SBS

These cutscene flags I'll be going over all seem have an important role.  While they aren't the only ones with effects, they are the most notable.
When the value is at 0, Mario can move.
When the value is at 1, Mario can move; however, the partner, item, and start menus are disabled.
When the value is at 8, the game behaves as normal, and adds any changes in the cutscene flags to 8.
When the value is at 16, Mario can no longer move or open menus.
When the value is at 32, Mario can no longer move or open menus.
When the value is at 48, Mario can no longer move or open menus.
When the value is at 128, Mario can move and has access to everything.  128 appears to be a duplicate of 0.
When the value is at 160, Mario cannot move and does not have access to menus. 160 appears to be a duplicate of 32.

Here's where we can reach these cutscene flags in the game.
It's at 0 anytime Mario can move.
The value cannot remain at 1 while playing as Mario without glitches.
The value reaches 8 when hitting lava or spikes.
The value changes to 16 in some instances when hitting spikes or lava as well.
The value changes to 32 during most text-based cutscene, when opening a menu, in battle, or when swapping partners out.
The value changes to 48 when riding Sushie, Lakilester, or using Parakarry.  Additionally, 48 is used for various other cutscenes.
During a loading zone the value starts at 48, doubles to 96, and then jumps back to 48.  Doors function similarly as well.
The cutscene flag cannot remain 128 without hacking or glitches, but temporarily jumps between 128 and 136 when you run into a fire bar. The value is at 160 when invisible with Bow.

Sometimes, cutscene flag values are replaced, other times, they are added together.  What exactly determines whether or not they add together, I cannot say. These values can also vary further depending on whether or not Mario has autonomous movement during a cutscene.  You may also remember that I could move with a cutscene flag value of 8; but you cannot move during the animation of touching spikes or lava.  There are other unknown values at work here that we've been searching for to explain these circumstances.

The pause locks I have listed below the cutscene flag are two values used to control whenever the game hinders Mario's movement.  If Mario's movement is locked as a  result of a cutscene, opened menu, or anything really, these locks increase by 1.  They work with the cutscene flag to determine whether or not the cutscene flags can change, and vice versa.  The differences between Pause Lock 1 and Pause Lock 2 are unknown, although they do update at different times in some cases.

There are moments where the game refreshes changing variables and resets them back to 0.  The cutscene flags and pause locks are among the plethora of variables that are reset. Loading zones do a full refresh of the game.  Pretty much any value that isn't normally changeable by the player is set back to 0, unless otherwise specified, when entering a room.  An example of a value that will not change under certain circumstances is the value that tracks whether or not Mario is riding Lakilester. If this value was set to 0 during loading zones, Mario would always dismount Lakilester when entering a new room.  Same goes for Sushie.  Loading zones aren't the only way to refresh the game, however.  Opening menus don't do a full refresh, but they do reload certain values.  Additionally, running away from a battle behaves similarly, and does a small refresh of the game like a opening a menu does.

Before we get into the glitch itself, it's important that you guys understand exactly what's supposed to happen with no glitches. Try paying attention to the cutscene flags and locks as well.

The first and most obvious thing is that riding Sushie is only supposed to occur in water...not on land.

The second is upgrading a partner with the Super Block.  Hitting the block explains that you can upgrade a partner's powers.  They gain a new move, and do more damage in battle.  You can upgrade each partner twice, but you'd need to get the Ultra Stone to upgrade them a second time.  It's worth noting that we skip the Ultra Stone in speedruns.  Anyways, you get prompted with a partner menu and may choose which partner to upgrade.  Should you not close this menu, a text box follows: "Do you want to upgrade this partner?"  Selecting "Yes" upgrades them, and selecting "No" cancels everything. Once a partner is upgrade, the Super Block is no longer usable.

The third and most important is this cutscene.  A few things worth noting right off the bat, is that we need to use Kooper to hit the switch to start the cutscene.  Your progress is hindered until this sequence of events is completed.  Hitting the switch will spawn a second Kooper.  One of the Koopers is a Duplighost enemy in disguise.  They'll argue about who's the real Kooper, and decide that Mario should be the one to determine who's who by whacking the fake Kooper with his hammer.  Hitting the real Kooper will force them to scramble up and gives Mario an extra chance, while hitting the fake one triggers a battle with the Duplighost.  After the cutscene ends, Mario can progress.

So what exactly am I getting at?

For years the Sushie Glitch has been used for skipping parts of Chapter 7, but never has it been known to manipulate RAM values.  More recently, that's changed.  To explain what's going on behind the glitch, there are a few things to keep in mind.  In Chapter 5, we can use Sushie to travel across loading zones in the water, so loading zone refreshes do not reset the values indicating that Mario is riding Sushie, similar to Lakilester.  Therefore, even if RAM values are manipulated, entering a loading zone will just reset everything back to 0, aside from the exceptions.  As I just said, one of those exceptions is riding Sushie. But here's where things get messed up.  Because Sushie is only intended to be used on water, the developers never programmed any exceptions for battle refreshes. Meaning if we encounter an enemy while riding Sushie, upon leaving the battle,  the cutscene flag and pause locks are reset while the game is left with the impression that Mario is riding Sushie.  And because we're at the point where RAM values indicate that Mario's still riding Sushie, but he's not, other RAM values and scripts get confused.  For example, the script and / or value responsible for controlling the endpoints of Mario's animations is either stuck or in a loop.  All this because of a game refresh...there's a reason your menus are disabled when riding Sushie.

Of course, it doesn't stop there.  A value allowing enemies to detect Mario has been changed.  If you enter one battle with Sushie; sure, some values refresh to 0 and some don't.  The cutscene flag value definitely refreshes.  But the Pause Locks aren't actually refreshing...they're mistakenly decreasing as a result of the cutscene flag value dropping to 0.  Meaning we can enter battle again with  sushie properties, exit the encounter, and decrease the two Pause Locks once more...this time, to an invalid -1. These values were never meant to drop below 0 because it's tracked with unsigned integers.  The only valid numbers in this case are 0-255, and the system  will automatically correct errors to prevent a crash.  -1 is nonexistant, but the value  before 0 as a resut of looping is 255.  Now we've got pause locks at 255.  Increasing them by 1 at this point will go back to 0, and decreasing them again will go to  254. If we were to get into another encounter at this point, we'd be softlocked.  The reason we're still able to move at this point is because the cutscene flag value is 0, but pause locks now stuck at values greater than 0 will prevent certain cutscene flag values from changing. In battle, the cutscene flag is 32, which will not refresh or drop to 0 while both pause locks are positive integers due to scripting exceptions.  A strange side effect as a result of two encounters while under the effects of Sushie glitch is a change in Mario's hitbox.  I can now walk out of bounds through some invisible walls that were perfectly normal beforehand.

Eventually, I asked myself, what if we were to mess with these values just right so we could gain the ability to move during cutscenes?

Entering the room with the Duplighost Kooper cutscene was our best chance at doing so.  Thanks to the Sushie glitch, I can skip this cutscene requiring Kooper and encounter this Clubba to start messing with RAM values.  Our goal is to get both Pause Locks to 255 and the cutscene flag value at 0, which is possible by encountering this guy twice.  Remember, since we skipped that switch with Sushie Glitch, we can start the cutscene without Kooper, and from this side.  Since the game only anticipates that Kooper will be Mario's partner during this cutscene, entering the cutscene with other partners has different results.  Unfortunately, using partner other than Kooper will not work very well.  Our options are limited, and Mario cannot talk to the Koopers.  To gain more control, we need method of having Kooper as our partner without resetting manipulated RAM values and maintaining pause locks of 255.  To avoid this, we perform a partner swap during the second battle.  This must be done during the battle, as opening the partner menu forces the cutscene flag to 32 while both Pause Locks are at 255, which will softlock Mario.  After this encounter, we'll have many values manipulated with Kooper out, and can begin the cutscene with some new options.

One thing that's changed immediately is the ability for enemies to detect me.  With Kooper as my partner now, enemies could spot me as normal, and I had access to my menus again. Upon beginning the cutscene, the first pause lock increases by 1 from 255, resulting in a 0. This is already strange, as the cutscene flag fails to update it's value in the meantime.  And the second pause lock should be on par with the first pause lock, but that isn't the case here.  Oddly enough, opening and closing the partner or item menus will softlock Mario. However, opening and closing the Start Menu does not softlock Mario.  The only major difference between the Start Menu and these Partner Menus are the refreshing of the game. Start menus do a more "complete" refresh than other menus do. Unfortunately, we are unable to confirm anything as of this point.  What we do know is that with our currently tracked values during a cutscene with Kooper out at 0, 0, and 255 respectively, we can talk to the Koopers while the cutscene is still going on without softlocking.  Spawning too many text boxes with this will crash the game.  More recently, I actually managed to experience some strange results when messing with this dialogue crash. Only frames before the crash, a music note followed by a lone lowercase "r" could be found after the normal text.  This music note is not anywhere in this cutscene, and nowhere in the game's text dump is it followed by a lowercase "r." There are obviously unknown values at work here.

Aside from that, not much else can occur with manipulated cutscene flag values and pause locks in this room.  That is...without the next glitch that has kept me tied to researching this room for the past month.

I spent a good time looking at the cutscene flag values and their relationships with pause locks.  I do not understand how to properly explain how they impact each other, but I did manage to figure out we'd been one tiny step away from altering many different RAM values a lot more.  In the Any% No Wrong Warp category, Sushie glitch is cancelled by encountering this same White Clubba and switching partners through the Super Block.  Nothing particularly useful happens during the Super Block cutscene with one encounter...but what about two encounters?

I was instantly dissatisfied with the results.  I couldn't move during the Super Block cutscene.  My cutscene flag was stuck at 32, and the pause locks were at 0 and 255 respectively.  I almost actually stopped there, but realized if I exchange my partner when prompted, the cutscene flag value changes when the menu closed.  As soon as that menu closes, the cutscene value goes from 32 to 0, and Mario can move.  The trick is that the partner must be swapped; selecting the partner you already have out for the upgrade will not allow movement.  Partner swapping increases the first pause lock by 1, as does the Super Block cutscene.  Meaning the pause lock is sitting at a normal value of 1, but with two cutscenes up.  This allows the cutscene flag value of 32 to decrease to 0 when the partner menu is closed, but with the Super Block cutscene still active.  So now, we can move with the text allowing us to choose whether or not we want to upgrade our partner.  So why's that such a big deal?

Well, the Super Block cutscene has really strange properties.  Many values we haven't yet found are being edited.  For example, enemy and item hitboxes are disabled. No matter how close to an enemy you get, no encounter will begin.  No matter how close you get to an item on the field, you will not pick it up.  All menus are unavailable; however, partner abilities can still be used.  With these manipulated cutscene flag values and pause locks, however, using Parakarry or Lakilester will softlock Mario.  Strangely enough, if you use Parakarry, he'll carry Mario as normal, but Mario will softlock in midair.  That's to be expected with this cutscene flag value, but things get weird after a few seconds.  Mario will instantly teleport back to his initial position before using Parakarry, while still softlocked.


Dialogue crashing aside, we could also choose to hammer either Kooper at this point.  This will advance the cutscene's stage while the cutscene is already playing the first stage.  Technically, this means we'd have two cutscenes going on at once.  We can choose to hit the Kooper on the left at first, which is the Duplighost, or we could choose to hit the real Kooper on the right.  Either way, we'd trigger multiple cutscenes at once.  Depending on what times you trigger the cutscenes will determine whether or not the cutscene flag values and pause locks will update.  Generally, you will still have movement during the stacked cutscenes.  If you were to hit the real Kooper multiple times in a row, the cutscenes could continue to stack.  Unfortunately, this is difficult to do, as the Kooper positions are randomized after the first time you hit the real Kooper.  Many odd things can occur here.  The most outlandish instances include when my coordinates instantly changed with Mario to two unique locations; a teleport of a sort.  Some included the infinite looping of the dust cloud animation that occurs during the fight between the two Koopers, others just crashing the game.  With multiple cutscenes going on, the possibly of game crashes appear to be at an all-time high.