Earlier today, I looked at the two WR runs, side by side, and I've come about a difficult conclusion. We are at the MOST about 6 frames away from the fastest possible time.

Let me go through the reasoning. First off, because of the stage 25 cycle, no time save there matters unless it's nearly 9 seconds. (That is a bit over the amount of time we need to save to get a 1:50 cycle.) Next, if you frame advance, you'll notice that both of the tied WR runs exit stage 25 on the same frame. (2:00.37) That is the best frame possible frame on this cycle. I frame advanced through the entire rest of the run and could find no discrepancies. They are the exact same.

There is exactly one timesaver I can think of. When you land on the platform on stages 28-30, you jump. There are many frames when you can jump, and it is probable that you can successfully jump at least a few frames earlier. That makes a grand total of SIX frames to save if I'm being EXTREMELY generous.

Nobody is going to like this, but I feel like I may be the only one who will say it. I don't know if anybody will ever beat the current record.