Progress report: We finished donut plains, with fast fadeout but had to sacrifice the 1 up. There might be a way to get the best of both worlds, I tried for a good amount of time, but its hard to test things due to how difficult the ending is, and all this work would not save any frames.
I started donut secret 1. Entered the first pipe 1 frame faster (compared to
viper's thing). I entered the next pipe 2 frames faster (3 total). To be honest I do not know how I did this part faster, I think it has to do with how the game is weird and some frames are better to start pressing a direction, anyways I used A jump, but I don't think it matters, I didn't even try B jump because it was faster already. This room probably deserves a closer look.
After that I got near the key hole but some how lost a few frames in the horizontal direction doing the drop shell and regrab rise. I don't know why, but in one simple test my horizontal speed differed based on when I dropped the shell, I think its another quirk. It does not have anything to do with that I pressed left for 1 frame before the fish, I tried going under this fish and not pressing left at all and the horizontal distance was the same.
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~darreon/smw_/6b.smv
Anyways. I have finals coming up this week so I need to study for and take them, I don't know how much I'll be able to play.