The cut off point to save time with a "Perfect" seems to be around 13 seconds remaining. Do better than that and you should save time theoretically speaking.
I want to test out the potential time save but I want to keep up the lab work and see what I can find in Australia's bonus stage first.
I'm happy to say that Australia's bonus stage is also done faster now by completing it too. And surprisingly it is easier to pull off than Thailand for an even bigger time save because unlike Thailand's lag fest of a bonus stage, the lag is minimal in Australia's bonus stage with this route. The cutoff point for time to be saved seems to be around 7 seconds remaining roughly going by the music.
I'll see what i can do about Alaska's Bonus stage but even the TAS can't do that one any better than a 28 so I'll have my work cut out for me there.
Alaska's bonus stage is brutal. Even with near flawless execution of my route here the time save is minimal. Approximately 3 or 4 seconds. It is easy to bail out of it you are off to a bad start with this one and you aren't heavily punished for any more than a few frames for doing just that.
This is the best result I've been able to dish out here after hours of digging.
The time saves weren't as big as I was hoping for in Thailand when I did attempts the other night (still absolutely worth doing though) but Australia's is huge. Alaska's time save is not very big at all as I expected.
I love that this is a thing though. Makes the run so much more exciting to watch at the highest level. The bonus stages that were once areas of downtime to relax are now definitely among the hardest stuff to pull off in the game and really balances the entirety of the run (5 minute long autoscroller aside lol).
