I've been wanting to do a storybook game TAS a long while now... this game would be a decent candidate. It's short and not too slow-paced, and it also has some time-saving exploits and TAS-relevant planning for cursor movement for example.
One thing I'm worried about is that it IS basically a clumsy port of a PC game, remade and adapted to suit the lacking GBA controls and hardware. In my opinion the ports are too different to really compare (based on what I've seen of the PC version on Youtube), but someone might complain about it being a bad game choice for this reason... Who dare stand in the way of my dream?!
Might try to do a WIP of it at some point. Also, I've seen a funky, apparently lag-based glitch effect in this game. While changing rooms, Nancy became lost in "minus world" for a moment before the game remembered what it was supposed to do and gameplay resumed as normal. These should be tried out more.
EDIT:
Here's a WIP of the game encoded.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sou8uJMH6t8
Some info. There's a number of exploits here for fast movement. Most noticeably, you can press A+shoulder buttons while pressing arrows in a room to turn twice or enter forward and turn on the same screen transition, depending on the situation. A+B when in corridors also makes the character step forward and turn 180 degrees on the same transition, which can sometimes be handy.
The room system in this game is really messy, and sometimes counterintuitive routes turn out to be the fastest ones. Like when entering the Saloon. Instead of simply moving forward twice, I use A+B to step forward while turning 180 degrees before turning left. This is faster because turning transitions load faster than normal forward or backwards transitions...
Putting cursor over things you can examine causes the game to load another cursor, causing a few wasted frames. So in cursor movement, you want to avoid hitting any objects in the screen you don't need, while navigating your way to necessary objects and arrows. The cursor moves pretty slow, so it can be faster to have an extra transition instead of dragging the cursor over large distances.
You can talk to Rose from outside the Dining Room for some reason while stepping inside. It might not save time, but it looks strange.
I realized one more thing at the chapter end cutscene, and that is that while the game is loading stuff, it doesn't release the button you last pressed. So it is necessary to alternate between A and B while skipping the cutscene messages or you lose a frame every other message. Note that this doesn't work in normal discussion scenes with characters. I think not knowing this trick wasted some frames in the game start-up screens...
This WIP was to the end of the first chapter. It and the second chapter are the longest in the run, after which the remaining chapters are really short actually. I think the entire TAS would total maybe 7 minutes.
...anyone know what's up with the audio glitch at the end of the chapter? Could it be emulation-related? Could also be because I got through the level too quickly. Something like it can happen even when playing normally.
EDIT 2:
Went and tested hexing the file. I indeed wasted one frame in the first pictures of the game, but... alas, the way lag works in this game is strange, mysterious and possibly random. This game doesn't appear to be hexable very well.
In this instance it appears I actually saved frames by screwing up because if you fix that one wasted frame in the first pictures, you get two extra lag frames by the end of the first corridor. So I guess I'll keep on going with the unfixed file for now.
EDIT 3:
I noticed something new concerning cursor movement which saves time, so I restarted the entire project. Now I'm back at the end of Chapter 1, everything fixed, and with a slight route change too, a total of 60 frames faster.
EDIT 4:
First and second chapters completed.
Encode! The rest of the chapters in the game are quite short, so I might be as far as halfway through the run right now.