So, like the edit in my last post says, you could possibly execute code that would write to A2D5 but it would require you to finish the first level, go to a level that has a coin in a right place so touching that coin would get an address to read 'A2', and then you would have to go to another level and perform the lag glitch in the correct x position in the level. This takes way too long to do or at least it would save not more than 5 seconds over the current TAS...
I had a better idea yesterday:
On version 1.0, on the title screen you can press a button combination to go to a level. This probably was a feature that was used by the developers to create the demos that play when you wait at the title screen too long and they forgot to remove it.
Up + Select: Mushroom level demo
Up + A + Select: Hippo level demo
Up + B + Select: Turtle Zone level demo
Up + A + B + Select: Macro Zone level demo
As you play the level, the music is muted and the game will save your input in SRAM. When all input slots are used up, it freezes and you have to reset. With those input slots you could write out:
08 D5 A2
or
AE D5 A2
---
http://i.imgur.com/sM1KCXc.png
The first address in a slot states how long you waited doing nothing, the second tells what input you pressed, and the third tells how long you pressed it. So you would wait 8 or 174 frames and press "^v>As" for 162 frames.
EDIT: Please note that the way I labeled the bytes seems to be wrong. It is really like this: 1 byte for the button combination, and 1 byte for how long you pressed it. Doesn't change the fact that you can write up a program in 0xA300 onwards.
---
Then you try to do the pause glitch with the addresses A203~A205 reading a code that jumps to the code that we just wrote. Unfortunately I don't really know how or if that would work.
According to
this, it seems that I want A203-A205 to read something like this:
C3 <address where we wrote our code>
I would love it if somebody helped me with this
EDIT:
Another image, describing the idea that I had:
I edited values manually for testing purposes. And the game would execute A201~ over and over and over and never stop. I don't understand why.
If I don't put in C3 00 A3, it executes whatever code was there originally and stops at C0 (RET NZ, which I don't know what it means to be honest...). If I put a C0 or other RETURNs at, say, A303, it doesn't prevent the game from getting stuck in an infinite loop.
Again, I hope someone can help me because I will not be able to get it to work by myself...
This is again with manually edited values for testing - in this particular image, it triggers the credits on the next frame successfully.
There is one thing to think about: Since we use the title screen demo to write a program, and it eventually freezes when all input slots are used up, we should try to prevent that freeze from happening.
EDIT: It seems this strategy is completely useless because Pause glitch doesn't seem to work while in demo mode.
There are bystanders that interact with the table which can ruin your plans. Or babies crawling across the table who grab your bombs and place them elsewhere on the table.
I think this would make a fun little TAS where you can try to finish each table as fast as possible with just one bomb. (Although I think a few of the later tables require at least two bombs.)
When I played the game as a kid I got about as far as level 22 with difficulties. You can start out with level 13, and the game has 30 levels total. So a TAS would be about 15~20 minutes.
