Breath of Fire III "9,999 Fishing Points" TAS [Part 2]

I had originally planned on catching a whale with the Wooden Rod as per Davidk's request, but it turned out to be more annoying than I had anticipated and I forgot to edit out the purchasing of said rod.
It's pretty widely known that 9,999 is the highest score possible for the super fun and addicting fishing mini-game in Breath of Fire III. I decided that a TAS needed to be made showing that it's possible, just so it can be referenced if anyone is curious.
This run is started a little while after reaching the final fishing spot on the Lost Shore. I used janus' full-game run as a jumping off point, since it takes a while to get this far in the game. In retrospect, I probably should have started the TAS after the game was completed so that I could show off the rewards, but oh well.
Next I'd like to closely watch the stamina of each fish, and determine the best techniques to quickly drain it. I'd also like to figure out the exact window of timing for each of the techs. Finally, estimating the chance of a max length fish would also be helpful.
If you'd like to watch it on an emulator, you can use this pxm file: dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.p...
For those of you that don't know, TAS stands for Tool-Assisted Speedrun (or in this case, Superplay). An emulator is used so that one can use save states to correct mistakes and frame-advance for precision. I also relied heavily on memory watching and lua scripting so that I instantly knew how long each fish was when I entered a fishing area (I have another video of the script in action).

[@doomikusz]

Thanks for taking the time to TAS something I'd always wanted to see years ago playing BOF3, which I love.

[@ButteryBay]

I am currently trying to achieve this. on the PS1 it is very time consuming and I hope to get a complete file before I beat Myria. I am currently at 8914 fishing points and have every skill in the game including ebon fire. This will really help in making my dreams a reality. Thanks a bunch for making this.

[@skins4thewin]

I was able to do this back in the day without any sort of TAS, I just played the living hell out of it til I got the 9,999. The key tho is to make sure your first catch of any given fish is a small one, and the next one is just a bit bigger than that one, etc, because you only get points for record catches. Reset if you don't get it. If you catch too many big fish on your first catch then it may become impossible to get the 9,999. If you do it right tho it's actually quite easy to hit 9,999 as there is practically twice the amount of points than you actually need.

[@IAmElectrospecter]

It actually works a bit different from that. From my Fishing FAQ (via Terence):
All fish have a 'target' length that you must meet to get the full number of points available for catching them. The Average Length is not part of this data; it's just a guideline. The Average Length is usually 75% of the Target Length, rounded *down* to the nearest 5cm (example: a fish with a Target Length of 50cm would have an Average Length of 50*0.75 = 37.5 which rounds down to 35). Just as there is a Target Length for each fish, there is also a maximum number of points available from each fish. How many points you get from a fish depends on what percentage of the Target Length you met. The formula used is: Points = [[10 * Catch Length / Target Length] * Max Points / 10]

[@skins4thewin]

@@IAmElectrospecter Ahhh I see, it's been a long long time since I played it so I suppose I forgot. So in other words you just have to try to catch the biggest fish you can of any given variety, and if you catch enough big ones you'll eventually hit the 9,999.

[@IAmElectrospecter]

@@skins4thewin yep! But you have to catch the biggest of each fish to reach 9,999 (and there's no wiggle room either; based on the target length for each fish, you end up with exactly 9,999 points for catching the biggest of each). Congrats on doing it legit by the way!

[@aloisiosenra]

I am trying so hard to FIND this 999 points Whale... It just doesn't show up!

[@IAmElectrospecter]

The whale is tough! The chance of finding a max length one should be 1/500 or so, or only about 0.2%.