Final Fantasy IX - Exiting Air Garden freeze

[serosis]

So of course the only time I ever use a save state and it has to be 1 hour after I made my last on-card save.
But I really don't know if this is a save state problem or just a bad disc problem.

So far the only thing I have tried is to use the Save Anywhere GameShark code, save it in the Air Garden and load it up in ePSXe. Same result, an endless white screen with the relaxing Chocobo theme behind it.

Details:
Windows 7 x64
AMD Athlon II X2 250u @ 1.60 GHz
4 GB Ram
pSX 1.13
SCPH-101 (Because I can)
FF IX / Disc 3 / SLUS-01296 [Greatest Hits] Imaged from my physical copy
First time to the Air Garden
Save stated just before the Ozma battle
Upon loading of save state I can't exit the Air Garden without the perpetual white screen

Here is the Save State: CLICK HERE
here is the Memory Card: CLICK HERE

Preferably I would like someone to exit the Air Garden and save at the nearest possible point. That's if it is even possible.

And you'll notice that I'm a cheating bastard, only in the parts that don't really matter. (Couldn't even win that Ozma battle.)

[meman887]

Jun 7, 2011 6:24:42 GMT -5 serosis said:

it has to be 1 hour after I made my last on-card save.
But I really don't know if this is a save state problem or just a bad disc problem.

So far the only thing I have tried is to use the Save Anywhere GameShark code, save it in the Air Garden and load it up in ePSXe.

Going by what I have read from your post, the suspect is the gameshark code that has screwed your memory card save file/save state up, the only thing you can do really is try and load an earlier save file/state or basically restart from scratch and put it down to a bad experience in cheating (cheaters never prosper as they say).

Tip for future reference:
In future if you do use cheats again, always make backup copies of any virtual memory card/save state files just in case something like this happens again, then it saves you time and a lot of headaches.

[serosis]

No, I used that code as a last resort after having tried everything else.
It was after the whole mess started that i tried using the save anywhere cheat to load it up on ePSXe to see if I could get it past that spot.

I could load the past save but that's an hour of work and I wanted to see if anybody else that has the greatest hits version could load up the psv and see if they could exit the Air Garden.

Basically I want to make sure that the save state is borked and not my cd image, which could easily be re-imaged if that were the case.

EDIT/UPDATE::
Great News!

I decided to replay that hour again and got all the Chocographs and you want to know what happened, it froze exactly the same way while leaving Chocobo Paradise. And I didn't need a save anywhere cheat since I saved right in front of it before I used the Dead Pepper.

No cheats this time and it still freezes, well... endless blackness with the song looping.

I'll test it in ePSXe.

UPDATE::
Tested in ePSXe, PCSX, and even the outdated CVGS.
Same result.

[psicomaniaco]

*

[psicomaniaco]

Probably a bad iso. Try to dump it again.

Tell me: is yout game original? Most problems people have with FF9 are related with some bad scene release.

[serosis]

Yeah, I stated in the original post that the image is from my personal copy of the Greatest Hits.

I also tried playing it through the disc itself and it still happens.
But other than that there are other issues with disc 3, the overworld music sounds corrupt and some of the sounds sound corrupt.

I was thinking of getting a scene release just to compare hash codes and whatnot to see if my actual disc is somehow messed up.

And for the life of my I can't find a simple thing like a hash code to verify that my disc is ripped properly.

UPDATE:

Magically ran across a site that has hash codes for almost every PSX game and mine does match. So it is ripped properly.

So that means I must've done something in-game, maybe got the Gold Chocobo a bit too early. But So far everything else but the Chocobo bits is playing perfectly, I'm about to hit Ipsen's Castle so we'll see.

UPDATE 2:
Apparently I must've fluked and got the Gold Chocobo earlier than I should have. Now all the bits are playing perfectly after getting the Hilde Garde 3.

I wasted bandwidth dowloading an earlier version of the game too (I have the Square-Enix release).