There's a few bug fixes here, and quick testing of performance (4 minutes of running my muramasa tas), it seems to be ~8% faster than the 470 build i posted a week ago.
Also, while I haven't confirmed this, these values suggest that hard mode halves your damage output rather than doubling enemy HP.
I looked up the SDA record for a frigate escape on the PAL version (0:04:25.40 remaining); that TAS is 4.1 seconds faster over that section, at 0:04:29.50 remaining. So at least it isn't unoptimized enough to lose out to a realtime runner, although I'm not sure how optimised the PAL frigate escape is on SDA (the author seemed to think 0:04:26 remaining was possible but not more, so unless a new realtime trick is found and someone uses it, I guess times like that are definitely in the TAS-only range).
That one's the best.
(...Any chance of a downloadable encode for this?)First of all, I've never used the Mystery item, although Miles says it's "insanely slow". Would it really be worth it to use that to manipulate a Thunder Rage to use on Red Bones, or should I stick with Miles' idea and use a Fire Flower and Power Smash?
Second, the speedrunner on SDA says that he needs to be at Level 8 or higher by Riverside Station to instantly kill the Goombas there. I noticed the speedrunner went into battle with some Crazy Dayzees but ran away. To get the Star Points needed, should I manipulate an Amazy Dayzee so I don't need to battle other enemies on the way to Riverside Station?
Finally, I noticed the speedrun on SDA does Frankie's trouble and gets a Gold Card. Why does the speedrunner do this if he never needs to play the Tube Parlor Game? It seems like it just wastes time.
I chose #2 also. Stretched pixels = ugly. :(