Controls: A to accelerate, Up to boost, Down to cancel boost. There's no cooldown between boosts, and you can cancel the boost anytime you want.
Driving at high speeds and accelerating during corners will destabilize your car, and lead to a spin-out.
Okay, so first off: I noticed that driving without the A button (only accelerating with Up button) gives me way better grip in corners. For example, I can clear some corners at full speed if I'm not holding the A button. But driving at the same speed with A button held results in spinning out. I'm not sure if the TAS would ever want to use the A button, since TAS could quickly alternate between Up/Down buttons to maintain certain speed during sharper corners. Maybe some A presses would be beneficial there for a TAS, if alternating Up/Down didn't give enough speed granuality.
The main game mode consists of 12 stages. Each stage consists of 4 tracks. In the first 3 stages, you only need to beat 3 out of 4 tracks, so you can choose which one to skip. After the first 3 stages, you will need to beat all 4 tracks in the remaining 9 stages. The money you receive for winning increases with each stage, so in the first 3 stages you'll most likely just want to pick the 3 quickest races, regardless of the prize money.
There are 6 car tiers, each tier having 6 variations. You start off with 2 cars from the first tier, and 1 car from the second tier. You can upgrade each car and buy new cars. You receive a few prize cars for winning some stages:
- 3rd tier car after clearing the 5th stage (very cheap to upgrade compared to other cars from the same tier)
- 4th tier car after clearing the 7th stage (not worth using because it has almost identical speed/handling to 3rd tier car)
- 5th tier car after clearing the 9th stage (useless because we can purchase the 6th tier car after beating the 8th stage)
- 6th tier car after clearing the 11th stage (marginally better than the $750.000 car after upgrades, but it's questionable if it's worth the menuing time to upgrade it)
- 6th tier car after beating all 12 stages (the fastest car in the game, use this for NG+ run)
The game has random obstacles (spider, mouse, bird) during races. If they appear on the track, you'll have to wait them out, which can lose a few seconds. I'm not sure if those obstacles travel around the map on some kind of cycle, or if they appear based on RNG. If it's some global cycle, then the order of playing tracks would matter. If it's RNG, then you need to figure out how to manipulate this RNG.
You also have to deal with the opponents that will often crash and obstruct your lane, which can force you to wait for a few seconds until they disappear from your lane. Maybe you can somehow stop them from spinning out by adjusting your speed during certain sections. You will be lapping opponents often, so they are a major concern for the TAS.
The difference in speed/grip between the 2nd tier car and the 3rd/4th tier cars is very small. I don't think those are worth buying. The 5th tier car is a little better, but it costs $390.000. I'd guess it's probably best to use our 2nd tier car (upgraded) until we beat the 5th stage, then swap to the 3rd tier car (upgraded) we received for free and use it until we get $750.000 for the 6th tier car. You will have enough money after beating the 8th stage. If you chose not to upgrade cars, you might be able to buy the 6th tier car one race earlier, but I'm not sure which approach is faster.
Starting from 8th stage, you will come across races where your fuel gets low, which means you can't use the Up button to boost. To refuel, stop anywhere on the track, press L, select refuel and mash A+B. Press L again to return to the race. You'll need to figure out if it's faster to refuel, or faster to continue driving without the boost option.
And another pressing issue, is the sound bugs that can happen during races and menus. Your sound can become corrupted for about 30 seconds and it sounds really bad. The only way to avoid this sound corruption is to slow down during certain parts of the stages or to delay menuing. So you have to decide if you want to sacrifice some frames in order to make the movie more watchable for the 1000 or so people who will ever watch the movie? Or do you go for maximum time save and make 1000 people bleed from their ears? The choice is up to you.