Geno Beam

The Geno Beam is a special attack that Geno starts with in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. It is a straightforward beam attack that hits one enemy. Timing it right will increase the amount of damage dealt. According to instructions to time it correctly, a player must press and hold button until the third star on the star meter appears, Unfortunately at least in the American SNES version of the game, the “Geno Beam” special technique has a non-responsive built in game mechanics problem. To timing it right, you will have to ignore the given instructions. It requires 3 Flower Points.

Also is one of the few moves in the game that does not add a sound effect when the player timed hit is done right, so the only way to know if it’s done right is watching the difference in the amount of damage dealt after using it and the amount of damage inflicted to the same enemy after trying it without pressing the button at all.

To time it correctly, a player must just tap once (without holding) the  Button until right after the "instructions" banner at the top of the screen automatically disappears from sight, which is right about before the star meter starts charging. Beware not to press the button too early, or instead you will make the instructions banner disappear faster and by doing so the timed hit won't work either. In other words, simply allow the instructions sign to take its time to disappear, (which takes about only 3 seconds) and calmly hit the button once without holding. You will notice you will deliver a little more damage just as when any timed hit is done right.

A player should try to compare the numbers while using this special move against the same enemy and see for him o herself the amount of hit points delivered while doing the timed hit and comparing it to the result while not trying to press the button at all. The player will discover the star meter is in fact unresponsive for this special move.

This problem is clearly a game glitch that was overlooked by the game creators, and a patch to modify and fix the internal code needs to be written by a programmer to resolve it.