The Return of Ishtar is the sequel to
The Tower of Druaga. It is an action game with light puzzle-solving elements that requires two players. One person is in control of the maiden Ki who fights with magic and the other controls Gil, the sword-wielding knight. Search for keys and special items. The tower has a few different ways to exit, and the aggregate total of levels is 128.
Game overs are pretty much a no-go in my book (as it would be similar to feed fictive coins ad infinitum (there's a precedent, also stated in the Movie Rules)), and since both Ki and Gil only have one shared life (if either dies, it's game over)...this rules out deaths at all.Disregard this for now.
As of now, this is purely in idea phase. In the meantime, check out
the StrategyWiki walkthrough of the game, with detailed comments on the rooms and maps. Routing is going to be the key to the fastest route.
This used to be in the PSX games sub-forum, as back then, MAME-rr TASes were not allowed on the site (and FBA-rr does not support the game at all), and thus the only possible way was to TAS on the Namco Museum Volume 4 compilation release on PS1, which contains a reprogrammed a version of the Arcade original. However, things have since changed and not only is MAME-rr accepted now, but MAMEhawk is also a thing now alongside MAME via libTAS.