I posted this in the r/speedrun thread for this run, but I'm reposting it here as I think these observations might be of interest to people here too.

The thing that struck me upon watching Zaxon96's new WR run was that several of the levels seemed less smooth and clean than I remembered them being in Mike89's 14:58, with more immediately obvious mistakes. (For example, coming to a momentary dead stop upon hitting the star post platform wall in Emerald Hill 2, missing the first capsule hit in Aquatic Ruin 2, making a mistake getting the speed shoes in Casino Night 2, and jumping straight up at the start of Hill Top 1.)

So I was puzzled by how exactly Zaxon96 ends up with a faster run overall - surely with mistakes like those, the 12-0 on the final boss couldn't have made that much of a difference? I was also curious to see how much of a difference the route changes made.

So I rewatched both runs and compared the times on each level.

It turns out that at the end of CN1, Zaxon is 6 seconds behind Mike's pace. He then catches up over the next few levels, so that by the end of Hill Top 1 he's 1 second ahead. Loses all of this advantage in Metro 3 and Wing Fortress, falling 4 seconds behind overall - then the 6 second improvement on the final boss makes all the difference!

Lvl -- Mike89 - Zaxon96 (Diff)

EH1 -- 0:20 - 0:19 (-1) EH2 -- 0:36 - 0:37 (+1) Zaxon96 takes higher route, which seems slightly faster, but hits platform wall upon leaving the cave, coming to a dead stop. Also just misses hitting the capsule at :36. CP1 -- 0:22 - 0:22 (=) CP2 -- 0:40 - 0:39 (-1) AR1 -- 0:21 - 0:22 (+1) Mike89 jumps fast horizontally across the water toward the shoes; Zaxon96 jumps up high, which might be enough to make the difference? AR2 -- 0:38 - 0:43 (+5) Mike89 gets the fast boss flee animation but Zaxon96 doesn't. Zaxon96 also misses the capsule hit. CN1 -- 0:28 - 0:29 (+1) CN2 -- 0:58 - 0:55 (-3) Zaxon96 makes a mistake getting speed shoes but catches up later, by doing a pausing trick to avoid the need to bounce three times on the bumper. Also a slightly faster boss kill I think? HT1 -- 0:40 - 0:38 (-2) Zaxon96 jumps up to skip the first seesaw. But Mike89 is smoother through the lava cave door HT2 -- 0:56 - 0:56 (=) Zaxon96 does a different route going up the vertical cave but I don't think it saves time MC1 -- 0:33 - 0:31 (-2) Zaxon96 takes lower route after invincibility boxes MC2 -- 0:42 - 0:42 (=) OO1 -- 0:32 - 0:32 (=) OO2 -- 0:41 - 0:42 (+1) MZ1 -- 0:54 - 0:53 (-1) MZ2 -- 0:16 - 0:15 (-1) MZ3 -- 0:45 - 0:49 (+4) Zaxon96 comments that he has a poor boss pattern, taking an extra cycle of the boss returning to the ceiling compared to Mike89 SCZ -- 2:06 - 2:06 (=) WFZ -- 1:41 - 1:43 This is the first time I've seen the glitch that Zaxon96 does to spindash above the platforms... but it doesn't seem to save any time. DEZ -- 0:49 - 0:43 (-6) Mike89 does the 10-2 hit pattern; Zaxon96 does the 12-0

Sum of all bold times = 14:41

Let me know if I've made any mistakes above, or if I missed any other differences between the runs that contributed to the changes in times!

In CN1 the block cycle is camera timed, so you do lose time with mistakes at the beginning