Is there any way to kind of control what happens in Big Mode as far as time goes? I feel like how long you spend in Big Mode before the Predator shows up is very RNG dependent. I was wondering if that's the case, or if there's a way to make the big guy show up a little faster.

Thanks!

As far as I know the predator spawn is RNG and no known manipulations have been discovered. It's been a while since I've ran it, but I know each Big Mode has varying degrees of when the Predator spawns and even, when the certain rock patterns spawn. Example, in big mode 3 there can be a difference of ~10 seconds depending on 1) if you rocks spawn quickly 2) predator spawns instantly and 3) how long it takes to clear the projectiles to get the predator off the end of the screen.

Slaughterhouse did a bunch of TAS work on this game a long time ago. I believe he noted the spawns were RNG. I haven't really looked into it other than noticing the different time loss/saves for each pattern.

Good to know. I noticed my splits got pretty wild on Big Mode a few times, and I didn't think it could just be the Predator fight itself. Thanks!

I know this is old, so you may have figured this out already, but the Predator doesn't spawn in Big Mode until all bubbles are cleared from the screen. If you are unlucky enough to get a spawn of them just as the last platform is going off screen, you will lose a ton of time. I never fucked around with it to find out if you could time it so that you can reliably get a favorable spawn for the last set of bubbles, but ideally, you would shoot the last bubble just as the last platform goes off screen to cause the Predator to spawn instantly.