So, since this game has an interesting game mode, which is cooperative, I think this would be a good idea to add a coop category, on condition to clear 100 lines in total for two players (that is 50 for each player; 75 for one and 25 for another; 99 and 1 etc.)

What do you think about it?

Introduction: I think all of this would be useful for improving runs, but I can't really call it a guide since it doesn't provide any kind of step-by-step actions but rather gives in-game information that is, well, not on surface.

[If someone would be kind enough to make all of this info comfortable to read and appropriate to be a guide in future, it would be greatly appreciated (by me, at least)]

Now to the point, it's obvious that any enemy in the game has health points(or HP), and any of the player's weapon can deal some amount of damage. And it feels natural to go by weapon that has proven itself powerful enough at SOME point of the game. But this one is not so linear.

First of all, it doesn't matter how many times weapon (or bomb) is upgraded (or if not even upgraded at all), the damage per shot is ALWAYS the same (except weapon 2 in Novice for some reason, depends on weapon level and turbo power rank - the more the better - in chart it shows maximum possible). Secondly, weapon damage as well as bomb damage varies from boss to boss. And this is where it all starts:

I decided to divide this chart in two parts: Novice difficulty (1) and Intermediate/Advanced/Expert (2/3/4) for the reason of being easier to read; and 2,3,4 levels of difficulty don't really differ beside of enemies' HP. Ofcourse, the only part of this game that matters for speedrunning is boss fights, so here are bosses' hps as well.

///some numbеrs are highlighted for the sole reason of me not being really sure, sometimes it's difficult to land a direct hit ///Area8 sub-boss2 was once encountered with hp being above usual (84 vs 76). The reason for this is unknown for me. Still, mostly it goes by 76 hp ///area3 sub-boss has two phases - the one with hands and without them. Body and hands (each hand) have the same amount of hp, but hands seem to have no invincibility time (destroyed pretty fast), so I didn't bother to include it in chart. ///It is possible to make a double damage with weapon 5 in one shot if being at right position. It still counts as 2 shots, so given invincibility time it's quite difficult to pull off ///I did a "full rundown" for Novice and Expert difficulties, but for others two I did it only for a few weapons and bombs to see that they are no different from Expert difficulty damage, so I assumed everything else is the same. If there's a chance I could be wrong, let me know (at some point I'm going to check it though)

I don't think there's a point in overanalyzing this chart - I mean, numbеrs are pretty obvious now so to make a route a bit more optimal. What isn't that obvious is that almost any boss has frames of invincibility (which COULD vary though), which means that button mashing isn't really going to help much. Another thing that comes from it is there could be cases when bomb is active so the main weapon is 1 (usually deals 2 damage points), which could be weaker than bomb damage. So it's usually better to not shoot at boss while bomb is active (true for fast types of bombs like F or W; T if upgraded) to not make boss invulnerable to higher damage from a bomb.

P.S. I guess that invincibility frames could be of some use, but I'm not really sure about that. I'm still thinking that measuring damage per cycle or damage per seconds (depends on type of bosses) can be a bit more interesting information than damage per hit, but some raw data is still useful. So, till next time!