Well, I finally improved the first run I ever submitted to SDA. That run was posted back in the halcyon days of VHS, grainy encodes, and little to no verification.

I'd just like to start saying that X really sucks compared to Zero, and that's the reason why it took me forever to improve this run. Zero has a sword with a ginormous hitbox that comes out instantly, whereas X gets a piddly little shot and a charged buster shot that still can't match the power of Zero's sword :(. Furthermore, screwing up my dashes seems to be the primary function of X's leg upgrade.

Barring X's shortcomings, I think I did a good job improving this run. I didn't find any major timesavers, except for one small route change - I did Walrus's stage before Mushroom's stage so I could use the frost tower against Mushroom's miniboss, saving me about 15 seconds. I'd like to thank Satoryu and RaneofSOTN for bugging me about this route change.

I know I still get hit a lot in some areas during this run (Frost Walrus's stage comes to mind), but it can't be helped. X's weapons are ill-equipped for dealing with enemies from below, or just enemies in general for that matter.

It only took me three years to realize, but it seems like people are tired of my IFAQs and stage-by-stage comments. Maybe in another three years, I'll manage to write entertaining comments that are worth reading.

Time comparisons

I'm only pointing out key points for large improvements, improvements that aren't obvious, and (the few) places where I lost time.

• Sky Lagoon 1: 0:28 --> 0:25

• Sky Lagoon 2: 1:02 --> 0:58

• Magma Dragoon 1: 0:33 --> 0:32

• Magma Dragoon 2: 1:13 --> 1:03

  Improvement: Fired partially charged buster shots instead of using the mech.

• Web Spider 1: 1:04 --> 1:04

• Web Spider 2: 1:52 --> 1:46

• Frost Walrus 1: 1:37 --> 1:25

  Improvements: Better job of navigating the ice platforms, and doing a better job against the miniboss (Fired at the miniboss the moment it hit the wall, letting me sneak in a hit without causing the boss to hide)

• Frost Walrus 2: 1:26 --> 1:21

  Improvement: Managed to hit Frost Walrus in between animations, which lets me get a few quick hits in. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, look closely at what happens after Walrus reaches the left wall.

• Split Mushroom 1: 1:29 --> 1:12

  Improvement: Frost tower

• Split Mushroom 2: 1:54 --> 1:50

  Improvement: I abused one of Lightning Web's properties against Split Mushroom. If you fire Lighning Web far off-screen, it will disappear from the screen completely, which lets me hit Split Mushroom the moment he's vulnerable, opposed to waiting for the web to disappear.

• Colonel: 0:39 --> 0:47

  Lack of improvement =(. I was so focused on not missing the Colonel that I ended up slamming right into his face. My bad luck didn't help either.

• Cyber Peacock 1: 1:25 --> 1:23

• Cyber Peacock 2: 1:20 --> 1:19

• Storm Owl 1: 0:36 --> 0:32

• Storm Owl 2: 1:43 --> 1:34

  Improvement: The first improvement should be very obvious :). The second improvement is shooting Storm Owl with uncharged aiming laser, then hitting him with charged buster shots.

• Jet Stingray 1: 0:43 --> 0:43

• Jet Stingray 2: 1:41 --> 1:44

  Bad luck against Stingray is what slowed me down here. He dove instantly in my old run.

• Slash Beast 1: 1:01 --> 1:00

• Slash Beast 2: 1:35 --> 1:29

• Magma Dragoon 1: 0:33 --> 0:33

• Magma Dragoon 2: 0:35 --> 0:37

  I only lost time because I collected the heart on this trip instead of collecting during the first visit. I actually saved around 3 seconds collecting the heart using lightning web instead of leaping from the right cliff.

• Space Port: 1:22 --> 1:11

  Improvement: Yeah, my Colonel fight was much cleaner. I also used nova strike at a better time in the battle.

• Final Weapon Part 1: 0:47 --> 0:47

• Final Weapon Part 2: 1:31 --> 1:18

  Improvement: Hit the General with more charged Twin Slashers this time.

• Boss refights: 7:49 --> 7:39

  The only boss refight worth mentioning is Web Spider. First off, this is what happens when you fire a charged Twin Slasher the moment the battle starts.

  The other thing that should be mentioned is that I didn't know you could even cut Web Spider's thread until I did it by accident this run :(

• Sigma fights: 2:58 --> 2:26

  First form improvement: Used two charged Rising Dragons without firing an uncharged one in between, which let me kill Sigma before he teleported.

  Second form improvements: The first improvement was using the nova strike. The other improvement was using the disappearing web trick again. These two improvements combined saved about 9 seconds.

  Final form improvement: Mostly just better luck here (it was perfect this time), though I did use a charged Rising Dragon to destroy one of the robotic heads faster.

This run is still improvable, but I'm satisfied with the time I got. I was only aiming take a minute off the time, but I ended up knocking out almost two and a half minutes. I think the human limit is somewhere around 48:00-48:15ish, but I wouldn't mind if someone proved me wrong.

What will I do now? Well I'd tell, but I'll probably change my mind in a couple of weeks, and then people will use what I said in these comments against me, as they have with comments that are nearly two years old as of now (February 2008). Damn me and my stupid promises :-/.

In all seriousness though, I'm working on improving many of my old runs. I'm not satisfied with most of the runs I did before 2006. I will say that I won't improve my Zero run anytime soon, as I'm tired of playing this game, and there isn't much to improve in that run other than implementing slash dash cancel, which only shaves off 45 seconds at most.

Here is the improvement on my X4 Zero run, done almost 4 months after the last one (like I said not anytime soon). If you are wondering what is improved here is a list:

-Overall tighter play, fewer mistakes (I think), by the time I reach the final stage I'm about 20-30 seconds ahead of my old time.

-In the first area of Split Mushroom's stage I use a different strategy against the miniboss, saving me over 10 seconds.

-I kill Split Mushroom a few seconds faster this time.

-Web Spider killed before his spiders land on the ground, both times too.

-In Frost Walrus area 2 I either pass by the frost birds, or kill them without wasting any time.

-In both areas of Jet Stingray's stage I constantly dash, making the screen scroll faster, saving me 1-2 seconds in each section (I'm really squeezing out all I can get here). The only parts I don't dash are done for the sake of safety.

-Slightly different strategy against Slash Beast allows me to maximize my damage everytime he lands.

-I not only take no damage throughout the Space Port, the Colonel fight is much cleaner, possibly being a few seconds faster (sorry, I didn't check).

-The Iris fight looks WAY better, I shaved off at least 3-4 seconds here.

-I'm tempted to say my runthrough when I repeat the 8 bosses is better with the exception of Storm Owl.

-My Sigma battle is better on all three forms in every conceivable way. This is definitely the area where shave off the most time from my last run (30+ seconds!). There is only one obvious mistake on the final form of Sigma, but it isn't too costly to my time. Let's just say I really get my revenge on Sigma from the last run.

Though majority of this run is better than my last run, there were a few sections done worse (mostly due to bad luck).

-In area 2 of Magma Dragoon's stage I get hit by a fluke meteor, causing me to fall down and lose some time. I also messed up on the positioning of jumping over the missle shooting bots.

-In area 1 of Web Spider's stage, a wall climbing error allows one of the mermen to shoot spikes that keep up with me while I'm dashing through the stage, costing me about 1-2 seconds.

-In Frost Walrus area 1 I get unlucky because the ice creature ends up blocking my uppercut, meaning I have to uppercut it extra times.

-When I fight Storm Owl the second time around, I mess up the timing on one of my Giga attacks, and at the very end of the fight I get unlucky because he ends up blocking my giga attack with one of his cyclones.

As you can see, the good definitely outweighs the bad. I feel like I am very close to the theoretical lowest time for this run (I'm guessing slightly below 47 minutes). Plus I have spent a lot of time optimizing this run, meaning this is the final version, unless if some more significant time savers can be found.