I played this game to death when I was young, but I had never yet beaten it without losing a life. After watching the TAS for the game, I picked up a few strategies and decided that not only could I beat the game, I could do it fast.

I abuse a number of glitches. The most well known one is the grenade-pause glitch, which allows the player to kill bosses 2, 4, 6 & 7 quickly without any problems. It does not work on any other boss. Not as well known is the walk-across-lava glitch. It is very difficult to pull off and often results in my death. I also pause and unpause the game in between rooms since it's faster than waiting for the room to scroll.

I feel that the route I choose in this game is the fastest one that is reasonable. Anything faster would mean ditching the gun upgrades and taking on the level 5 boss "naked," which to this date I have never been able to do. I make a lot more mistakes than I would've liked in this run, the biggest one being a slip of the finger in level 2 that loses me two bars of gun power. I'll likely make another run to improve on this one in the future.