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As the topic title implies, this bug concerns Seiken Densetsu 3. It may happen to other games as well. It was detected on a 1.51 port to the Wii, but it also happens on the PC version.

Basically, the problem is that the randomizer does not re-seed itself when the game is reset. The easiest place to see this in action is with the item seeds (appropriately), which are items you can plant in these little pots in the inns to get other items. No matter what you do in game, you will always get the same sequence of items from the seeds, which is the same every time you reset the game. The only way to get different items is to plant more seeds without turning the game off.

This is especially annoying with the ??? (class change) and Weapon/Armor seeds, which are extremely rare and thus planting zillions to get the items you need isn't really feasible, particularly since turning the game off resets the sequence.

Planting other seed types, fighting enemies, and other things that you might expect to generate random values and thus "fix" the problem have no effect, each seed type must have its own randomizer or a sequence of items must be generated when the game is booted, before any player-initiated actions can take place.

ZSNES (old ZSNES at least) does not suffer this problem, resetting the game there changes the sequence of items, allowing you to get the ones you want (it must be an actual reset, though, if you merely load your save state you get the same items, this may point to it being calculated on startup). I can't confirm which emulator is "correct", since I don't own an actual cart and neither do 99.9% (at least) of other english-speaking players of this game.

I've also heard from one person that they didn't have this issue. I tried using a different copy of the rom and it still happened to me (and the same rom worked on ZSNES), so I don't think it's a rom issue, but it's always possible.

Maybe we can fix it in Snes9x 1.52... if it ever comes out...

Super late bump with more info!

Okay, so I must apologize. Today, I received the cart version of Seiken Densetsu 3. Of course, the first thing I thought to do was to test this "bug". To my surprise, it actually happens on the cart! This is NOT a SNES9x-specific issue!

Determined to get to the bottom of this madness, I went through all of my various computers and tracked down every save file and emulator I had for this game, and sure enough, in each one the sequence of items you get from item seeds is always the same, no matter what you do, or how many times you reset. However, the sequence I was repeatedly receiving was DIFFERENT for every save file.

Returning to my cart copy for the moment, I decided to try getting a little farther in the game before saving and trying the seeds again. Simply progressing and then saving does not help, but to my great surprise, when I reset the game and tried the seeds again, the sequence was finally different!


So we finally have the answer - The sequences of items are generated when you start the game, and the seed for the randomizer is the content of your save file. It seems like the stat that actually matters is EXP, simply staying at the inn again and saving did not change the sequence. I suppose this makes sense, since the SNES has no internal clock, but the fact that they generate the sequences when you boot the game really threw me off.

Oh, and this also explains why I thought ZSNES wasn't doing it. I was playing the game at the time and did the following sequence of steps:

- Save
- Check sequence
- Reset
- Check sequence

Which generates a different set of items since my save file changed. However, had I continued to reset, I would have seen the same ones over and over again. It was simply luck that I got what I wanted on the first reset and never tried it again.


Long story short, you can mark this bug as "solved" or, rather, "non-existent". It was just some really convuluted logic in the game.

Try Snes9x 1.52 fix 4.....wait, never mind.