I had to TAS what the top four did to get their hammer to really understand it. Before doing that I happened upon a must faster version of the easy hammer strat detailed in ProfessorRetro's guide.

My strat:

I found this to be significantly easier than the strat used by the top runners, though in practice is tends towards 16-20 frames slower than the top runners' strat.

It's pretty simple: Walk to the bomb on the first platform, hammer it, dip right enough to not get blown up and hammer over where the wall was, dip left again right after hammering and hammer over the bomb spot, then start moving right and hammer again once over a vacant wall.

From here climb the ladder to the 2nd platform and hammer right away and hold left to get out of the bomb's blast. As soon as you're clear AND before the blue bits of the bomb are no longer visible do a quick pause buffer (pause then unpause as quickly as you can). The hammer should visibly spawn and after a few more frames waiting for the bomb to stop blowing up dip right and hammer the golden hammer.

Time to save here is mostly how tight you can make the movements on the first platform and how close to the first frame the hammer's obtainable you can grab it. 420 total frames is the fastest I've found possible with this strat.

Faster but harder strat:

I'm not sure who figured this strat out, but tomkabs' current WR uses it, as does the rest of the top four runners (as of writing 5/12/24).

Starts out mostly the same, head to the first bomb, hammer it, dip right just enough to not blow up and hammer, dip left again over the bomb spot and hammer. From here move straight to the ladder and climb it, there is no fourth hammer swing on the first platform.

Once on top of the ladder hammer the bomb and move left just enough to be clear of the blast. As soon as you're clear of the blast, hammer. The tricky part here is this pause buffer. Pause buffer at the very last animation frame of the hammer swing and the golden hammer will spawn. Dip right and grab it as soon as you're able. Another visual queue is the 100 points from breaking the wall.

So WHY does this work? Due to the behind the scenes calculations that go on one needs to swing one's hammer FIVE times total for the golden hammer to spawn on this bomb spot.

My strat does four on the first platform and breaks the bomb with #5.

The other does three on the first platform, one to break the bomb, then the last one as the bomb's exploding.

So why do I keep getting the golden bear with the faster strat? If you pause buffer too early in the fifth swing it won't register it before doing the calculation to generate the spawn, and with four swings you get a gummy bear consolation prize to enjoy as you go for the reset button.

Five swings = 8(0) on the goodies chart from the math, Four swings = 7. Chart goes from 0-7, with 0 being the only golden hammer prize.

The calculations are described very well over here at this gamefaqs post by "Ronald BG."

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/579407-wrecking-crew/faqs/45343

So, why not just swing three times before anything? A) I think the red guys will probably eat you. B) the swings seem to be tied to the bomb locations and the 2nd swing over the 1st bomb spot seems to act as detonating bomb #2 of three needed to spawn the loot. Just my best understanding based on BG's info.

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Below is a video of the TAS's - Left is WR strat, Right is the strat I found. (yes mine on the is a few frames ahead on the video, best I could do with freeware for split video).

Current tomkabs' WR method fastest I could TAS it was 413 total frames.

Mine I couldn't TAS any faster than 420 total frames.

I timed both from frame 301, first frame before Mario moves. I ended both on the first frame 3200 points showed up. This was frame 713 for WR, 721 for mine.

I really hope this helps folks with getting this very important hammer spawn!