Soul Blazer (I like Soul Blazer maybe too much).

[inferiare]

Oh hello there! Glad you checked back in to see you were active! Since we're a lot more quiet than we used to be, I have it to where I manually activate accounts, so most legit ones don't usually check back. Glad to have you here!

I replayed SB recently; it had been long enough that I remembered like, nothing about it, so speedrunning it seems insane to me since I had some minor issues on the bosses, but I guess when you speedrun, you learn the most effective way to beat everything, huh? I'll have to pick up some tips for next time.

[Jason Tandro]

All I want is IoG Raft Skip.

[SoulBlazerFan]

inferiare wrote:

Oh hello there! Glad you checked back in to see you were active! Since we're a lot more quiet than we used to be, I have it to where I manually activate accounts, so most legit ones don't usually check back. Glad to have you here! I replayed SB recently; it had been long enough that I remembered like, nothing about it, so speedrunning it seems insane to me since I had some minor issues on the bosses, but I guess when you speedrun, you learn the most effective way to beat everything, huh? I'll have to pick up some tips for next time.

When I was younger and rented the game all the time I got my time down to about 3 hours to beat it in one sitting. Last time I played in one sitting I think it was like 6 hours. My memory ain't what it used to be. The idea of speed running anything at this point in my life is beyond me.

[Manibrandr System]

Welcome to the forum. We've considered Soul Blazer to be one of our favourites, even over Illusion of Gaia. So to see someone who is speed running the game is fascinating.

I am not a speedrunner, as I like to take my time on things, but seeing how players route my favourite games have always been a fascination.