I've been too busy to make a lot of progress, but today I was finally able to sit down and at least get a rough draft of croctopus chase done with my new script.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/26369311450733872
I didn't resync the movie past 4-4, so it won't play the whole game, but the total time is an accurate representation of how long the run would be if submitted today.
Overall, it was pretty easy to TAS the level once I could see what I was doing. The camera is quite difficult to work with though, and many of the big shortcuts I thought I could take turned out to be undoable since the camera simply got irreparably broken.
The final level time of ~1:32 is about 18 seconds ahead of the previous complete attempt so that is progress at least. I don't know how it compares to the nico video ones.
Anyway, with the techincal hurdle removed, its just a matter of time to get the run in shape now. Let's go!
For Tompa and anyone else interesting in taking a stab at this, here's a link to my script and the file that contains the lines I used to outline the level. Maybe someone else can find a better route.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcxokh5hytzyhz3/radar.zip?dl=0
I'm not a programmer, so I'm sure some clever person can improve the performance of that too, it does slow down emulation a bit.