Greenalink speedrunning a Contra game?
Yes, I have been playing this game from time to time since early 2019. I got back into playing this game lately because of an upcoming local speedrunning event that is coming up later this November.
In the past, I had a time of roughly 18:19 and I managed to cut that one down by over 30 seconds thanks to some faster boss fights, a mixture of execution and luck.
Notable time savers:
Junkyard Main Boss 2 (square blocks):
There are a few strategies to get the Yoyo to fully lock onto the red block but all of them feel very inconsistent at the moment.
Jungle Main Boss 1 (Orb bot):
The spike balls (Weapon B) deals more damage per second and is a notable luck based fight as the boss usually does not die and end phase 1 until they have finished an attack, those attacks can be random and some are longer than others.
Jungle Main Boss 2 (Dead Eye Joe):
The 3rd phase has a new damage invincibility strategy, by falling off from the ceiling before taking damage, the player will regrab the ceiling and cancels out the hitstun animation, regaining control much sooner than just hanging onto it.
Train Main Boss: Powered Ninja Yokozuna
The boss will only take damage when it is actually standing on top of the train. I take advantage of death invincibility and get into a good position to dish out some major damage when it starts to accept actual damage.
Big Battle Main Boss: Bahamut Overdrive
Phase 1 is by far the toughest execution time saver. If you can get the sweet-spot lock on to work, you can just end his first phase right after his charge attack.
Phase 2 is not as hard as phase 1 but failing to 1 cycle this part can cost a huge amount of time for the run.
The perfect Phase 3 fight would be killing it before it even moves, I haven't mastered the timing yet but it's doable.
The run is done on Japanese thanks to the 3HP mechanic which allows riskier plays. The censored European Probotector version is theoretically faster thanks to shorter cutscenes (due to censorship), the game's code was optimised for 60hz and recently, both the Mega Drive Mini and Contra Anniversary Collection had this game running at 60hz. I said theoretically because like the US uncensored version, the player only has 1HP which discourages risky plays losing some time against some of the bosses.