@KilleDragon Thanks, the turnaround strat works and so does the beginning of 8-2, but you still need to press 3 times at water exit.

I guess that brings the total down to 114 A presses

1 more question: Does anyone know if it would be possible to make a rom hack that displays the A button press count? (like the abc challenge sm64 rom hack)

I guess I beat that by 1 A press. Does anyone know where it could be improved? I might make another one on PAL to see if it helps

Today I got bored so I decided to make a TAS to see how many A presses you need to complete the game. My TAS has 116 A presses (not 100% sure) , does anyone know the lowest number of A presses needed.

Where could I improve the TAS?

While trying to get an All-Stars PB, I decided to mess around a bit and try out BBG (everyone was telling me it would softlock/crash the game) and i managed to do a weird BBG/FPG/whatever you want to call it. Could this be a potential time save?