I've decided to write down a few known improvements for any%, before I forget them again:
First wait till there is a version of mupen with which resets work for MM. Everything else will be a waste of time.
- skip deku text before entering termina (you can skip the flower and the text, it's just hard)
- pause buffer past bipolar mask salesman
- Reset right after entering clock town to skip a cutscene
- after buying bombs and chus, use a chu to get by the guard. talking to him is slow. Also use a leaver to enter GB. See here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhpxw4bwAHQ
- In the swamp use a down-A HISS to skip the big octos
- get one less deku stick in woodfall
- in woodfall temple use the double bomb strat to hover over the gap. You can see this strat in PF and SHT.
- Sell the last red potion isntead of drinking it so you can wrack up damage beforehand, for GBT BK skip
- Manage bottles a little better so that you can catch a fairy in a real bottle
- get one less nut back
- Use a-slide clip in STT in the map room to get to the main room:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u8VVkCaWx4
- I think the second gap in ST should be skippable with the new a-slide clip, but that would have to be tested
- destroy stt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx1VXKIk1Yo
- fight Garo master with fire arrows instead of stick
- skip stt mask cutscene with stored sot. That needs a few other little changes in the route, but I'm sure you can figure that out :D
From what we timed skipping cutscenes of other temples should not be worth it. They are simply too short.
For Garo master I'm not 100% sure if getting deku nuts back is even faster when you fight him with fire arrows. Does anybody know for sure?
I hope I haven't forgotten anything. If so please tell me and I will add it.
Considering the japanese version:
Text differences are relatively negligible. Yes japanese is faster, but not by much, certainly not enough to warrent a switch.
But there are quite a few big differences between J and U. I'm going to mark what helps the J version with + and what hurts it with -.
+ Power crouch stab: this means getting only one deku stick and destroying bosses even faster.
+ slightly faster text
+ Shoot hookshot guard in the face. No need to get into the upper room.
- no cutscene skip with sodt.. there is a cutscene skip to skip the turtle cutscene, but it is slower
- no flying zora
- observatory platform is only reachable with zora mask
- before hovering against walls you need to slice the sword once. otherwise chus won't explode (basically never happens during the TAS, so negligible)
There are other differences, but afaik those are the only ones important for a TAS.
