# Icing On as the default — 2026-10-30-r7

jdc clarified that Icing should default **On**; the previous screenshot showing
Off was not his intended icing default. This release restores On for a clean
boot, newly created empty Full/Light/Mini formats and explicit season restarts.
The On/Off toggle, valid saved choices and first-completed-game locking remain.

Other defaults remain Edmonton, Auto line changes, Fighting Off, Hard,
Auto Replays Off and Crit Shots Off. The r6 CPU keeper catch handoff and outlets
to the requesting P1–P4 current skater remain byte-identical.

## Narrow code change

`ICING_DEFAULT` is0(On), with `--legacy-icing-default` selecting1(Off) for an
exact r6 reproduction. The constant is supplied to replaymenu.s, seasonplayers.s
and the generated season features include. Both instructions and code layout
retain their original length. Apart from release strings and checksum, only
three bytes change1→0:

| Immediate byte | Instruction | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2AA34B | 2AA348:31FC0000F0EE | season/slots.s, fresh/restarted format |
| 2DE03F | 2DE03C:31FC0000F0EE | experimental/replaymenu.s, boot |
| 2EB44B | 2EB448:31FC0000F0EE | experimental/seasonplayers.s, empty legacy-format fallback |

Existing valid U records retain their choice; played legacy S/T records retain
their established native On behavior. No saved season is unlocked or rewritten
to force a different setting. Each new release uses fresh progress under jdc's
standing delivery policy, preserving controller config/remaps and history.

## Validation

All **75 required suites executed:74pass**. Only the inherited finisher_hold
geometry failure remains (native1.9046278288761302 versus held2.777268439788352,
early one-timers2vs2, four strict Normal/Easy controls unchanged). The strict gate
remains **FAILED**; no new strength qualification is claimed.

The native menu/default suites verify actual On text, both adapter tables,
clean boot, fresh Full/Light/Mini formats, saved On/Off compatibility and frozen
season rules. The keeper control and P1–P4 outlet suites remain passing.
The new binary guard permits exactly the three immediate changes above, plus
version/checksum. All40 current raw gameplay traces (24000 sampled frames) match
40 fresh exact r6 controls. The earlier r6/r5 comparison separately retains its
35 raw-exact traces and15 bounded video observations across5 scenes; those older
comparisons are not relabeled as fully byte-exact. No new Hard matches were run.

Independent rebuild and exact r6 rollback pass:
`--legacy-icing-default --version 2026-10-30-r6`.
The matched no-hold ablation is rebuilt from this release's source. IPS applies
to the canonical original v5.1W base (MD5:8f863ecb108c1d213953bada9b98f4f2) and
reconstructs the release exactly.

ROM SHA256:48af31f9f7c85766951bf42745360571d6e7bf025bdce936363a58a178ab05f6; CRC32:273334B0.
See QA_STATUS.json and ICING_DEFAULT_RESULT.json for exact-build receipts.