I've done some experimenting with TAS and I recorded 2 separate TAS runs. One using the R3R5 route, and one using R2R4. I was surprised to see that R2R4 was faster, but going by the segment times the optimal route APPEARS to be R3R4. Here's the clips. Both of these were done on the US version of the game.

R3R5:

R2R4:

Bro..... the blood, the sweat, the tears. But I've finally beaten both your TAS runs with an R1,R3,R5 run using the shifter trick in some parts. I'll be uploading and submitting soon.

I know you did the shadow checks as apart of the entertainment of the run but I still feel like this was a major accomplishment. I'm sure you could make something in the 37 or 36s with another TAS.

3:36:XXX possible in TAS I'd say, but I'm not dedicated enough to do it. I whipped this up in about two hours, and it's spotless. Incredible work though, I didn't expect the old TAS to ever be beaten, not unless a new major trick got discovered. Considering there's like 5 people who even remember this game though, it probably isn't likely we'll be finding new tech anytime soon. Here's to another 2 seconds.

Carkiller, Do you happen to know off hand what the fastest routes are for each of the stages? I think I'm going to start running the other stages again to make them more optimized and get the Easy runs in for stage 3,4 instead of the Hard versions I have up there now.

I'm thinking that the current routes that are run are already fastest but since I know you've TAS'd stage 1, I wasn't sure if you happened to test any of the other ones.

No I haven't even seen the other stages of the game honestly, I never got past stage 1 as a kid so that's the only one I bothered to look into.