OK, so after doing work on WIP V2 I've discovered several more things that, unfortunately, make this a more annoying game to TAS then at first look:
* You can manipulate rabbit spawns by waiting frames, similar to what
Samsara did in Riddle of the Sphinx. I was able to get a better starting position this way, but doing anything more beyond that would be a tedious trial-and-error process that might not even get me what I want (i.e. never miss rabbits at all).
* The alternate strategy
does save frames, but only if you have all three rabbits going at once. Otherwise, the original strategy is faster.
* In the Three Rabbits mode of gameplay, each rabbit will spawn in one of three different "zones", and only one rabbit will be spawned per "zone". These "zones" consist of the top three rows, middle four rows and bottom three rows respectively. If there aren't any carrots in a "zone", rabbits will not spawn there until a patch is repopulated. This limits how effective luck manipulation can be in a TAS.
* At the 1,100 point mark of V2, I ran headlong into a glitch similar to
this one that killed the game too early. Without yet knowing how to manipulate my way around it, that means further TAS work is on hold until I can figure that out.
I am also at this point wondering if Lua scripting would be able to help with the trial-and-error of the spawn manipulation. If anyone that knows scripting sees this message and thinks it will, feel free to PM me.
EDIT 2/15/19: I am intending to go ahead with this project anyways, but currently I am waiting until the next release of BizHawk to start, which will incorporate
a recent update to HMOVE behavior in the A2600 core that will most likely affect sync if I try to import a TAS started in a previous version.