I'm interested in understanding the mechanics behind the pass locations for RTA purposes. The pass location is stored in $7B8 and is set at the beginning of each level. If it's 0, it's in one location and if it's 1, it's in the other location. The same address is used for levels 1, 3 and 4.
From what I can tell, the relevant piece of code determining if it's 0 or 1:
LDA #$01
AND $2A
STA $7B8
$2A is an RNG counter that changes every frame and takes player input (and probably other factors) into account. By observng $2A, I can't see any pattern in the parity of it. The values seem to be completely random. So based on this, I would expect the pass locations to be evenly distributed between the two locations.
However... Console attempts point towards a quite heavily skewed distribution and it's unfortunately for the wrong locations... This is where I was hoping for some support. So, if you're familiar with game code and intrigued by this problem, any help would be appreciated.