So now that emulation of this game is fixed, myself, mapler, and itsPersonnal are gonna go ahead and start this project. I just tested today whether memory cards are faster or not and if soft resetting after levels is a possibility. For the first, after spending a few minutes looking at our options, it appears using a memory card and simply not saving is the best choice. As for soft resetting, it is much slower because it requires saving and going all the way back to power on. Not sure if too many games are like SA2:B where it saves the memory in some kind of cache even without memory cards AND it resets to the title screen. Oh well. It still looks like a great game to TAS and we're all looking forward to starting.
Edit: Found
this video that shows you can simply pause and exit levels after the final hit of a boss. Awesome! ^_^