I'm not working on the next run for now, but I'd like to post a few infos.
Having your buddy kirbys use magic so you can acquire needed abilities out of the blue has always been considered a great possible improvement, if it can be used properly. Usually turning around while running, starting to run and sliding (the first one being the most applicable and effective) changes the randomness/RNG in the game.
The buddy Kirbys will change powers from time to time and it doesn't matter in which room they currently are. They can acquire abilities that wouldn't be possible to get in the room they are in. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to influence the timing of said behaviour. You can change the RNG as much as you want but all it does is changing the ability that one of the kirbys will get (and even that is hard to manipulate). I'm currently looking into the memory trying to understand this behaviour. I think there should be a timer or something that counts how many time is left until a buddy kirby gets a new ability...
Some memory addresses:
02020fe0 Health Points (Pink Kirby)
02020fbc Battery Units (Pink Kirby)
02020fe2 Lives (Pink Kirby)
Only added those for fun.
02020fe3 Ability (Pink Kirby)
0202118b Ability (Yellow Kirby)
02021333 Ability (Red Kirby)
020214db Ability (Green Kirby)
Assigning the value to these addresses doesn't switch the moveset so you will end up freezing the game most likely if you do.
1: Fire 10: Throw 19: Cupid
2: Ice 11: Sleep 20: Fighter
3: Burn 12: Cook 21: Magic
4: Wheel 13: Laser 22: Smash
5: Parasol 14: UFO 23: Mini
6: Cutter 15: Spark 24: Crash
7: Beam 16: Tornado 25: Missile
8: Stone 17: Hammer 26: Master
9: Bomb 18: Sword
I'm currently looking at 030015dd onwards. This part might be related to RNG as it doesn't react except when I turn around (which is known to change RNG).
Once one buddy Kirby has Magic, it is possible to manipulate either of the Kirbys to acquire Magic from the ability roulette they get. So we can use this over and over, but because of the timing it might be troublesome. It doesn't save time in many areas as most areas require wheel which I have most of the run anyway. But there are certainly parts where it is possibly of advantage to change the ability, like in boss fights or when I need to break grey blocks. Looking at it twice, it might not be a great time saver after all (the greatest time saver in the next any% will be optimizations and new strategies rather than Magic ability abuse). I'm not currently interested in working on a new TAS, but I might be if I succeed understanding the memory better and solve the problem with the timing I mentioned above.
Any feedback/help with this is greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I can't figure it out! I'm done with 1/10 of the IRAM part, and I'm not even sure if I didn't miss anything and it took very long... I'm out of this. If someone figures out the RNG and Magic kirby trick and all then I'll be doing a new TAS but as it is currently I simply can't...
until here:
- You don't hit bosses at the first possible frame. And often you aren't close to the right side to go out of the screen (to trigger the level end), so you had to walk there and thus wasted some time. I'm not very familiar with the game and therefore I'm not confident about this point, but positioning didn't seem optimal in some places.
- You didn't use frame advance much/effectively it seems. At the end you autofired A at 25% speed or so, wasting a lot of frames.
The run seems good, and is okay for a beginner's run but there are quite some possible improvements (I think you could save at least 20 seconds). I suggest you implement these, and take your time optimizing things, especially the boss fights, instead of rushing it. If you aren't interested in redoing this TAS, I'd like to give this a shot some time in the future :)