I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the RNG works to be able to more easily spawn the correct map seed necessary to get the most time effective runs on any category in this game.

I had figured out at first that the value that triggers which seed is based on when you push start on the 3rd intro screen/the credits screen, not the 1st/hockey mask one. Then I went through each individual value in FCEUX, made a spreadsheet, and charted out which value placed the counselors in which cabins, kept testing to make sure that the placement could be recreated from scratch with the right value. Power cycling was seemingly the best way to properly manipulate this, as it would put the values right back at 00, whereas resets would jump the value backwards a varying, inconsistent number. I gotta hand it to the devs, they did not want this RNG to be easily manipulated by the player.

But now I'm realizing that there's much more to this RNG than I originally thought. I built a metronome value that would get me as close to frame perfect 3rd intro start as I could with minimal resets - in theory. All of this on emulator. But put into console, the RNG acts way differently. If I power cycle and use my metronome, I should expect that I get a map seed that is either exactly where it should be, or at least close to it as far as my chart went.

Then I started noticing that SOMETIMES when I would power cycle, it would sometimes give me a map seed that was nowhere close to where my metronome should place me on the chart, or worse yet, a map seed that isn't even on my chart.

I wonder if the game has multiple preset lists of map seeds set for multiple 256 value cycles of RNG, and on console it randomly pulls one list up and you can't manipulate which one it does pull up.

Also wonder if there are actually multiple versions/builds of this game made and no one's ever realized it. The biggest RNG factor of running this game is undoubtedly for map seed. Right now I'm just quickly doing soft resets and hoping for the best until it actually potentially gives me the map seed I want (Mark NW Lake Road cabin + Paul at far South Main Road cabin immediately attacked by Jason) - but sometimes what I think may be that map seed (I don't stop to check in advance, it wastes time from a potential PB run), it might be a map seed where Jason starts at the Cave Road, or a map seed where Jason starts at the NE Main Road cabin and I don't know until I get to the far South cabin and find no one there.

This RNG feels pretty unique in a way that makes this game hard to run for any sort of records.