REBOOT CLIP

I don’t know why this exists.

In Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, there is an address in memory which relates to a strange ‘feature’ the community has coined “Reboot Clip”. When the game is powered on, this address (802DC940 on NTSC GC) will have a value 0. The only known way to influence this value is by using Cruise Bubble, which adds + ~0.0333… each time it is used normally.

If you attempt to L clip while the Reboot Clip value is low (below ~0.4) Spongebob will have an easier time phasing through collision, since, for some reason, the duration of the laggy-intangibility is made longer. Unfortunately, each frame of the laggy-intangibility of an L clip acts as if pressing L, so if it takes 5 frames to phase through collision, the value will increase by ~0.166. For the best results, you need a Cruise Boost state with stored negative vertical speed to clip efficiently (least frames), but even still, sometimes the Reboot Clip value can increase at upwards of +0.5 from just a single clip if it’s angle of approach is sub-optimal or it’s collision is complex. Reboot Clips seem to function sort of similar to Xbox/PS2 Lag Clipping, but they are actually possible on Dolphin/GC (and on those other consoles, they have an additional effect).

Once the Reboot Clip value increases, as mentioned earlier, rebooting your console is the only way to lower it. Beyond a value of ~0.5, it really stops to produce any useful results, so it’s viability non-TAS is fairly low- especially since each time you Cruise Boost, it will increase, and the non-TAS CB method has twice as many L presses. (And, having speeds above regular non-TAS CB speed can allow you to clip in fewer frames, and therefore add less to the value).

In a TAS setting, there are 3 theorized Reboot Clips that could save time, 2 of them taking place in the Rolling Ball Room (to get in and out from the BRC Spatula), and 1 for Drain the Lake in Jellyfish Fields. I am currently attempting to minimize this value as much as possible without losing time, in order to have it lower than ~0.45 by the time I reach the JF clip. I don't know if this is doable yet.

Here’s a video demonstrating the concept with a live address viewer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkGH6w-tCIY
And yes, I do know that I didn't bowl the button in this video. I will work on finding the best way to do that later.