So, somewhere between July 25th and August 4th, (probably between July 28th and August 2nd to be more specific) I found a Boss Skip by accident. I was playing Sylvania Castle Zone Boss, and I started a Rolling Combo, which, instead of getting cancelled at a certain point like normal, continued all the way to the Capsule. As it turns out, if you initiate a Rolling Combo with the right timing, you can just Roll to the end. I assume that whatever it is that cancels the Rolling Combo is placed just slightly before whatever it is that locks the screen and temporarily removes control of Sonic, though it's possible that that's not the case, and that you simply have a small window of time before the Game actually removes control. I try to time it by starting the Rolling Combo about halfway between a set of trees in the background right after passing the last set of 3 Rings in the first section. Doing this Boss Skip saves over a minute. Since this does Skip pretty much the entire Level, I assume that it would be separate from the normal Sonic Category for the Stage, and possibly from the existing Full Game Categories as well. I did also try this in White Park Zone Boss, but it looks like it doesn't work there, probably since that Level is a bit different.
I think that this game could use some more categories to make it more lively. Firstly, there could be a 50 Emblem category. 2 players would need to be allowed for the 5 multiplayer Emblems, as the one where you need to break 5 shields is pretty much impossible against CPUs. The 3DS version would have to be seperate as it allows up to 4 players. Also, 3DS has 20 more Emblems exclusive to multiplayer, so it would need 70 Emblem if people ran it. Second, there could be an all S rank category. Finally, there could also be a category where you try to beat a CPU as fast as possible in Brawl mode. (That last one may just immediately get fully optimized.) There could probably be more beyond this, but this is about all that I've come up with so far. If you don't want to add any more categories, then that's O.K. It's probably time consuming enough to moderate what's currently there.
Is retrying from checkpoints allowed in IL runs? I only ask because the rules don't specify. Personally, I think that it should be allowed, mainly because of Level 13. The reason is Thunderwing's patterns. If you have a good first phase and a bad second phase, you should be able to retry from the checkpoint at the beginning of the second phase, due to the fact that Thunderwing as a whole is random enough to the point where you pretty much have to retry multiple times to get a fast run. My best ever is a 4:06, but that isn't really something that's all too possible to achieve on a one try.