Boss bug SD2 US/JP? "Yatta!", no orb, can't continue

[nasshi]

Howdy!

This problem finally made me come to a forum to ask, and has been an issue for me for a number of years.

On the US cartridge version of SD2 after random boss fights, the "Success!" (or whatever the translation of "Yatta!" was) screen comes up, I get no orb from the fight, and nothing happens to allow me to move beyond that point in the game. Resetting the system and replaying the boss fight has never worked.

Oddly, this happens on my SD2 Japanese cartridge as well.

I have played these games on an original SNES, the remodel SNES, and a Retron 3 clone system. I have played the Japanese cartridge via a Nakitek Gamesaver on both an original SNES, the remodel SNES, and with and without the Nakitek on a Retron 3 clone system.

I do not use any sort of cheats or bugs to get the 9th sword orb or any other thing of that sort. I've always been playing the game as normal.

Does anyone know why this happens? I can't find it documented anywhere on the internet, mostly because searching for "bug" or "glitch" anywhere with SD2 or "Secret of Mana" yields an infinite result of people just dying to talk about all the wonderful "glitches" they've found. I'd rather call them "oddities" since most don't seem to ruin your game like this one does.

Please help! I'm tired of never beating the game because my save files get ruined after randomly getting this boss fight bug.

[Kassidy]

I've had this happen with some of the boss fights in the mana holy land and it is extremely frustrating. I'm not sure what cause the bug. It is definitely more prominent when orb glitching, but may be down to something in your inventory. In particular it is strange that you'd have it happen across so many different systems. I'll have a think.

-Kassidy, powered by Tapatalk, Swype and HTC Desire... and cake.

[Kassidy]

Another, perhaps silly question, but I take out there's no chance of the cartridge being counterfeit? I say it only because I have run into similar problems with gba games I bought which turned out to be fakes. Another possibility is that the battery, which if I recall correctly it does have, is bad. It may be causing corrupt data upon save. I know that some people have replaced these batteries and addressed problems with other games (in theory, if the battery is fully dead it should wipe save data, but maybe this differs with different games, I dunno.

-Kassidy, powered by Tapatalk, Swype and HTC Desire... and cake.

[nasshi]

Good suggestion with the counterfeit thing. I don't suspect either carts are counterfeits though, since otherwise these would be phenomenal counterfeits, and the person who made them probably has Tom Hanks chasing them as we speak.

If there is a ROM battery in carts natively, that could cause save files to get corrupted. Many first American generation Pokemon releases for Gameboy no longer work because of that, but I don't recall Famicon or SNES carts having a ROM battery, save maybe Harvest Moon.

There are save files on both versions of these carts that are not mine. Orb hacking seems to be popular to do, so is it possible that other save files can cause issues with new games?

Overall, this happens at such strange times, such as in the Mana Holy Land (first time it ever happened was when I replayed the game a second time - I've only been able to beat the game once because of this!!), the speeder-bike boss after the sand ship (sorry, the names evade me since I've been unable to get very far from these glitches), and just two days ago with Spikey Tiger in Elaine's Castle, which was the instance that ticked me off enough to get this figured out.

At this point, I'll gladly erase all save files if I need to, but the Japanese cart I have has characters from the previous owner in the high 60s, so if he was able to get through just fine, I'm confused as to why I can't.

Thanks for your help man. It's much appreciated.

[nasshi]

Oh, can you describe what you mean by me having inventory issues?

[Kassidy]

Re batteries: http://www.jjgames.com/page/replace-snes-battery

Re inventory, there are a few glitches with the way that SoM saves inventory items in its memory. Among other things, you can effectively get a large amount of money by buying/selling certain items in a particular order by the time you reach the Dwarf Village. It's very bizarre. Chap who did a recent speedrun of the game used that, so makes me think that there are other possible corruptions that could happen.

This glitch allows you to make money without economic efforts. In Secret of Mana, collected items are stored in 12bytes of RAMs: 1 item per 1 byte. There are 32 kinds of items and you can possess at most 7 items of the same kind (though usually limited by 4 items). In the memory, lower 5 bits indicates what kind of item you have, and upper 3 bits tells you how many items you have. For example, 0x40 means two candies and 0x20 is one candy, or 0x26 means one magic rope and 0x06 is zero magic ropes.

0xFF usually means blank. But if the cursor points the item 0xFF, you can sell it with 30000 GP. In fact, 0xFF calculates as if you have zero glitched item “BLAT”. When you sell it, the RAM number is subtracted by 0x20 then becomes 0xDF, which means 7 “BLATS”

You can access this memory like this way. If you have 2 candies 1 chocolates, 1 herbs, 1 ropes, and nothing else, and the cursor points the rope, then the 12bytes RAMs is like this. (Hexadecimal)

40 21 24 (26) FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
( ) means the cursor. Don’t move the cursor and sell chocolates and herbs. Then these RAMs become like below.
40 26 (FF) FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
The cursor moves once, but not more than twice. So you can select the blank item (zero “BLATs”). In this situation, the former 2 items are displayed as item icons. But the actual items are glitched. Described candy is actually a magic rope, and the described magic rope is zero BLATs, whose price is 30000 GP.
This glitched situation will be finished if you buy something or restart the game. But if you sell the blank to earn 30000 GP and get new item (like chocolate), then the RAMs becomes below and items remains glitched.

40 26 DF 21 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
This is because if you get a new item, the nearest 0xFF is replaced by that item. Item 0xDF (7 BLATs) has no icons. So there are only three icons and new item cannot be selected because the cursor itself is not glitched anymore.
In the gameplay, I bought a chocolate to go through the situation that the Flammie Drum cannot be accessed. But if you want to recover the glitch completely, you must sell all the BLATs to blank and then restart the game or buy something new.

Erasing all save games and starting clean may be a decent idea, if that's within the options you're willing to pursue. Like you say, it is possible that corrupt data on one save could cause issues with another. Another case of "I'm not 100% sure" though.

[Diana_Liuba]

And here comes the PAL version! Haha
It seems that we Germans are a bit better in this case. Because this glitch is completly new to me.
I've played SoM back in 2004 (remember I'm still very young xD) on the original SNES with all stuff and so. I also stuck for five times at the castle of that damn witch I don't know her name in English, but is called Tura in German. Then for about... two years or so ago I got an original SoM PAL ROM and played it so much... you need to invent a new number. After that, just to obtain the 9th sword orb, I got an US NTSC version of SoM. But even on all of these I've never got that glitch, bug, whatever.

I have a guess though...
Can you remember the 9th Sword Orb Glitch? You cannot get it on the German PAL (Dunno if it is in the UK and other nations with PAL) Because when you try to land on the island next to the Ice Palace you'll land somewhere in the Crystal Forest instead, not near Neko. Even if you're walking up to Neko, you cannot get the Sword orb. That means you cannot even enter the Ancient Fortress... Under the Tree Palace... Grand Palace... Whatever it's called... and the dude at Potos Village explain you unnessessary information and you cannot enter (easily, you can, but it's very hard) Potos Village after your banishing.
Maybe that's the reason why I've never seen this glitch before. SoM was released 1994 in Europe. I think, that the German, which have made the game playable in Europe, changed the code of the game, that you'll land nowhere in the Crystal Forest instead near Neko to avoid this glitches. Maybe the glitch is also known before 1994 and they fixed it. Maybe I just had very good luck. That means... The smartest solution may be to play the PAL version
Well, I hope that helped, and good luck on solving your problem

--Diana

[Kassidy]

Yeah, the 9th Orb glitch was fixed for the EU releases. Same thing went for making it back into Potos (the "get out" dialogue is retriggered by touching the villager rather than talking to him, so you can't edge past him).