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Megaten Speedruns Resources

Shin Megami Tensei

Shin Megami Tensei I is the first entry in the Shin Megami Tensei series.
SNES
Leaderboards See all the submitted runs on Speedrun.com

About

Section titled “About”

For the longest time, Shin Megami Tensei was mostly run by the japanese community. There were a few western runners, such as Symm, who did some attempts with the fan translated English Patch available from the SNES version of the game, but it wasn’t until 2020 that a new surge of runners appeared.

Speedruns of the SNES Version

Section titled “Speedruns of the SNES Version”

There were a few reasons why SMT1 wasn’t a particularly popular run: the English Patch was considerably slower than the japanese version, which created a barrier of entry for anyone trying to compete for a fast time, especially considering the multiple recruitments required for the run; there were multiple RNG-heavy sections, such as the Sylph fusion, the Devil Summoner fight and the Bishamonten fight, and there was no available guide at the time with the up-to-date strats that the japanese runners were using. mizusima40’s 1:57:xx stood as the world record for many years.

Everything changed in 2020 when runner lradial picked up the game and created a thorough guide for the No Major Glitches - Law Ending category. This was the first in making the game more accessible for more players. Around the same time, runner sioneus picked up the game and created guides for the Neutral Ending, Chaos Ending and All Bossses category.

The new activity caught the attention of world record holder mizusima40 who, after joining a couple of races with the western runners, return to SMT1 and developed a new route that would break away from the Sylph route. This new route would take advantage of two tricks in the SNES version: Charms and Traesto Sequence Breaking.

The core of the route became to charm boss fights instead of stunning them, which we can do to all bosses relatively easily except for Red and Blue Phantoms. This removes one of the big reasons to fuse Sylph, an RNG-heavy random fusion, which justified cutting fusing the Hinokagutsuchi and instead picking up one of the swords from the reward house. This small change led to a route with completely different stat assignments, recruitments, equipment and fights. What’s more, with Traesto Sequence Breaking we are able to cut Ikebukuro entirely which saves time and prevents having to adjust our alignment after Yama. After this development, mizusima40 achieved his time of 1:47:43, which still stands today as the world record.

Variations of this route are also used for the Chaos, Neutral and All Bosses categories.

But that wasn’t all. For April of the same year, runners sioneus and Symm decided to try to execute the until then TAS-only route that completed SMT1 in 20 minutes. After finding an alternative to manipulating a fiend encounter and successfully executing the Heroine Duplication Glitch, the Any% category was born. At the time, the glitch could only be executed on Revision 1.1 of Shin Megami Tensei, the version that was exclusively released for the Super Famicom official flash cartridge and, therefore, the run could only be executed on console using a flash cartridge.

July of 2021, runner and glitch-hunter masaya released an updated TAS that used a different glitch, the Extermination Glitch, to reach the credits. This route cut the Any% by about half its length and could be executed on any revision of SMT1, being the route that is still used to this day.

This newer Any% route attracted many new runners due to its short length of under 20 minutes. Since then, Any% has become the most popular category of SMT1 and one of the most run categories in all of megaten.

Speedruns of the PS1 Version

Section titled “Speedruns of the PS1 Version”

The PS1 version was its own niche, with only runs done by equi and Clive standing on the boards for many years. Despite it’s faster movement and menus, the lack of turbo options and the usage of the Sylph route put runners off from tackling this category for a long time. But everything changed with the release of the unofficial English patch in July of 2022. This patch made a previously japan-only release more accessible to a wider audience and, opposite to its SFC counterpart, turned out to be faster than the original release, as the patch creators added instant text and mapped the A button to, when held, mash through all the text.

This drew in new runners, such as S_Guy, the current world record holder for many of the PS1 categories and a very competitive runner for the other versions. But it also led to the discovery of the viability of an otherwise inocuous glitch.

When investigating the glitches of the PS1 version and experimenting with the Equipment Glitch, Symm discovered that equipping nerve bullets to the boot equipment slot of a human would make them invincible. No attacks or status effects can be cast on them, other than those reflected. This glitch, combined with the possibility of equipping guns to sword slots, turning them into absurdly strong weapons, led to the creation of the Any% category.

Speedruns of the GBA Version

Section titled “Speedruns of the GBA Version”

Speedruns of the GBA version are still relatively niche, as it’s not a particularly appealing version to run. The game is insanely expensive on cartridge and it doesn’t offer the best quality in terms of speed, visuals or soundtrack. It uses the same Sylph route as the PS1 version.

Its most unique aspect is the presence of Visionary Items, a small optional collectible that lets the player view new cutscenes that have been added to flesh out the story. This led to the creation of an All Visionary Items category, which has the runner jump between save files and suspended saves to get all the items, some of which are locked behind beating a certain ending or beating a certain boss in NG+.

Speedrun History

Section titled “Speedrun History”
  1. Shin Megami Tensei was released in Japan on October 30, 1992.
  2. The first ever recorded run was done on 2007/05/12 by korosuke, completing the Neutral route with a time of 3:36:17. At the time, among the japanese community, Neutral ending would be the preferred ending as it was perceived as being the most complete and canon one.
  3. On 2009/10/13, runner 01 improved the Neutral ending world record completing the first sub 3h run with a time of 2:35:41
  4. On 2016/10/15, runner 柳雲 completeed the first run of Chaos Ending with a time of 2:34:54
  5. In 2017/12/04, Symm would complete the first run using the English Patch with a time of 3:00:24. The English Patch would then be confirmed to be terribly slower than the japanese version, therefore most runs on the boards are done on the original version.
  6. On 2018/01/01, megaten runner mizusima40 popularized Law Ending as the defacto ending and obtained the first sub 2h run with a time of [1:57:40]. This would stand as world record for 3 years.
  7. On 2018/08/02, runner masaya would complete a run using RNG Manip to obtain a stradivarius obtaining a time of 1:39:17. The leaderboards, as of 2025, do not allow RNG manipulation, otherwise this would be the world record.
  8. In 2020, mizusima40 re-worked his route to include the usage of the Traesto skip, which was ruled by the boards as allowed, as well as no longer fusing the Hinokagutsuchi to use Charm strats and the Lotus Wand instead. This was a major reworking of the route and the standard route to this day.
  9. The current world record is held by mizusima40, achieved on 2020/09/11 with a time of 1:47:43.

Categories

Section titled “Categories”

No Major Glitches

Main category that disallows game breaking glitches such as ACE, Memory Manipulation, going Out of Bounds, etc. Category also bans encounter manipulation. All 3 endings are seperate categories

Any%

No restriction on glitches or manipulation. Seperate ending categories are not avaibale. Whatever the fastest ending is will be the ending for the run.

All Bosses

No Major Glitchless ruleset except this time you fight every boss encounter in the game. This requires Neutral ending. Category is currently under Misc.

Glitches & Tricks

Section titled “Glitches & Tricks”
Magic Preemption

Due to a bug in the code, magic will always be the first thing that happens in a turn over anything else regardless of speed values. This is triggered by making sure Magic is the last action you select that isnt attack or defend. You can disable this by opening and closing the item menu with the last party member. This is very useful in making sure spells like zio/bufu are the first to come out versus enemies with powerful non-magic attacks.

Traesto Sequence Breaking

When leaving the Ginza Underpass (Going to Ikebukuro) if you re-enter before the Yami event triggers, you can cast Traesto which will teleport you out and allow you to bypass the event trigger entirely.

Sell Glitch

Hold the B button when entering the sell menu. Press A while still holding B and the game will ask if you want to sell an Attack Knife (Even if you don’t have one). You can do this as many times as you want. This also works in the buy menu and depending on the shop, you will be able to purchase a wide variety of items.

Heroine Duplication After rescuing the heroine from the public execution in the Tokyo Goverment Building, if you talk to the her with a full inventory, she sends you away and asks you to clear up some space so she can give you the fake ID and join you. After discarding an item and talking to her again, she will join, but for some reason the flag on that tile that she has joined is never set to true, so the player can keep talking to the heroine over and over and get infinte heroines in the party.

Extermination Glitch The extermination glitch is a state where every character is either DYING or DEAD status but the game doesn’t trigger a game over. When the game is in this limbo state, it becomes extremely difficult to run away from random encounters and on opening the equipment menu, the cursor breaks as it has no living character to point to, so it becomes possible to access random values in memory. Opening these values can cause the game to crash or collision to break, making it possible to walk in memory, even all the way to the cathedral to trigger the ending of the game.

Notes

Section titled “Notes”

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

List of TAS VODS

Section titled “List of TAS VODS”