1. We collect diamonds in order to save time. When a level is completed with 0 diamonds, the time countdown at the end of the level is skipped, saving about 1.2 seconds (on a WHDLoad setup, which is preferred). Whenever you collect enough to end with exactly 100, you gain a life and it resets to 0, saving you that countdown time! It's possible to do that in 4 levels of the speedrun (11, 12, 25, 28).

2. You need to collect the powerups as seen in the top runs, in order to get the water drop which helps skipping the flames. Furthermore, you can use the bomb and the stopwatch as follows: Hold FIRE and press DOWN + LEFT to activate the stopwatch (freezes enemies onscreen). Hold FIRE and press DOWN + RIGHT to activate the bomb (kills all enemies onscreen that can be killed).

3. There are warps in the game, and there are deathwarps. Whenever you die after activating a warp (we call it deathwarp), you respawn in the warped level AFTER the checkpoint which saves a lot of time.

We utilize following 6 warps: Level 3 -> 6 Level 6 -> 9 Level 17 -> 20 Level 22 -> 25 (death warp) Level 25 -> 28 (death warp) Level 28 -> 31 (death warp)

4. Enemy patterns aren't random at all. You learn them once, and they will always be the same. Furthermore, it does not matter for enemy patterns when you screw up an earlier part of the level. Enemies spawn as you reach the part where they become visible, so you always get the same patterns, independent of how fast you played the earlier part of the level.