This is an improvement over my previous record:

Like I said before, I never seriously attempted speedrunning before, and this game, due to its short length and my nostalgia for it, seemed like a good candidate to try beating the current record. It still gave me plenty of issues and a deep understanding of just how much having to be fast all the time changes the act of playing a game.

Before attempting a full run, I made practice runs that first focused on individual levels, then individual worlds, with the horror world being the biggest nightmare to learn how to deal with. It took me surprisingly few attempts to accomplish the first successful run, but improving upon it took me a great deal of attempts.

It's still not perfect, as shown by the various fails that, together, lost me over a minute of time. Not to mention that on multiple occasions, I chose to wait a bit instead of taking a riskier maneuver, since doing the latter usually ends up getting me killed. I am convinced that with perfect execution, riskier movements and good RNG, you could bring the time down close to 40:00, although I am uncertain if sub 40 is possible.

I'm probably not going to attempt to beat the record any further. With the game's janky programming and occasional RNG elements, it doesn't feel worthwhile to try, since even if I were to play perfectly, I could still get screwed over by a bug, or the bubbles, or the vultures, or Evil Ed's bombs...