You can find the video tutorial here:

It's meant for beginners, but if you've played it before you might see something you didn't know. I just wanted to record any tribal knowledge the game might have. It's longer than it should be, so I'd suggest watching at x2 speed.

You can find all the standard routes by watching the current runs. Watching obsolete runs should show you some easier runs that don't get quite as much time, but are great at getting you started.

The TL;DR version of this: -End with a low enough health and berserker that you don't lose time when ending a stage -Most of the timesaves in this game are minor. You can change strategies and only lose tenths of a second in many cases -Speaking of minor time saves, doing an attack in the air lets you jump off a platform one frame earlier -There's a door in 6 that is great to enter to get a 1up and extra continue for safety -Deaths take about 5 seconds. Stage 7 and 8 have some RNG and/or tough spots that can force you to take a death. It's not a huge deal to do so, you can still get a great time. -Don't push any input until you have 2 bars of health filled up during the transition to Sabretooth -- you can influence his actions with your behavior, and the influence is always negative -If you want a benchmark "good" time, go for 6:36. Anything 6:36 or lower is a fantastic time for this game, but still allows you to potentially take a death. This means you aren't fully beholden to RNG in stages 7 and 8.