Super Mario RPG was a perfect game in the eyes of many nostalgic gamers. But even this perfect game had a few bugs and glitches that the fandom eventually exploited. Read on to learn more about the best glitches from the original Super Mario RPG.
The Best Glitches from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Super Mario RPG was released on the SNES, a renowned but imperfect console with its fair share of hardware and software limitations. These limitations have led to more than a few glitches on most SNES titles and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was no exception.
Let's go through the best glitches Super Mario RPG had in its code, ranging from hilarious graphical bugs to game-breaking exploits that would later define the game's speedrunning scene.
The Headless Bowser Glitch
Let's kick things off with a hilarious but harmless glitch: the headless Bowser glitch. This glitch only happens on a specific fight with a specific team composition. During the battle with Yaridovich, if Bowser is in the center of the team and the upper Yaridovich attacks the third party member, Bowser will become temporarily headless for the attack's duration.
Bowser gets his head back right after and can attack as normal for the rest of the fight. A simple graphical glitch to be sure, but one that makes me laugh every time I see it.
The "Go, World!" Glitch
This is a weird one because there doesn't seem to be a proper way to explain how the glitch happened. The "Go, World!" glitch can only be triggered after a certain set of parameters are met. The player must first collect the "Lamb's Lure" or "Sheep Attack" items and fight a boss that spawns endless minions, such as the Manager and Director.
The glitch triggers if at least one enemy minion dies when one of the aforementioned items is used. The boss will try to summon another minion to replace them, but the text "Go, World!" will inexplicably scrawl on the top part of the screen instead, spawning no minion.
It doesn't make any sense, but hey, glitches rarely do. I'm just glad they didn't decapitate a character with this one.
The Chancellor Glitch
I like this glitch in particular because it requires some setup to execute, yet accomplishes nothing. The Chancellor glitch can be triggered right at the start of the game when Mario goes to visit the Chancellor. Normally, a cutscene with the Chancellor would play as you pass through the two columns of Toads flanking the center of the room. If you try to go around the Toads, they'd usually tell you to go through the center instead.
If you manage to time a jump correctly and land on a Toad, however, you can jump right off and reach the far end of the room without triggering the cutscene, which is usually impossible. You're free to roam about, but talking to the Chancellor from behind would cause Mario to walk through him and the Chancellor to turn around. This makes the two character models overlap, but the scene will play out as normal afterward.
Again, this glitch required a bit of setup but had absolutely no payoff. I don't even know how players managed to figure this one out.
The Mack Skip
Now we leave behind the realm of harmless bugs and enter the territory of game-breaking glitches. The infamous Mack Skip, when performed correctly, lets you skip an entire boss fight. While it's usually not fun to skip a boss fight since it'd mean you're missing out on content, this glitch was famously used by speedrunners to lower their run times.
Doing the Mack Skip glitch follows the same principle as the Chancellor glitch from before. The boss arena has a similar layout to the Chancellor glitch, with the main subject in the middle flanked on either side by columns of smaller enemies. Instead of Toads, Mack is flanked by jumping Shysters. To do the Mack Skip, simply jump onto a Shyster from the left column as they come down from a jump. If done correctly, the Mack fight won't trigger and you can get to the Chancellor at the far end of the room, freeing him and moving the story along. A real excuse me, I just need to get through
moment.
This one takes more skill to execute than the other glitches, and for good reason. Shaving an entire boss fight off of your run time would save you minutes, which may sound like nothing, but are several eternities for speedrunners. It's not very useful for a casual run, though, especially if you could have fought Mack comfortably anyway. But to this day, the Mack Skip remains one of the most well-known glitches from Super Mario RPG.
The Skill Swap
Now we are moving on from A speedrun glitch to THE speedrun glitch. The Skill Swap, aptly named for its ability to swap skills between party members to better optimize their stats, remains the single most important speedrun glitch in Super Mario RPG speedrunning history.
It comes as no surprise that the Skill Swap is the most complex glitch exploit in Super Mario RPG speedrunning history, requiring both skill and luck to get done. The first thing you need is a star, have one active as a character is about to level up and hit the X button mid-way during a screen transition between rooms to switch their place in the roster. If you do it right, the ability that the character would have gained from level up would be transferred to the character they switched with.
This is a very powerful exploit, as these abilities are character-locked for a reason - skill balancing. Speedrunners use this glitch to Frankenstein their skillsets which lets them cut down on run time through sheer firepower alone. Get this glitch to work and you'll be sitting pretty on the speedrunning leaderboards.
Super Mario RPG Speedruns and Glitches
Out Glitching the Competition
Glitches are mistakes, logical errors in a game's code that are often chalked up to developer oversight when discovered. In the right hands, however, they serve as powerful tools that can lead you to victory. This was the state of Super Mario RPG glitches for the game's speedrunning scene. When every possible skill ceiling was reached, only glitches, exploits, and manipulations could get you a leg up on the competition and runners were more than happy to partake.
The Mack Skip and Skill Swap glitches were discussed before due to their popularity, but those two are far from being the only glitches and manipulations used by speedrunners to get ahead.
Super Mario RPG uses a system called RNG counters to determine the random variables that affect the game. These include enemy spawns (specifically in the Barrel Volcano area), another gameplay mechanic called "freebie", and enemy turn order for group fights. RNG counters tick up with every passing frame, barring time spent in the overworld map and in-game menus. Knowing what frame you are in means you know what RNG counter you are in as well. This means that the randomness just got a lot less random.
New strategies revolving around the careful manipulation (manips) of RNG counters were developed, such as the "Terrapin Manip" and the "Freebie Manip" for the fight against Grate Guy and Knife Guy atop Booster's Tower. While technically not glitches, as these are exploited game mechanics rather than faulty code, these, in combination with the Mack Skip and Skill Swap mentioned earlier, formed the backbone of the runner's guide for Super Mario RPG. These glitches, exploits, and manips have defined the current speedrunning scene as we know it.
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