Oh, I didn't notice this! I actually routed out a real-time RNG manip route for this game for Halloween, so I'll give this a good look. I was thinking about TASing it, but, I just wasn't sure this game can be Moon-tier, and as a hack, can't be Vaulted.
However, right off the gate, with the very cool stutter step skip to immediately reach the Dearkhart fight (which I totally wouldn't have known about!), that's probably like a 10 minute time save at least, skipping the horribly slowest portions of the game, which IMO makes it viable for Moons. Beating Dearkhart with no Paula and no Freeze reflects is quite insane also, which can be seen in just how much RNG manip every turn needed.
I think the enemy dodging in the Sea of Eve was especially great (I knew the hearts' hitboxes were wonky, but not THAT wonky), and for what it is (just enemy despawning/dodging and optimized boss fights), it's a good short TAS. And the connection to Toby Fox makes it more note-worthy than many other romhacks.
However, there is one major thing missing from this, which luckily would be trivial to change if chatterbox wanted to since its at the end. The final boss, Dr. Andonuts, can be one-shot by diamondizing him. This can be done by Mirroring him with Poo, and having Poo do the "tear your limbs off" move. It looks like this would save 2 minutes. (It might also be possible, and way more unlikely, to Pray with the "confuse everyone" result, and have him diamondize himself; but I'm not sure if it'd be faster even if possible. The Pray confuse strat is done in real-time EB any% to have Ness's Nightmare PK Flash himself to death.)
With the final boss having Megalovania playing and all, and having to get around how insanely under-leveled you are with insane SMASH/Pray RNG manipping, it could be argued that fighting Andonuts normally is more entertaining, but I dunno. 2 minutes is a lot in a 20 minute run, and having Andonuts just suddenly beaten in one turn is a pretty funny, unexpected way to end it off as well. Plus, it's kinda weird for the TAS to have a longer Andonuts fight than the real-time run...
So, how it should go is, turn 1 after the Id, RNG is manipped so Poo's Mirror succeeds and he goes first turn 2, then turn 2 is manipped for him to do the limb move, and have it diamondize. Very easy to edit in.
If that was changed, I definitely think that the romhack is notable enough, and the TAS is short enough and action-packed (about as action-packed as an EarthBound run can be) to be a Moon run.
(Also, it doesn't really need a "best ending" category descriptor, this is just the normal ending. any% bad ending would just be a meme)
Oh, and I have a big question for chatterbox: Was backtracking to get Paula required? Like, would the Sea of Eve have no exit if you only had Jeff and Poo with you? Or does getting Poo trigger the exit, was Paula only gotten to save time in bosses with her Pray attack?
If Paula can be skipped, perhaps it would be worth it now, if she's not needed for Andonuts. That'd require redoing everything past Dearkhart, however, and Phaze/Id would be a lot more turns. (Phaze in particular would need some serious manipulation to beat with only Varik/Jeff, but the trip to Onett is pretty damn long, so I dunno.)
