Hi, I've been sifting through all the collected info I can about Earthbound TASing. I will say briefly that I am a huge fan of breaking games in a non-physical sense, but I myself have never made a TAS of my own nor do I have any plans to do so.
That said, since this game's release on the Wii U's eShop, I have set myself a simple goal of posting a screenshot to the miiverse of being in Magicant at the lowest level possible with Ness. Naturally, this is all done on the Wii U, so no emulator tools - with the exception of a single save state I can use to at least do some modicum of luck manipulation.
- With no trickery, and minimal strain (i.e. beating Titanic Ant at level 8 so I have PK Rockin for the fight) I can reach Paula by level 12. Not good enough.
- If I really want to strain myself on that single save state (which is also painfully slow to open the menu, reload, close menu, etc.) I could do level 11. Not good enough.
- With the skip Twoson trick, I could leave Ness at level 9 (I think?). Thats getting there, but...
I want to go deeper. I want to do level 1. I have skipped Starman Jr, so I am free to roam Onett at level 1. I've successfully performed the trick where one uses a skip sandwich to pass through cliffs. In fact, if anyone was interested in knowing - I managed to trigger that debug menu nonsense in Onett's corner on the Wii U version. Of course on that note I don't know what I am doing whatsoever. All I can make it do is give me a fast text dump and then the game hangs for a minute before it gives me back control:
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAABAABnUV52ieiNww
I gave up on that under the assumption that I can't do anything meaningful with that without tools. I've looked at as many videos as I could find relating to TASing Earthbound and either I missed something or none of them skips Onett. Either this means it's just faster this way... or more likely, it's not possible. (outside of that debug menu, anyway)
So I've come here, asking for any tips that could help me get to Magicant at a low level. Is there any way a skip sandwich could get me through those roadblocks in Onett? Or is the debug menu easier to get to than I think it is?