by exiting The last pipe while holding certain buttons you can get consistent patterns ex up right b a to bet a forwards jump

Heres proof

its not 100% consistent but i think it works

The problem with that is that it loses too much time. You hit the axe around a second later than if you didn't. So this won't be implemented into the run.

Plus I don't think there's anyway to actually manipulate bowser patterns, it's just hope and pray. You only got that pattern every time because you used a savestate.

oh that makes sense

Every bowser, as well as any object or enemy that has rng, is determined by what exact frame you're on, as well as some other objects or enemies you've interacted with in the level. In all other castle levels this means you CAN manipulate exactly what bowser will do, because you'll enter the castle on a knowable framerule, and you can manipulate his behavior by doing something standardized like entering the level on a buffer jump vs not buffering a jump.

8-4 bowser is the exception to this. Because he's on his own individually loaded part of 8-4, you can enter it on any FRAME rather than any FRAMERULE. If you were consistent enough to know what exact FRAME you enter the last section of 8-4 on, then you would be able to know exactly what bowser will do. The fastest runners usually know what they expect bowser's behavior will be in a small range of frames that they can enter that section on. But even they can't be consistent enough to know EXACTLY what frame they will enter that stage on. And a normal player will have no idea what frame they will be on, and even if they knew the range of frames, there would be no way of knowing what exact frame they would be on.

So theoretically it's possible to know and manipulate bowser's behavior... but (1) manipulating it in that stage would require some variant of a slowdown, which you don't want to do in 8-4, since every frame matters... (2) Even if you did know the range of frames and what bowser would do in each one, it's practically impossible to know what exact frame you're on, since frames are... really fast

However, this IS possible on every OTHER castle level with bowser - and it's been mapped. For instance, if i'm 2 framerules behind my pb on 1-4, I know to do a buffer jump against the ceiling to guarantee that bowser will jump backwards, which is faster for completing the level with the small fire glitch.

TL;DR It's theoretically possible, but practically impossible to (1) predict and (2) manipulate bowser's behavior in 8-4, and even if you could, you probably wouldn't want to