Update: 12/20/2016
Port Saiid Situation Update: I'm giving Yuku until January 1st to resolve the ongoing issues with the Port Saiid forums. If the forums are not fully-functional, at normal speed, and with a working advanced search feature by then, we are going to look at other options for the site forums.
Some of us are suspicious that Port Saiid has gotten too large with almost 17 years worth of posts, and that's why it won't work right anymore. If that's the case, we can move to my backup Yuku board, which is much smaller. If Yuku in general is the problem, we'll have to move to another service altogether.
-FO
Probably messing up the tables again, but I'll post this anyway: Although the character limit doesn't make it a suitable replacement, we do suggest signing up for and following us on Twitter if you want to keep up with us in times when the forums are down. Here are some of our accounts:
Flying Omelette: @FlyingOmelette
Pero (Me): @Pero_Velasquez
Daryn: @Minerva_K_Red
Dominic (Agisuro): @Dom_Lom_DeMarco
You can find some other familiar names by looking over our following/followers lists.
-Pero
EDIT: Woo-hoo! Pero and I are playing Update Tag!
Port Saiid Members Twitter List!
-FO
Update: 11/23/2016
Minor Update #1: Port Saiid Pipeline is working again.
Over the holiday weekend, I'm going to attempt to recode the front page so that when Pero updates, the tables won't get messed up.
While the Port Saiid Forums are up and running, they are still slow and our search function is offline, so we're still not ready to make an official statement saying we're back yet.
And now the real reason for this update, I need help solving a little mystery that is dogging me about the original SNES release of Final Fantasy III (better known as Final Fantasy VI, but using the American nomenclature because this glitch might be specific to that version.)
Several people within the FlyingOmelette.com community, including myself, recall running into a bug in the Phoenix Cave where getting into battles would cause the game to wildly glitch out and become unplayable. Either graphics would scramble and glitch or the screen would go black. In my experience, I remember the music would keep going, but I had no control over anything. Starting from the last save and going back into the Phoenix Cave would not fix it. The battles would always glitch out on that file, leaving us unable to get Locke and the Phoenix Esper. (This is, BTW, how some of us discovered there are minor variations in the ending if you don't have certain characters as some of us went on to finish the game without Locke.)
Back when we experienced this issue in the late 90's, we discussed it on internet message forums, and it was (at that point in time) possible to find people mentioning it outside of our community. Those people speculated that it was a defect in first-run cartridges, though we have no concrete evidence of that.
Today, it seems impossible to find any mention of this glitch anywhere outside of this small website. I'm wondering if part of the issue is that most people play the game emulated or play one of the remakes, or if they are playing it on an SNES cartridge, it might not be a "first-run" (if that even has anything to do with it). I'm fairly certain we didn't have a group hallucination.
Please help us investigate this. If anyone else has experienced this glitch, please write in to the staff email on the "Contact" page to tell us about it. If anyone has a video of it, that would be even better!
Minor Update #2: While it is possible to see a similar glitch in the Phoenix Cave by having Relm sketch certain monsters there, this is not the same as the well-known Relm Sketch Glitch. As I recall, the glitching and blank screens would happen immediately upon entering a battle, regardless of party members, and it was impossible to do anything, let alone select "Sketch" from Relm's menu. Other people have claimed to run into it without even having found Relm in the World of Ruin at all.
-FO
Update: 11/2/2016
Hello, everyone. Port Saiid, our official forums, are currently down because Yuku (the site that hosts the forums) is moving various old boards to a new server. We do not have an ETA for when it will be back, but are hoping it will be soon. We will post an announcement when it's back. Thanks for your patience.
-Pero
Update: 10/11/2016
Hey, everyone. The Memory Card is no more. My staff and I closely monitored the exit link activity on this page for over a month and the truth of the matter is...nobody was using it. Since all the sites that were in it can be found on the Links page, and some of them are no longer updated, we saw it fit to finally lay it to rest for good.
In other news, just like Ninja Boy 2 and Super Ninja Boy, I've unearthed previously undiscovered passwords for the SNES game, Ultimate Fighter:
This code for a rather fancy-pants Sound Test is just one of several I found hidden in the ROM. For the whole lot of them, see this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/FlyingOmelette/status/784764360128360450
Update: 10/7/2016
Previously undiscovered "Ultimate Password" for Super Ninja Boy (SNES) has been found!
Enter Z? at the Password Screen
You'll be taken to the last town of the game, before the final boss, with maxed stats, experience level, and items.
A little history here: The special passwords for this game were all cracked and first posted to the internet by the Port Saiid/FlyingOmelette.com community, way back in the mid-90's. Somehow or another, we all managed to miss this one until now. If you look around various sites that have codes for this game, you'll notice they don't have it, either. That's because the internet trail on this information all spread from our original postings about it, and since we didn't find this one, no one else learned of its existence.
It's difficult for me to remember the exact process by which I figured out the passwords, but if I had to guess the reason we all missed this one is because it's the only one that contains a symbol. The rest are all two-letter combinations. We may have all given up trying to enter passwords with symbols after so many of them proved fruitless.
There is also a dummied password to display the ending sequence in the ROM, but it's redundant anyway since the ending can also be viewed from the Information Mode.
For more on this, see this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/FlyingOmelette/status/784540575429234688
Update: 10/6/2016
The rest of the Ninja Boy 2 passwords have been found, but there is a catch. The only other one besides the Music Test code that works without hacking is +ND, which will show the ending. The letter "E" is replaced with a + symbol in the password table, but it will still work.
The other passwords are all three-character codes that call up various debugging features, but cannot be entered during normal gameplay because the third character does not appear in the password table. However, by editing the ROM, they can be re-enabled. There are quite a few of them, and to fully explore them, check out this thread on my Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/FlyingOmelette/status/784160223053357057
And this thread shows where the passwords can be seen in the ROM:
https://twitter.com/FlyingOmelette/status/784179337088143361
Update: 10/5/2016
After 23 years, I have found a previously undiscovered code in the Game Boy game, Ninja Boy 2.
Enter three musical note symbols on the password screen.
And you'll be taken to a screen with a Music Test.
This is significant to me because almost all of Culture Brain's titles that have passwords have special passwords for things like sound tests, viewing the ending/cutscenes, and starting with powered-up characters. I actually found a lot of these passwords for The Magic of Scheherazade, Flying Warriors, Little Ninja Brothers, and Super Ninja Boy many years ago, but this game always eluded me due to the lack of vowels in the password system.
When I first played this game in 1993, I was certain it had a sound test in there, but I couldn't find it. I noticed text for one (as well as some other extra modes) appears in the ROM, so I knew it had to be there somewhere. On a complete whim, I tried entering the musical note a few times, and almost couldn't believe it when it happened. Seems so obvious in retrospect, but I think I'm the first to find it.
Will keep looking for passwords to access the Information and Message modes...
Update: 9/7/2016
Hello, everyone. FO has informed me that she is not likely to be writing any capsule reviews or making any other updates for awhile. I also want to reiterate that this site no longer accepts any kind of advertising, per our policy. For some reason, we are still receiving emails about this, even though we have clearly stated that in the contact rules.
-Pero
Update: 7/16/2016
April 2016 Capsule Reviews
Also, a note on the Inindo: Way of the Ninja stuff in the previous update: Another possibility is that there may still be a time limit on other versions of this game, and that may be why the manual mentioned it. However, as it stands, this time limit does not exist in the SNES version. I haven't played any of the other versions and probably won't, so I can't confirm if the bad ending exists on them or not. The Wikipedia article seems thoroughly convinced it does exist, but as of yet, I have seen no evidence of it. Manuals are known for having errors. In fact, there is another mistake in the SNES Inindo manual in the very same paragraph that mentions the time limit: It says the game will end if everyone is frozen in battle, but this isn't true. The battle will end in "defeat" and you'll be ejected back to the overworld or dungeon, but your characters will still be alive.
Update: 7/4/2016
I've solved a mystery that has haunted players of Inindo: Way of the Ninja for well over a decade. I can confirm with 100% certainty that the manual lied - there is no "bad ending" for failing to beat Nobunaga (the game's final boss) in a time limit, and here is the proof:
The manual states, "...there is a 20 year time limit for victory which must be met or the game will end. If victory is not achieved by January of 1601, the game will end."
Well, as you can see in my screenshot, the game is still going in February 1601. I even went to the end and beat Nobunaga and the ending was exactly the same.
To be sure that the manual didn't simply state the incorrect date, I checked through all the game's dialogue by opening the ROM in Notepad. It does not seem as though any of the game's text is compressed, and there is no dialogue pertaining to an ending where Nobunaga dies of "old age" or under any circumstance other than you beating him at the end of the game. The only difference depends on if you're playing the harder path or the easier path (the harder path has extra dialogue pertaining to the sorcerer Nicolai who is not present on the easier path).
So, then why does the manual say that? I believe it's a remnant of a change during development. This dialogue appears with the text for winning territorial battles:
"'s army unified Japan!"
It is not possible to unify Japan because no one's army will ever invade Omi (Nobunaga's home land), but it's very likely that the original idea was to beat Nobunaga in the territorial battles and that it had to be done by January 1601. This idea was removed, but a reference to it was left in the manual by mistake.
Update: 6/11/2016
Stuff I Wrote: March 2016 Capsule Reviews
Looks like we're going to need a 2016 Update Log, soon...
~FO
