I don't know I could have had anything to do with it, but I was his main competition (and vice versa) on Castlevania III Alucard (US) for the first 2 months of 2018, and he pushed the record time all the way down to 26:11 before vanishing. What really strikes me is that all his runs are gone + he was top tier in pretty much every game he ran, and this wasn't the first time he completely dropped off the planet. He mysteriously came back mid January to beat my former WR of 26:32 and then left 2 months later, deleting every trace of him being on the internet almost. Trying to write the WR progression for Alucard since then would be very awkward.
The differences between those 2 are pretty major if you ask me. Alucard and Sypha runs are both easier for the JP version; Alucard's bat form consumes less hearts over time and Sypha's lightning attacks are stronger and more accurate.
Yes, second quests are US only, and so are all the secret names.
Ideally, you only only switch back to Trevor in a Grant run for two occasions:
- To fight the three bosses in stage 7 as soon as the fight starts (Trevor can get a much faster kill on the Leviathan/demon than Grant could).
- To perform a glitch in block 9-01 at the first set of stairs, so you can clip up a few pixels and not touch the ground, to be able to climb straight up to the door to 9-02.