Row 50: MOVE n reported blocked 890 times in 1,431 macros on the cartridge,
every one of them on a frame the seam read as an open move list with a
placeable cursor.
MoveSelectionMenu writes wTopMenuItemY 12 and wTopMenuItemX 5 and nothing in
the game clears them, exactly as the two-option box's geometry outlives its
box. SelectMenuItem then decrements wCurrentMenuItem back to the 0-based slot
on its way out, which lands straight back inside the one-based range the
accessor reads. So the whole of a turn -- the text, the animation, the
enemy's reply -- read as the fly's own turn on an open list, the pad dealt
the four move buttons on it, and the cursor step pressed at a list nobody was
reading until its budget ran out.
The reading is the figure the menu draws, the same construction text_box's
waiting and yes_no_prompt already make: a box at (4, 12) fourteen wide with a
horizontal run over its top-left corner and the junction tile at (10, 12).
Surveyed with one rollback pulse per battle frame over 3,102 frames at the
rung-9 forest checkpoint: by the cursor bytes alone a real directional press
was honoured on 264 of them, and by the cursor bytes and the box on 231 of
231.
A frame whose list is not on screen is between turns, whose pad is the one
NEXT that advances text.