Many times in the middle of levels, it fades to this black computer screen and back. These constant interruptions basically kill the pacing of the run. I don't think that's star material.
Against the stage 3 boss, you only fire once on the first jump, then you fire twice on all jumps after that. Wouldn't it be faster to fire twice on the first jump and only once on the last jump instead? Anyway, very nice improvement! I'm impressed that there was so much time to save on this game.
Have you tried something like land the hit when the glitch occurs, wait 10 frames, then use RAM Search, before load savestate then landing a hit without the glitch, wait 10 frames and find what changed in memory? If not much addresses are left, you could try freezing them one by one with the value of the first attempt until the glitch is triggered?
Very nice improvement. Just one question: is there any way to replicate the glitch from stage 1 boss on other bosses?
Looks like the trick to the first boss is getting the killing blow while it is moving downward ($4FA == 0xB2) and its y velocity(?) is 243 ($45F == 0xF3). Since this game seems to copy everything to temp addresses to do anything with them, those values end up propagating elsewhere and just happen to speed up the transition to the next stage, I guess. The thing with the ship and the final boss probably happens for the same reason, so an input file of that happening might give some clues to getting it on other bosses.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/22646697?t=10m09s There's a glitch with the ship where you can destroy the front on a specific frame to skip the rest of the ship and go straight to the final boss.