Major Glitches

For both major glitches, it can be helpful to know that every area in the game is laid out on a single large map.

Check Area Glitch

References

• Video demonstration
• Pirohiko and Mugg's 09:01.77 TAS using the Onett spot
• Pirohiko and Mugg's 30:42.12 TAS using the Threed spot

There are several spots in the game that, when checked, can cause the game to read an arbitrary location in memory. These spots are all located along the outer edge of the game map, and many are normally inaccessible. The 2 most commonly used spots are the northeast corner of Onett and the southeast corner of the circus tent in Threed. The former spot can be reached by using the walk-through-cliffs glitch, while the latter spot can be reached normally.

The desired outcome is for the glitch to activate the debug menu. With the debug menu, it's possible to warp straight to an end-game event (e.g. Picky knocking on Ness's door).

Stairs Glitch

References

• Video demonstration
• Pirohiko's 1:10:00.95 TAS

The stairs glitch causes your party to enter a "ghosted" state in which your party is able to walk through any solid object, including walls, NPCs, trees, cliffs, etc. This allows the party to walk directly between adjacent locations on the map.

The stairs glitch can be activated in 2 ways:

First Method

This game treats movement on stairs differently from normal movement. When walking onto a set of stairs, the transition from the normal to the stairs movement state isn't instantaneous. Instead, the game disables all player input, and Ness automatically keeps walking forward until the transition is complete. The duration of disabled input is about 19 frames.

If an interruption occurs during the transition, Ness will stop walking and the game will give control back to the player when the interruption finishes. The interruption can either be a phone call (e.g. from Ness's dad, Mach Pizza) or a critical health warning, which appears if a party member has a health-draining status effect (cold, poison, nausea, or sunstroke) and HP drops below a certain percentage of the maximum. (I think the threshold is about 19.5% of max HP, but I'm not completely sure about that.)

If the interruption occurs after the transition begins but several frames before it completes, the game will give control back to the player with the party left in a ghosted state. The timing window for the interruption to trigger the ghosted state is about 12 frames rather than the full 19 frames, and the earliest possible moment is the second frame of the transition. If the interruption occurs within a few frames after this window, the party will be confined to move along a diagonal but not actually be on the stairs--in this movement state, the party can still walk through walls, but there is no way to get off the diagonal without deactivating the glitch.

The glitch can be triggered at the top or the bottom of a set of stairs, but it cannot be triggered by walking off the stairs. The glitch cannot be triggered with escalators either.

There is another limitation with this method. Imagine drawing an infinitely long horizontal line at the point the glitch is triggered. If you try to cross this line, the game will warp the party onto the stairs no matter where the line is crossed. If the glitch is triggered at the top of the stairs, the line is actually a bit below the party; conversely, if the glitch is triggered at the bottom of the stairs, the line is slightly above the party. Hence, if you want to travel up or down, the glitch needs to be triggered at the top or the bottom of a set of stairs respectively.

Second Method

1. Walk onto a set of stairs.
2. Get the entire party wiped out while on the stairs. This can be done by having all party members unconscious except for one person. That person should have a health-draining status effect such as poison.
3. Return to the title screen from the game over scene. This can be done by answering "no" and then "yes" at the prompts. Resetting the game will not work.
4. Open a different save file.
5. The party will start in a ghosted state upon loading the save.

Unlike the first method, there is no horizontal line that you cannot cross.

Using a second save file in a run might seem questionable. The unofficial compromise is that the second file can be made only by copying the primary file used for the run, so the second file cannot be prepared beforehand.

It is likely possible to complete a stairs glitch run without a second save file, but the run would be much slower and more difficult. The biggest problem is that not using a second file will make it necessary to go through the Cave of the Past normally. Since large parts of the game are skipped, the party will likely be severely underleveled and will have to run from every fight. Equipping the Rabbit's Foot might help, but given the large number of enemies that appear and the possibility of a wipe out, doing this would introduce more risk and overhead into the run.

Exploring as a Ghost

Although you can enter other locations while in a ghosted state and hear its BGM, most of the other areas aren't visible and you can't interact with anything in them. When the party enters a location normally, the game loads the graphics only for that location and leaves most other areas unloaded. (Some rooms share the same set of graphics, and entering one of these rooms will load every room with the same graphics set. You normally can't see more than one of these rooms at a time because they are never next to each other.)

When you enter an unloaded room, there are 2 ways to load it: use the Map or the Sound Stone. The Map is faster but can be used only in towns, while the Sound Stone can be used anywhere but disappears after defeating Ness's Nightmare.

With a room loaded, you can return to normal by either entering a door, falling through a hole, or walking onto stairs or an escalator. There is a catch, however: if you activated the glitch using the first method, entering a door or hole that leads to a location on the other side of the invisible horizontal line will cause the game to try to warp you onto the stairs. This can often cause the party to become stuck on the stairs.

Other Glitches

Walk through Cliffs

The cliff crossing glitch is probably best understood by looking at a picture. Like many games, EarthBound's maps are divided into tiles. The game's programming designates each tile as either passable or impassable, with all cliffs being impassible. Because of the jagged shape of cliffs, they sometimes form 1-tile wide "nooks" where 3 of the 4 adjacent tiles are impassible. If this nook is diagonally adjacent to a passable tile on the other side of the cliff, it's possible for Ness to squeeze into this nook, and then cross over into the diagonal tile.

Doing this glitch with a Skip Sandwich can make things easier. Also, a cliff cannot be crossed by walking diagonally; it requires a combination of horizontal and vertical movements. Let's say you enter a nook from the top and there is a passable tile down-left. To enter it, you'll need to walk briefly to the left and then turn down and repeat until successful. Failure can occur if you walk too far to the left before turning down because this can cause Ness to get pushed out of the nook or off the cliff. The nook itself can be entered with diagonal movement, but it requires precise positioning. Again, using a Skip Sandwich can help.

Condiments Glitch

The condiments glitch (or the Rock Candy trick) lets you use a single food item an indefinite number of times. It's done by having condiments and the food item in the same character's inventory, but the food must be placed after the condiments in the inventory's sorting order; simply placing the food at the bottom of the inventory is sufficient.

Now, if the food item is used during a fight, only the condiment will be consumed. The food item will remain after each use as long as a condiment is available. This glitch does not work if the food is consumed outside of a fight.

Time-Saving Techniques

Stutter-Walking

Stutter-walking refers to moving short distances at a time when walking. It's used to avoid certain enemies and skip event triggers, such as the Starman Jr. fight and Buzz Buzz's final words.

There are several different enemy movement patterns on the field. In one such pattern, an enemy only moves towards the party when the party is moving; when the party is standing still, the enemy also stands still. The Coil Snake and Rowdy Mouse are examples of enemies that move this way.

Stutter-walking can be used to avoid such enemies because they start moving a few frames (usually about 3 to 6 frames) after the party starts moving. Waiting for a longer period of time between each step seems to improve results.

Skipping event triggers is much more difficult because it requires alternating between walking and stopping on every frame. If the party walks for 2 frames or stops for 2 frames, the skip will fail. This technique is essentially TAS-only, unless the player is extremely good at button mashing.

Luck Manipulation

Two factors make luck manipulation feasible:

1. Resetting the game resets the RNG to the same initial state.
2. The RNG is affected by specific in-game events, many of which can be manipulated by the player. Examples include:
   • Scrolling text/dialogue: each character of scrolling text generates 1 random number.
   • Cursor movement: each movement of the cursor in menus generates 1 number.
   • Opening and closing a menu window. This can sometimes generate 2 numbers because some windows and their contents are loaded separately.
   • Whenever an NPC starts or stops walking. Scripted NPC movements, such as Pokey at the beginning of the game, does not affect the RNG.
   • Walking over certain parts of the map. These are usually caused by enemy spawn triggers.
   • Displaying the HP/PP window outside of battle. This causes a new random number to be generated on each frame, so its use is limited to tool-assisted runs.

In a console run, luck manipulation is useful only after a reset because it's impossible to determine the RNG's state in the middle of normal gameplay. Methods for adjusting the RNG include opening and closing the main menu, pressing L, talking to no one, and making a specific number of cursor movements in menus. The path you take when walking can also be important in areas where enemies appear. In areas where enemies do not appear, your walking path has only a small effect.