i think you should be allowed to skip the starting cutscene.

you skip it by watching it and then going to the title screen and timing would start on clicking continue, i think so because the cutscene adds nothing to the gameplay.

btw setting rules would be great. and il's for every "stage"
even tho its only you and me here it would be nice to have

and i think we should time our runs without loads since the loads vary (example some of yours were longer than mine) there is a program where you can put a picture in and it looks for that on your screen and when it sees it it pauses the timer and resumes when its not on screen