Overflow glitch The overflow glitch is a glitch that has appeared in various games throughout the series . It often is a glitch that rolls damage over from the maximum damage to either low damage , or instantly killing an enemy , when the player hits a certain amount of kills , Ability Points , or any other special requirements . Appearances . " Final Fantasy IV " . In the game ' s SNES and PlayStation versions , when Cure4 heals more than 16 , 383 ( 2 ^ 14 - 1 ) damage on an enemy , the spell will heal the MP of that target instead . When the party meets the Magus Sisters , if the player keeps defeating Mindy and Sandy , letting Cindy revive them over and over again , they will continue to give EXP . After 256 enemies have fallen , this number will loop back to 0 . For example , if the party accumulates EXP from 258 kills in a battle , they will receive 2 EXP . " Final Fantasy V " . The maximum amount of damage a character can do in a single move is 65 , 535 : ( 2 ^ 16 - 1 ) though it will always be capped to 9999 . If a character were to do more damage than that , the overflow will cause the counter to start over from zero again . For example , if a character dealt 70 , 000 damage in one hit , the system will count up to 65 , 535 and roll over to zero , ending up doing 4 , 465 damage . The easiest way to trigger the glitch is by performing a Sword Dance after having maxed both Strength , Speed and Level via Sing while wielding either the Chicken Knife or a weapon with more than 105 attack wielded with Doublehand . " Final Fantasy VI " . The maximum amount of damage a character can do in a single move is 65 , 535 : ( 2 ^ 16 - 1 ) though it will always be capped to 9999 . If a character were to do more damage than that , the overflow will cause the counter start over from zero again . For example , if a character dealt 70 , 000 damage in one hit , the system will count up to 65 , 535 and roll over to zero , ending up doing 4 , 465 damage . The easiest way to trigger the glitch is through casting Ultima with a character who has over 140 Magic . There is a bugfix patch that players can use to fix it on the SNES version . This glitch was fixed in the " Advance " version . " Final Fantasy VII " . All the integer numbers are encoded in 32 bits . Since they need to be signed integers , the two ' s complement representation is used . In this encoding the leftmost bit is negative weighted , while all the others have a positive value . Given 2 ^ n , the sum of all the powers of 2 with the exponent in the range ( 0 , n - 1 ) is equal to ( 2 ^ n ) - 1 . This means the lower and upper bounds for in - game integers are formula _ 1 and formula _ 2 If , at any point , the computation of some value results in a number which is out of those bounds , an overflow occurs and the game exhibits abnormal behaviors when this happens . " Final Fantasy VII " has several instances of integer overflows . The most important and known one is the damage overflow glitch . Other instances . Other overflow - related bugs involve rolling over AP ( only on the Underwater Materia ) , Experience Points for characters , battle and escape counters , the gil counter , the timer , and the chance to cover with the Cover Materia . The maximum amount of battles and escapes the counter will hold is 65 , 535 , and once the player exceeds it , it will reset to 0 . The timer will reset to 0 after roughly 136 years , 36 days , 6 hours , 28 minutes , and 16 seconds of playing the game . For EXP and gil , the maximum amount is 4 , 294 , 967 , 295 ( 2 ^ 32 - 1 ) , and once over the limit , it will overflow . EXP cannot be overflowed normally unless set to the maximum amount outside of battle . Cover percentage doesn ' t have a cap and can be increased by equipping multiple Cover Materia at once . The Cover chance overflows at 256 % , reducing the percentage back to zero . " Final Fantasy IX " . If the player plays for 100 hours 256 times , the game ' s internal clock will reset . This can be used to obtain the Excalibur II without playing for less than 12 hours . However , the player would be required to play for 25 , 600 hours , 1 , 067 days , or 2 . 92 years . The in - game clock color changes whenever it " rolls over " 100 hours from white to red to yellow to cyan to purple , and finally green . At 600 hours ( after the timer has been green for 100 hours ) the timer changes into a glitchy font and continues counting for 1 hour . At 601 hours the timer reverts to a green 99 : 59 : 59 and stops counting and nothing happens until the 2 . 92 years pass by when it overflows , returns to white 00 : 00 : 00 and starts all over . The time is counted by frames , not by actual seconds , so speeding up the framerate in an emulator will make the timer go faster . This is because of the PlayStation ' s hardware ; since all PlayStations are designed to run at a specific frame rate , games can use that information to control their timing directly . If one has a Tetra Master card that is at max stats ( FAFF ) and it is used to play , eventually the card will overflow reverting the card ' s power to , say , 0AFF . Although it says 0AFF , the card ' s attack power is that of a FAFF card . The maximum number of jumps in the jump rope minigame is 8 , 388 , 607 after which the next jump will overflow the counter to 0 , and afterward the counter won ' t increase further . " Final Fantasy Mystic Quest " . The Cure spell heals its target for a percentage of its maximum HP equal to 50 plus 1 . 5 times the caster ' s magic stat . Because of this , if Benjamin casts Cure on the Dark King , it will overflow and cause damage instead . This does not work for Phoebe ; because her magic stat is nearly twice as Benjamin ' s , her Cure overflows " twice " and recovers HP as normal . Why overflow happens . In computers , " " is the condition that occurs when a calculation produces a result greater in magnitude than that which a given register or storage location can store or represent . 65 , 535 is a frequently occurring number in the field of computing because it is the highest number which can be represented by an unsigned 16 - bit binary number . Some computer programming environments may have pre - defined constant values representing 65 , 535 . In binary , this number is represented as 1111111111111111 ( 16 digits , or " bits " ) , and in hexadecimal , whose values are from 0 - 9 and A - F , as FFFF . Values of 65 , 536 and above would require extra digits , or " bits " , to represent ( 65 , 536 itself would be 10000000000000000 ( 1 followed by 16 0 ' s ) , and 10000 , respectively ) . In older computers and devices with processors operating with a 16 - bit address bus , 65535 was the highest addressable memory location . In addition , many older game consoles , including the SNES and the PS1 , utilized 16 - bit processors and RAM , resulting in all single - address data being limited in value to 65 , 535 . Because of this , 65 , 535 is the limit for many player variables in older video games . This could be due to " oversights " in which developers would not anticipate a value requiring more than 16 bits of value , such as damage calculation ( and indeed , in many cases it would not ; many of these " glitches " require significant effort to generate , such as exploiting the calculation mechanics of certain equipment ) . This is less of a problem with modern consoles , which utilize 32 - bit processors or higher , boosting this " limit " to a much larger 4 , 294 , 967 , 295 , which is FFFFFFFF ( eight Fs ) in hexadecimal .