Turns out 20 of the stages have a secret item that awards points - or a random power-up from the Question Mark - by meeting a special condition. Would such a category exist if someone submitted a run? I think reassurance would be motivational.

I like how the cake on 6-3 requires hitting yourself or the other player with a punched bombed and awards 10 MILLION points. Source is from LIJI who posted how to get them in 2013 and made a video:

The Question Mark awards Red Bomb the first time and Bonus Time the second. 100% category especially could take the gamble on (1-5) for early Red Bomb from (3-1) or Golden Flame Radius aka Full Fire from (3-3), else settle for Roller Skates or Flame Range. 1 in 24 odds on each and 3 minutes for each attempt. I love it. LIJI's post says rolling Exit, Skull or another Question Mark awards an extra life instead.

In typical GameFAQs fashion, cheat is posted without credit. There was a source given for cheats in the early 2000s.

I would be down for that, also that explains why the mystery item sometimes appear on the 4-4, that we on the brazillian community had no clue for a while, I'm also hyped to start grinding any% again with this "discovery" LUL

I don't know if I have enough powers to create a new category here, but would be down to run, seems like fun

I did notice the branching paths in AugusTitan's and your guide based on whether the mystery item appears or not. Glad that's solved. LIJI has video comment saying, "It will also trigger if the last combo you had in the previous level [4-3] was a ≥ 3 combo. :)" The random power-up is fixed once the stage starts. Therefore is tied to the stage's pattern and manipulatable if someone wanted to re-route most of the game.

I checked to see if either player can trigger the secret items and that is the case. I even had Player 2 bomb one corner and Player 1 bomb the other three on (1-5) and got the mystery item. Then on (1-7) I got the heart early and was puzzled. Turns out GameFAQs is wrong. You can stand on any tile for that heart. LIJI actually says as much at 2:15 in the first video but it's not bookmarked so easy to miss.

I think the pro move for single player is summon the other player on (1-5) to bomb the corner, do nothing on (1-7), get down to last life for (2-4), bomb another corner on (4-1), stay on last life for (4-5) and get hit by a bomb on (6-2). If Player 2 doesn't move the whole game and isn't bombing any enemies, seems like single player to me!

I made a diss track, I mean, demonstration video of Player 2 triggering the heart on (1-7) with different patterns:

So I started routing this category, and I must say that the routing is much tougher than any% or 100%, but I found some peculiarities.

First: I took your idea to heart to have the second player on screen some of the times, to ensure the 4 corners on 1-5 and 4-1, and also to drop the lives on the second player when needed on 3-4 and 4-5. also 1-7 works just by black bomber staying still on the start of the stage till the end.

Second: I've been able to map the whole layouts and surprisingly a lot of the layouts overlap with the any% route. 1-1 and 1-2 stays the same, but there's a magical thing with the 1-5 mystery item that you can manip so that you can go back to the any% layouts from 1-6 onwards. but if you make it spawn on certain spot you have a quicker 1-6 than the any% route, and a faster 2-1 and less random 2-2. 2-3 is weird since the layout is the same from any%, but one enemy behaves differently and so the normal any% strats for that stage also do not work. I've made myself a new route to fit the extra bomb as well, more details later. 2-4 plays exactly the same, but you need to spawn the mystery item. but the cool thing is you can manip the mystery item sapwn placement from the top right to bottom right, ensuring better layouts for 2-5 and 2-6, while coming back to the any% layout on 2-7. The heart spawn on 2-7 changes the 3-1 layout a bit, but it can be a faster layout than the normal any% route. From 3-2 to 3-6 you can keep the any% layouts, but on world 4 things start to get really warped. The good thing is that once you spawn the mystery item on 4-4, 6-1 and 6-2 keep the same route from any%, but when you throw the bomb on black player's head, you'll have different 6-3 - 6-7 layouts from any.

Third: Bombs routing: Since you need to have a score ending in 20 on 3-3 and 6-4, you need to find 2 + 10*k bomb upgrades, where k is a constant. The good thing is is that there are 13 bomb upgrades up until 3-3, so you can even skip one. There are two paths that could be followed here. The first is to get only the two bombs from 1-1 and not anymore until 3-3, or grab all - 1 bomb upgrades until 3-3 and be good for 3-6 (placing 6 bombs on screen). If you go for the first strat you can get the 2 bomb upgrade in 3-3 getting you to 5 and using black bomber on 3-6 to place the sixth, but you'll need to get a lot going forward. In stage 5 you can get 4 for free, getting to 80 points, and I believe 4-3 and 4-7 can be routed to get easy bombs. also 6-1 has one, so maybe it's not so bad to find another one, but I think getting all in the start and avoiding the rest sounds better.

As soon as I get a run going I'll be posting the video link here. The game is mostly routed, just need to finesse some of the stages, not get owned by 2-4, and avoid the bombs after 3-3 and all should be great.

Phew glad you're willing to do the routing!

I looked at the tasvideos TAS on a whim thinking it wouldn't help because I'd seen it years ago. Actually, on January 16, 2023, gentleman and scholar LIJI submitted an improved "co-op" TAS and explained the RNG in good though not complete detail in the author notes:

Fast generator must determine the mecha bomber direction and the enemy difference you saw. We knew the stages were deterministic based on starting frame, except when a secret item is generated that forks the stage generator. I assume the initial state is the frame counter. I'll come back to N. I interpret bitwise OR means to always set the most significant bit to 1, given SNES is Little Endian.

This is the good part. Each secret item triggered makes two slow generator RNG calls: X position and Y position but if that location is blocked, such as with a block or heart/remote bomb or a player standing there, another two calls are made. Lazy coding. LIJI later states that picking up the Question Mark calls the slow generator once to determine the power-up.

We have a bit more opportunity for Any% and 100% to test different branching stages beyond the (4-4) "mystery item" and (6-4) "ice cream" routes. What surprised me is pausing on (2-2) generates the item even while sliding down the exit tunnel and playing the ending jingle. This "pause" doesn't actually pause the game. Too late on (6-7) when it's the last generated stage.

I wanted to see the branching for myself so I password-ed to (1-5) with save state to preserve the starting frame. I checked for the (2-1) layout with testing the Question Mark on (1-5) and Heart on (1-7):

• Triggering the Question Mark generated the same stage as both collecting the Question Mark and triggering the Heart. Also the same stage for triggering nothing.
• Triggering and collecting the Question Mark generated a distinct (2-1) stage.
• Both triggering the Question Mark and the Heart generated the same stage as only triggering the Heart.

Logically, we'd expect triggering either the Question Mark or Heart to give the same stage for 2x calls each. The way this makes sense is if the first two locations for the Heart are already taken and there's only 3 stages possible for N = 3 and (N - 1) = 2. Then 0 calls = 3 calls = 6 calls = 9 calls, 1 = 4 = 7 and 2 = 5 = 8, using operator %. First case is 0 calls = 6 calls = 9 calls with %3 = 0. Second case is 7 calls with %3 = 1. Third case is 2 calls = 8 calls with %3 = 2.

I was able to get different (2-1) stages from the above 3 using different starting frames, including the existing speedrun route, meaning each starting frame has a different, small set of possibilities for each stage.

That you're saying there's real overlap with the Any% despite advancing the RNG supports this theory of very limited granularity once the starting seed is set. That more than 3 possibilities for the random Question Mark power are possible means N = 25, for (N - 1) = 24 = 0x18 in that case, which otherwise uses the same slow formula.

Anyway, I'm excited you've done all this work for a new category no one saw coming and that there's room for strat improvement in Any% and 100%! Early Red Bomb or Full Fire from (1-5) or (2-4) can be guaranteed, hopefully with the easy Japanese starting seed.

The idea of the empty tile formula advancing the rng on the slow generator to change the layout makes hell of a lot of sense, and the fast generator changing enemy patterns explains why 2-3 has a different enemy pattern. Great to see someone already made the research for the game's RNG, I was just unaware of the science behind the game.

One thing I'm thinking is the category should be to only spawn all secret items, cause collecting some of them seems a nuisance, specially in early stages, and do not value the time of the runner LUL.

I'm still not gambling on the mystery item collection on 1-5 and 2-4, cause, as you said, it can change the layout of subsequent stages if collected, and my current routing makes sense in my head so I do not want to indulge in branching options just yet, and do not want to lose my kick for a bomb pass, no thank you.

Also the 6-7 heart spawn manipulation is still very useful, since it changes the 6-8 boss arachnid robot movement patterns, allowing for a quicker kill.

I have also not been able to completely figure out the 3-combo theory yet, since there seems to be two ways to do such. One is killing 3 or more enemies with a single bomb (doesn't include bomb chains or bomb spams). But I also saw that if you kick a bomb (any bomb) into three different enemies (case and point on 1-3), that also does count to the three combo. It baffles me cause these conditions should not trigger the 4-4 mystery item spawn, since on 4-3 for any% we're always bomb spamming, making it feel like a bit of RNG still for the 4-4 spawn. Something feels off still, and I would gladly accept some help figuring this out

Will start my daily grind now, more news soon.

Right, the RNG system explains so much when we have working knowledge of it! I had ideas but I wasn't putting together the x-y coordinate not being available causing another 2 numbers to be generated.

Spawn all secret items versus collect, cool with me. You're the one attempting the category so you should decide. I think any game lucky to get 5 runs a year should give runners latitude to encourage them.

I didn't even think about optimizing the boss movement patterns. The author notes mention the mecha bomber map as being easy to manip on. Can cover the first and/or second locations of the Roller Skates after defeating the golden bomber for 2 or 4 RNG calls. Collecting a Skull makes 1 call like the Question Mark and safe to do when the stage is clear. Only ways to get an odd number.

I tested the mystery item spawn on 4-3 and 4-4. I think the programmers, forced to use assembly, took another lazy way out. They only intended it to spawn from killing 3+ enemies with one bomb but the way they coded it was to check for the kill count between explosions. Would be harder to check all the kills from the complete bomb explosion since enemies can walk into it after it has started. More so for every bomb when multiple explosions are animating at once. You'd need an array or an int added a struct for each bomb.

So once an explosion starts, count enemy kills. Once another explosion starts, check the counter for >= 3 and if not, reset the count and try again. This lets kicking work. Can lay down more bombs if you want, just don't detonate any. Killing an enemy by punching a bomb onto them doesn't work though. There must be special code that checks for that, given the two conditions that require punching.

I couldn't get the mystery item to spawn on 4-3 or at the start of 4-4 or however it works and I tried both killing 3 enemies with 1 bomb and kicking bombs into them. Maybe because I started with a password, or more likely, triggering on 4-3 is a glitch and doesn't always work.

To be completely clear, I always got the mystery item to spawn on 4-4 but never on 4-3. Bomb kicking 3 enemies to death spawned it once I detonated a bomb to trigger the >= 3 check. Can detonate bombs to weaken enemies or kick for all hits. No more detonating once you defeat an enemy by kicking until you're at 3.

Maybe you're experiencing a glitch, of unknown means, that switches the >= 3 check from 4-4 to 4-3. I presume 4-4 is the intended stage due to LIJI's notes. Maybe it matters that I didn't start on the leaderboard frame. I held A to enter password 3535 on frame 1230.

I played the Japanese version on BizHawk 2.9.1 with BSNESv115+ core. Here's a save state pack, in case that's helpful to reproduce. The "two out of three" means two enemies have already been kicked to the curb.

Yes, the 4-4 is the only one that spawns the item, but sometimes the item spawns as soon as we enter the stage, giving light that something we do prior to entering 4-4 is triggering the >=3 check to work.

I gave light to this case specially because on any% we don't want the mystery item spawn to occur, since it produces a worse layout for 4-5, 4-6 and 4-7. I was just assuming that the condition of 3 combo could be overflowing from 4-3 to the start of 4-4, but I never actually said that the item spawns in 4-3, although it was poor communication on my part and kinda left that ambiguous.

Anyways, I got a run going, the time is a bit bad since I did some weird shiz on 4-1 and it deviated from the layouts I was routing, but for now it's good enough proof that the route is viable, just need some more optimization and I trully believe that a sub 16 is possible as well.

Feel free to study what i did on the run, although in portuguese. I will be opening a new category soon for this run.

That run was great! I used my Prime sub. Bomberman chat emotes! I was most interested in seeing the 3 hit combo on 1-3 with limited range and no heart bomb, 4-3/4-4 and the super fast arachnid fight. I didn't think of punching or kicking a bomb to a corner to save time. Funny hitting black bomber on 6-2 as soon as the invincibility wore off. The 20 points condition worked out as well as it could have.

That's interesting you didn't get Roller Skates at the end of gold mecha bomber. I see 3rd place on Any% got a Flame instead. I like not moving black bomber being judged as a 1 player run. Dropping to 0 lives on player 1, twice, and losing heart/remote bomb is not entertaining.

Thanks so the mystery item spawns at the start of 4-4 for whatever is done on 4-3 and I see it happen in the video. I still can't get it to spawn at the start no matter how many times I try from the same 4-3 save state, that started from password to 2-1. Video proves I don't need to bomb 3 enemies at once or kick them. Glitch being glitchy, fair enough.

The item spawns on stage 5 is heavilly dependant on the layouts (specially stage 4), although, spawning the mystery item on 4-4 doesn't affect the spawns. But the item spawn on the mecha bomber (rollers or fire on any%) is due to the positioning of the bombs that lock the boss.

If you place another bomb on the top row to lock the mecha bomber's kick, the slow RNG for placing item kicks in, although seems kinda delayed for that to happen. Maybe manipulating the boss positioning there is a factor as well. The fact is if the roller spawns, the 6-1 layout is slightly slower (+0.5s roughly) than if the fire spawns. So we try to do the phantom bomber strat, where we position ourselves in the direction that the bombermen on stage 5 are facing after finishing the cage.

Good to see you liked the run, and thanks for the prime! Will try to run more often, just having a bad week due to university workload, so not that much time to grind. Hopefully by the weekend we can run more.