Well, after three continuous months of computer problems, I'm back for a bit.

My first impressions of this level in my 0:27 vid were probably a bit harsh as I had quite a bit of fun with this one during the grind for 0:26. While the seemingly-lower decimal expected of you to beat the boss for 0:26 probably helped, this is easily the dream boss in this game: Challenging and fun. This wrap had a marathon of teething problems within the first hour of playing but now it makes it a lot more sense to me, so I'll give a few pointers as to what I feel helped me:

• For the downclip, you need to piano roll the jump keys to get a clip. I'm not sure if it's subpixels or the height of the floating platform but I was probably seeing 1 in every 50 runs actually succeed in actually clipping, which wasn't practical when considering that you needed as many attempts to the bottom part as possible. This was thankfully mitigated by doing a zip left before right, possibly for alignment purposes.

• The zip needs a 5 frame jump at a frame perfect spot, which is why you will want as many attempts here as possible. I actually found that quickly tapping A, B and C simultaneously gave me a nice 5 frame jump duration, although your mileage may vary with that method. I did make a Mega Drive homebrew ROM to test controller inputs out so you could do some analysis on that, if you want:

To add to this, make sure you are reasonably close to the ground before you start pressing right to zip, or it straight up won't work. Another detail I noticed is to keep holding right even after your jump.

• The boss is standard. As far as I am aware, you have a comfortable margin to work with in comparison to 0:27 but I recommend that you get comfortable with this boss using the 0:27 strat before going for 0:26, as the chances you have to reach the boss are cut down dramatically.