Global timer

The Global Timer is a variable that increases by 1 on every frame. Some events occur depending on the parity of the global timer, or depending on other functions such as trigonometric calculations, so pause buffering can be used to alter the state of the game.

The Global Timer starts counting from the moment the console/emulator is powered on, and resets to 0 every time the game is reset. Many Objects and variables depend on the global timer to determine their course of actions on any given frame. Example: the coin display value in the HUD only goes up once the Global Timer is odd. This why that with pause buffering, the coin display can fail to update for a certain amount of time.