I've updated the emulator, and the condition works now. This also solved the breakpoint getting PPU_Data results. However, besides that things remain unchanged. With the condition the breakpoint never breaks, and not having the condition still gets it stuck on the same values every time, not going anywhere after A becomes 88.
I tested this on the original ROM and it also has this problem.
Here's the video:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RtAmtLxQMKjYUbUpF4q3tMKLMviLlW65/view?usp=sharingI couldn't get any sort of voiceover or subtitles, and the video quality was as high as the software would allow.
So I guess I'll just explain the video here:
I first open up my hacked ROM (which is actually a hack of a hack, the 25th anniversary hack), and demonstrate how it gets stuck every time (as specified above and in my previous comment). A few of the lines selected by the breakpoints are different from the original ROM (25th anniversary), but none are within the range of the problematic values.
Then I bring up the 25th anniversary edition, and show how it does the same thing.
Then I show how, as far as I can tell, nothing happens with the condition set (running about to different parts of the game for a while still did nothing).
One of the main things I was doing with the ROM was restoring the original graphics, palettes, and aesthetics to make it more faithful to the original, as well as various optimizations that the original hack didn't cover. That's why they look so different.
I then pull up the completely unmodified Earthbound Zero ROM for a better comparison of the colors.
I hope this helps