Notes on SM. So Little Room any% TAS
Routing:
By letting the title demos start playing (and then one can immediately cancel them), one can start the game at Landing Site instead of in Shaktool's room, and from there, the shortest connection into the maze that leads to the planet explosion tiles is given by the room before Bomb Torizo.
Starting at the first maze room, the shortest routes (regarding the number of transitions) to trigger the end are: Down, Down, Left, Down, Left; Down, Right, Up, Down, Left; Up, Right, Left, Down, Left.
But since this hack is a hack of the Debug Mode hack, one can choose Samus' starting place (after watching a title demo) at different places than just Landing Site, by using direction buttons at the map with the hexagonal coloured tiles, and the only other suitable spawn-point is at Wrecked Ship, from where one can run into the transition to the moat room which puts Samus into the maze at a different location and from this location, there is exactly 2 fastest routes (of same lenght as in the pre Bomb Torizo room case): Rright, Left, Up, Down, Left; Right, Right, Left, Down, Left.
And among those 2 routes, Right, Left, Up, Down, Left should be faster.
Considering that both of my Test-TASes (1 with the pre Bomb Torizo room route and the other one spawning at Wrecked Ship) finish within about the same time, the resulting route isn't clear and probably both paths (and the multiple maze routes) might need to be checked.
All the routes in the maze can be checked via brute-force, knowing that the last 2 transitions need to be Down and then Left.
Technically, the door in Shaktool's room is randomized such that every few frames, the transition blocks change so that one can start at 6 different rooms in the maze, but the (laggy) Shaktool fight should be slower (and much harder to optimize, compared to the platforming).
Debug Mode features:
Other than this, the Debug Mode allows to toggle a background layer by holding Select and L and then pressing Jump, and the Debug Mode also allows to change enemy graphics (and the graphics that Samus uses) by holding Select and R and then pressing Jump.
If one holds Select and L and presses Cancel, then some dark layer seems to be toggled at the bottom half of the screen.
If one holds Select and L and presses Shot (once or twice) then some other tiletable seems to appear.
If one holds Select and R and presses Shot, then the HUD is toggled that way.
And as long as Select and L or Select and R are held, Right, Left, Up, Down, Start, Dash buttons seem to have no function.
Maybe some of those Debug Mode features can be used to speed up a TAS by a few frames (especially if layers are taken away).
