Well, that took longer than I thought it would!
I redid the first stage and saved 83 frames over the YouTube video. Most of the time saved came from better manipulation of the Ring to grab things faster, which allowed me to save time by grabbing the blue poles.
I also redid the second stage and saved 226 frames over the YouTube video. Most of the time saved came from having a better understanding of how damage works — it turns out that the Ring does more damage if you spin it for a while before you throw it.
- If it does not make a full revolution, it does 1 damage.
- If it makes one or two full revolutions, it does 3 damage.
- If it makes three or more full revolutions, it does 5 damage.
- Each revolution takes about 32 frames.
Fockewulf has 20 HP, and his bombs do 8 damage if you throw them back at him.
Finally, I completed the
third stage (
YouTube). Bearenger has 26 HP, but he does not have any attacks that you can use against him. I have one other strategy to test against him before I move on to Metal Island.
One other thing I noticed is that there are some frames when your input does not do anything, but the game is not lagging. I pseudorandomly pressed buttons during several of those frames near the beginning of the first stage before I got tired of looking for them.