I'm not sure a full game TAS would be interesting, but I think the first level (Imperial Grand Prix) is a lot of fun to speedrun so I decided to try out BizHawk's new N64 rerecording capability. I was working on setting up BizHawk and was just trying to get my controls configured the way I like them when I serendipitously discovered that this sign has very strange properties. If you get partially stuck in it, it tries to eject you upwards. The game appears to freeze, but it usually ends up throwing you out into the cave. In this case, I managed to get a very helpful warp forward. The freeze took a lot of "real time" but no in-game time, so this seems like it could be useful.
Link to video
*Edit* I played with this using frame advance a bit and discovered that you cannot press the accelerator, brake or slide buttons or you will lose all of your speed. You can, however, turn (though not very well). I was able to turn enough to make a clean exit in this version.
Link to video
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
This looks like it can be pretty cool, I say go for it.
There's a "checkpoint" glitch in the PC version of the game, perhaps it's in the N64 version as well? The tracks seem to have checkpoints along after them to keep you from cheating too much, the thing is that they don't care which direction you come from. In some levels this allows you to turn around after passing the first checkpoint after the start and drive through the final checkpoint, then turn again and cross the finish line, which will count as a lap.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytYxXRNmst4
Oh man, that's some bad game design. I guess doing an optimal TAS would depend heavily on finding the memory address(es) for when each checkpoint is achieved. It seems at least the first level's checkpoints are placed such that it's faster to just complete the level normally. I may optimize the level a bit, not sure if I'll use this warp trick though, it's super weird.
