When I was doing runs on emulator, someone told me that the visual cue for getting Mark in the upper right cabin on the lake was just as soon as you see pink after the knife hits the mask on the title screen.

That worked, and it wasn't perfect, but I'd still get it frequently enough to attempt runs.

I ordered an Everdrive so I could play on console and chase WR (since I'm in Japan, and this is the only option to play on Famicom outside of a converter) and the visual cue appears to be different. None of the RNG I'm used to seeing is showing up and I haven't gotten the optimal RNG a single time. It's driving me nuts.

Is there any footage out there showing exactly what you're looking for on console?

I also heard the first pink frame, but I don't usually try to go for it and will just hit the start button at random intervals after resetting the console hoping for good mark or chrissy rng

I went for it a bit and never got it myself, either

See, I got it dozens of times on emulator. Probably more than 100 times, actually.

But I haven't been able to get it on console once. So it makes me think maybe the cue is different.

There are a lot of things I've come to learn about the RNG in this game. One of which is that it's the 3rd intro screen (the credits screen) that determines which map seed you end up getting. Another is that power cycling helps reset the RNG back to 0, while soft resets jump the RNG around to a different value.

But I'm having a hard time getting optimal RNG on console too. The seed I'm requiring forced me to create a click track to get it since it's obviously frame perfect. Using the click track while practicing over emulator helped me get the correct seed about 40% of the time. Over console however it's more like 7%. The console somehow rolls the RNG differently than FCEUX does, and I'm still figuring out how to crack the mystery of how so myself and others can manipulate it to our advantage.