Anyone interested in Phantasy Star speed runs?

I've never attempted to speed run anything myself, but I've recently really gotten into the speedrunning scene as a viewer, particularly the RPG stuff, and I was wondering if anyone here has checked out any such runs for this series.

I haven't had a chance to check any out myself yet, but I'm looking on YouTube right now and happy to find that a number of runs exist, including some stuff from the fourth game from RPG Limit Break. I know it might seem kind of weird or pointless to watch an RPG being beaten as quickly as possible, but I find it interesting to see what kind of exploits they use, such as what cut scenes might be skipped, and more importantly I often learn a lot about the game's mechanics, such as how to avoid enemy encounters or manipulate them to the player's advantage.

Actually speedrunning myself? Nah, but as a programmer in college its cool to see how these games function under the hood. As far as I understand it, a lot of new tricks that comes from speedruns are from people cracking the game under the hood to figure out what ways it needs to be poked to get x, y or z to happen.

Absolutely, it's really neat to see the inventiveness and dedication that speedrunners have in deconstructing beloved games. I just finished watching a run of Phantasy Star II which clocked in at less than 55 minutes, which is pretty amazing to me. Like many RPG speed runs it relies on overflowing or underflowing the inventory in order to get crazy results.

The different thing about this one is that the guy was able to get not only end-game armor and weapons from the very beginning but also to manipulate the character's stats to incredible and ridiculous levels. He was also able to get key storyline items, including the dam keys and amusingly enough Teim herself, allowing him to bypass very large sections of the game and also to avoid Nei's death. This last note was particularly awesome to me, as I rather enjoyed seeing the fallen hero get her revenge and destroy Dark Force and Mother Brain!

Ah ! Very interesting question ! I've watched some parts of some speedruns and it was always very interesting ! Yes, for an RPG it's a bit strange to see some people going very fast but in fact it's amazing to be able to discover some mechanisms behind the scenes/curtains !