(will add TL;DR part soon)
This is a glitch I've known about for some time now, and I feel it has potential in a speedrun, maybe even leading to a new category, but I don't know how to get consistent results from it. I am posting it here in hopes that someone with better expertise with glitch-hunting can figure out how to get consistency with this glitch.
Note: When I said in the video "any area aside from Bikini bottom", I was referring to the part of the first world where you go thru downtown Bikini Bottom. This glitch works in the first cave level though.
Does anyone know how rng cycles in this game? If nobody knows or there is no cycle then I am convinced that the glitch is based on what time it is, day number, etc.
I've played this game for years and never figured that out, mostly because I don't know how to search for that kind of thing in a game. Maybe we should consult TASvideos to take a look at the coding?
I mean TASing would help figure out the things you can manipulate but coding wouldn't help find this out. But yeah TASing this game would help you.
Based on what I've messed around with from trying to develop strats, I think the box's position on the map affects what the position is when you spawn, because the first box in the volcano has been consistent on spawning the character behind the entrance in the other stage in Mu, and the other stage of Mu's box consistently spawns you in front of the first sandy block in the volcano. So maybe when you reset it saves the last X & Y coordinate you spawned (after you leave the box) and when you reset it never overrides that value so when you enter a stage it just loads that position from memory. I don't know that much about programming, but that seems like it would be a plausible reason for the glitch existing.
Long needed update: We do know now that the melody shell count is read when the game spawns the player in with this glitch. Further experimentation should be done to determine the viability of this glitch in a run.
