Ok, time for Alucard's awesome commentary. Here's a little history...12 days ago I submitted another run that I thought was amazing, only to have it rejected. Thanks Psychochild! Well, here's a serious thanks, because I improved it upwards of 4 minutes, which is HUGE in a game like dmc. Lots and lots of thank you's here.

• Thanks: Psychochild (For crying about every little detail, which motivated me to run it so that there was NOTHING you could cry about...there still is, but it's way better ;) ) Also, thanks to psychochild for a few tips. I may have demo'd the concept of shooting pandora's box laser (Revenge) at the savior as soon as the mission starts, but I thought you had to line yourself up to do so. This was the downfall of my last submission, as I fllounded around with no back-up plan trying to aim at a huge statue directly in front of me, costing me almost a whole minute. This submission however, thanks to P-unit like I call him in the hood, I do the simple thing of STANDING still and just shooting the PRE-AIMED laser onto the savior, knocking him down instantly. (D'oh) Also, as you can see, I am the MASTER of gyroblades (Tee hee hee!!!!) and slam them around nicely. It's thanks to P-unit I only slash twice instead of swinging unnecessarily, which saves a bit of time. I invented that gyroblade glitch in the hallway though, so props to me :). Also, I do little things like split / helm breaker some air pads, or DT run with dante at certain points, which are thanks to P-unit's guidance.

• Thanks: Mike Uyama. Hey guys, WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE HAVE A PARAGRAPH THANKING HIM? Lets see, it all started when I was scared of IM'ing the shinobi 3 master over aim, after reading on SDA "To contact me, please do not say 'Hey I ran a speed run!' and expect a response. Pretend your writing an email, and try and include all the info in there. If I don't respond, you have failed." (LOL) After dealing with me for awhile though I'm less afraid of him and feel like he is a true ninja in real life. He does all the work taking in submissions and junk by the way ;).

• Thanks: Zack "Illusions" Kerr and Dennis "Mr Breadman" Rosado, who helped with moral support and keeping me going after failing the first time. Mr Breadman happens to be working on a half life 2 episode 2 run for the 360, so keep an eye out much later on in the future ;).

• Thanks: Cauldrath, Assaffin, Illuminated, Sshplur (THANKS for your amazing mission 2 strat...bustering everything does have its positive points, if it wasn't for him I'd never have a sub 5 min mission 2), and everyone else on the SDA forum I may have forgot who contributed to the DMC4 discussion and different points etc.

• Thanks: Radix for having the awesome site, Nate for dealing with me having to physically mail him my run and then doing the work piecing it together all nice and giving it to all the verifiers quickly, and the rest of the SDA crew.

Ok enough tearful thank you's, onto my comments...

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• Mission 1: Well as you may be able to tell, I've done this tutorial 5000 times. I walk up to Dante shooting him to start off the tutorial, because I pretend I'm shooting the developers for making me play this tutorial even with the damn tutorial mode off. I attempt to get some free orbs off the chairs while Dante's shooting at me, mainly just to kill time and get some extra orbs, since there's no way to speed through the tutorial really. Also, the orb count doesn't count towards your mission total, which sucks because it means I have to make sure I break exactly 8 out of the 10 benches at least while quickly dispatching Dante when the actual fight starts, in order to BARELY be able to afford speed for mission 2. Speed lets you sprint and is obviously an essential skill when it comes to speed-running DMC4, so it's annoying trying to keep those benches in the back of my head while I'm fighting him. I make the tutorial look a little flashy by grabbing Dante out of mid-air when I'm on the buster part and look all cool :). The actual fight goes well, I get 7 seconds slower than my previous run because Dante runs a little wild, but I'm not crying about it. This is a 40 second mission we're talking about, and it's mainly luck to get sub 30 or so, so I'm satisfied with the 29 second intro to my run along with breaking enough benches for speed. Also, you can see that if you time bustering Dante while he's invincible, you can grab him right when he is about to be in the attack mode again if you do it right...takes somewhat perfect timing. I do it a few times here, which makes it look a little glitched or whatever, but I assure you I don't need to cheat in my loveable game :).

• Mission 2: Not much to say here, I buy speed since it's the only move I can afford and makes a huge difference sprinting through the whole level. I buster every scarecrow because I'm a noob and also because it's simply faster than anything else. (Thanks to sshplur for coming up with this, whether or not anyone else would eventually or not...it was him who set the huge segmented time gaps...a 4:28 mission 2??? CRAZY!) In the warehouse in the docks I have to get one Instant Revved slash off on the leg scarecrows before 2 busters to kill them, which is why I actually slash around here. I stand in a spot so when I buster the area effect keeps them from attacking me, since I can't take damage here or mission 1 (Or mission 3 for that matter) to afford specific important moves later in the game. Also I hit all my sprints I think, Berial goes alright, he didn't do fire pillars so SUCK it I'm keeping that 4:44 time. I'll kill myself before I go for a sub 4:40 in an SS, takes too many restarts just cause of level one.

• Mission 3: I hit the little mario platforming part, sprint nicely, own the frosts (Though I get caught for a sec when one goes in the ice shield mode..I ATTEMPT to double jump onto the pillar and streak off it to move a little faster, but as soon as I fail once I give up and just run.) Torture chamber goes well, I hesitate on the spiked ceiling even though I'm AWARE you can streak across the first and last part, I just didn't feel like doing it because I'm so used to just doing it my own way...and honestly it only saves a few seconds vs breaking my run, which tends to happen often. The knights, LOL. I know what your thinking, and no it wasn't my insane plan to dodge that knight that way...you'll see what I mean in the video. Let's just say the no damage in the end made my life easier for later moves.

• Mission 4: Gyroblade Mastaa!! Thanks to Psychochild for the shorter slashes to obtain max speed with them. The first room I sadly don't open in one gyroblade buster (aww oh well) but I do it quick enough. QUIT crying about it I'm not the master of physics and the universe. I think that it's impressive enough how I handle the 2nd gyroblade room to kill everything, nothing else to mention. I take the hallway and purposely skip the first chamber to knock the gyroblade down the hall and bring the other one back to one of the top slots right away. This is a glitch where if you enter a room the first pre-positioned gyroblades always respawn no matter where you left them. This is important because usually I would have to go back and knock BOTH gyroblades into their slots, which takes a lot of time. I do well enough on the knights, well enough knocking the gyroblade down the hall, then pretty much look like the master of angles and gyroblades as I take out EVERY enemy with a few gyroblade busters, leaving it right in front of the open doorway after I hit the switch. For the boss fight I get slashed in the face by a lure. Oh well, I'll make sure I wipe my tears away after my instant Bael stun and destruction of him before he could disappear.

• Mission 5: Straight foward kill enemy mission. I do it well, land nicely on another air pad after grabbing the holy water in the winged talisman area , hit my head on an air pad on the way up, and do a matrix dodge of the frost in the hallway (I don't even know how I didn't get hit.) Oh well, a damageless 3:17 mission 5 isn't half bad right?

• Mission 6: I have some more souls to work with than planned, so I buy all the necessary moves with some left over. I get nailed by a flailing sword-fish (I forgot the official name of them, sue me) which never happened before, and stuns me for a second...but I quickly recover and somehow bring the other 2 up in ONE charge shot TWO (not 3, 2), which has well...never happened before. I taunt the dice as I magically luckily get the numbers I want (hee hee) and charge my sword and just do whatever else I can to pass the time till I get to the end of the dumb puzzle. I get nailed by a flying sword in the beginning of the agnus fight, other than that I destroy him. I now have DT and try and mix it up enough to get the max usage of it throughout the Angel - Creation area, which I do pretty well I imagine, though at some points later in the game I may not use it to its full potential simply because when you run a 2 hour game you start losing your edge a little. I do some splits on the air pads to make the flight up a little faster (Thanks psychochild), but I still get a concussion on the pipe at the end (Shrugs). It's alright I'll mail nero a get well card from the hospital.

• Mission 7: Ahh the scary "Alucard shortcut" level. As you can see, in the VERY beginning, SOMEHOW, I DON'T KNOW HOW BY THE WAY....I miss the holy water which I've never missed before in my entire devil may cry (Not even speed run included) career. I flound for a second attempting to air hike for it...get pissed and think "f*** it", and move on without it. I swear I'll be back for that holy water....I need it for later, but I can deal without it till I have a chance to get it again. It would take too much time to climb up and get it, so I ignore it and keep going...get nailed by a chimera for the first time because I'm still thinking about it, then finally get it together and move on. AHH THE ALUCARD SHORTCUT! Heart is always beating during this part. I swear it's harder than it looks...pretty much I hit the switch to begin the disappearing platform section and then do a mid-air calibur and off screen air-hike to where the door is. The reason it's hard is due to the weird camera angle...usually you have to hit "down - up" (since its back to foward) then slash in mid-air to do calibur, but due to the camera angle I kind of have to do "Up-down" and then slash...and have to do it before the mephistos register on my targetting or it's impossible to do due to auto aim. Also, if I screw up I'd fall down the hole, which is an inevitable fight, which is a run breaker, which makes Alucard crazy and have to restart after all this. I perform it successfully, and later on hit the gyroblade on some unholy impossible angle that knocks it BACKWARDS and makes me waste a few seconds breaking the wall. It's not such a big deal, just pissed me off a lot. You can probably tell I'm pissed since I hesitate and flound around a little during the echidna chase part, which costs another few seconds, but isn't much of a big deal either. Echidna herself gets owned pretty well, so nothing much to say.

• Mission 8: I own the assaults (raptor guys), sprint the wrong way for a second in lapis river, which sends me flying, pisses me off, and wastes a few seconds. And then I run all the way to Credo and pretty much do a perfect fight more or less. Damageless sub 4 min mission 8 isn't bad at all I must say. (And without a holy water =) )

  Note: Something happens with Credo that may have you scratching your head. It's called a "double-stun" I found, where if you DT and spam swords throughout the animation, while bustering Credo, he'll instantly lose his shield after the first boss animation buster, allowing me to quickly do a non dt'd buster if I want right after and guarantee death :).

• Mission 9: The knights cooperate, and BOTH do the ball of death TWICE (how am I so lucky????) The ball of death allows me to instant kill them when I shoot it back. The first time though apparently the knights can live if it's angled 100% wrong, since it only kills one and breaks the others' shields. Oh well, I take care of them fast enough. On the 2nd encounter they do it again (god I'm lucky) and this time it kills them all. I follow up by just embarassing the last one for a very stylish SSS meter finish to getting the key of chronos. I hesitate to get the orbs on this part because it only takes a second and I want to make sure I have enough for a third holy water by a certain point. It's a safety thing, and I don't care if you think I could've done without it :@! I pwn the elevator up to agnus more or less, dodge all the lasers, and then successfully pwn Agnus.

• Mission 10: Unfortunately the Faust (king mephisto guy) goes off screen and I'm unable to grab him into the elevator when he loses his cloak. This costs me some time but it's unavoidable to an extent when he randomly flies that far away, so I shrug it off and expect it at least once through a long SS with mephistos and fausts. I dodge all the lasers successfully, run past the enemies, get mildly owned by the golden knights (Dunno what happened really, cept I just got a mix of them flying around and took a bit to take off their shields.) I mean it's not terrible or anything, I can just do it better. However, Dante begins the fight by nailing me into the wall, and then falls into my endless loop until he dies. All in all I pwnt him.

• Mission 11: Lots of run-breaking elements here. If I miss one of the snatch - orb sections, and gotta redo a switch or do an extra fight...run-breaker. If I screw up on the part where there's one golden knight and the switch for the snatch - orbs...and I don't make it up top within the switch's duration...run-breaker. Ahh just a headache of a level. However I handle it nearly perfectly, even landing my cool little shortcut back to where Sanctus is, that I invented by the way ;). Sanctus gets destroyed, even though I get nervous for a moment where he knocks me back when his shield is off and I think I can't get to him in time...I make it in the nick of time and do enough damage. He never gets his shield up an extra time throughout the whole game. (Proud of that, not so easy ;) )

• Mission 12: Ahh Dante my best friend! Pretty much go shopping and buy all the appropriate moves in the beginning. Then I'm kind of limited to what I can do here, so I try and make the best of it with the mega scarecrows. Dante is more preference here, since there's different ways you can handle things quickly, like the mephistos. I prefer to do charged shot to take off their cloaks, since it's good in general and I kinda dislike gunslinger. Sure it's arguable, but if you really wanna see it done faster doing it the gunslinger way feel free to beat my time (It really doesn't make a significant difference, is what I'm getting at here ;) ) I successfully do the shortcut where the first elevator drops, which is a run-breaker if I don't, so I buy air-hike even though you don't need it just to make sure I'll pull it off. The rest of the run goes as well as it could, I get hit by a laser (GASP! - Stolen from Mike Uyama) but since I have trickster 3 I quickly recover in mid-air and trickster through the rest of them for the most part. (Yea yea psychochild bla bla bla) In the end doesn't hurt my time more than a tiny bit, which I can live with.

• Mission 13: Pretty straightfoward, only challenging part is echidna, who I end up deciding is worth the 2 holy waters, due to her flying around costing plenty of time. I sprint the wrong way in lapis river (Happens a lot doesn't it?) and get nailed by one of the chimeras in the lost woods. Shoot me.

• Mission 14: Yet another run-breaker. (See why DMC4 is difficult to Single Segment yet?) If I get captured by one of those many faults (The annoying blue things that keep appearing) the run is over, due to having to do an extra fight which can cost a minute. I get a LOT of close calls throughout, and you can see me hesitating and playing it safe...as many runs have failed on this level. Oh yeah by the way, remember that holy water I was pissed about in mission 7? Well I told you I'd rescue it, and successfully remember to (something I'm not good at) and grab it before leaving the stage. I pause and screw up sprinting during the tunnel at the end, sorry about that, I think I had to scratch my hair or something and held the wrong direction for a second.

• Mission 15: Blitz's Blitz's Blitz's. These and Dagon make this level nerve-racking to say the least. I do something called Royal Guard cancel where I pretty much punch them and hit royal guard right after to avoid damage from the electricity, which takes off their shields pretty quick. Instead of using glitched real impacts on them (Super-punches you'll see me do soon that do massive damage to bosses) I alternate between rebellion and giglamesh, do a charge 3 gilgamesh punch, then improvise stuff to finish them off. It works well, and saves me the souls for other moves that I can use in general, which I figure is more worth it. I KNOW during the hallway I could've stinger'd out the window to start sprinting. Why didn't I? I forgot, sue me. 3 seconds lost :(. Both blitz's go pretty well, other enemies get owned enough in my opinion, and then Dagon...well. A sub - 10 second kill on Dagon is good to say the least. I randomly taunt during the 2nd blitz part because I wanted to add some DT... in retrospect I see it just looks stupid, but oh well. Overall Mission 15 is very very good in my opinion. Luck induced? Hell yeah it is. Couple that with the 2 sets of knights doing the instant death ball, and you can say this is the luckiest SS you will ever see.

  Note: I hesitate a bit in the goddess statue before the fight. Doesn't cost me time or anything, just wanted to apologize, since I was thinking about a lot of things. I get speed just because I have nothing for anything else and I rather not forget it next stage...even though I cancel all in mission 16. I DON'T KNOW! STOP YELLING AT ME!

• Mission 16: The damn swordfish get me here also. I take upwards of 30 - 40 seconds to kill them all, maybe more, because they don't cooperate and my shotgun feels like it's broken to knock them above the surface. Oh well, I move on and handle the rest of the level well enough, even though I was a little shaken with my health getting low vs the swordfish and no healing items. The rest of the level goes well, I do some helm breakers on the air pads, DON'T get a concussion on the pipe this time, handle the basilisks REALLY well in my opinion, since they are like cheap puppy toys that usually go flying all over the place. When I get to Berial I hesitate to make sure I have the right style and weapon out, for whatever reason. The fight with him goes pretty well, as soon as I get one glitched real impact off on him the fight is over pretty much. Here is where I pause after the fight so I can switch tapes out of my VCR, since for some reason my new VCR stops recording at 2 hours, and I'm paranoid it will do it here.

• Mission 17: I get the fastest time I ever got in my life here. It's pretty much a massive enemy - kill level, which tests my mastery of Dante. Fortunately all my techniques prove awesome, and pandora's box works insanely well during the street fight since many things line up for me (Thank God.) Agnus gets owned more or less, beginning with me sucking at JC'ing him (Hey I didn't say I was GOOD at dmc ;) ), I eventually get to just spam that move with lucifer on him you see me doing a lot, which does tons of consistant damage and allows me to stay mobile. That's pretty much the mission.

• Mission 18: Ahh the savior, and the downfall of my last run. Well this time I stand still (How many times do I have to mention that damn Psychochild?) and instantly knock him over, pwn his blue crystals, and improvise like a madman. I get knocked off him before I finish off his forehead, where I improvise mid-air pandora's box and take out his head without having to climb up his arm again. I contemplated using the devil star there to make sure I took out his forehead, but felt I rather save it in case something went wrong with his chest. When I knock him down during the actual boss fight and get to his chest, nothing goes wrong necessarily...but I do JUST slightly less damage to break the crystal and end the fight. I improvise some mid-air pandora's box, but then figure it will be faster to use a devil star and guarantee a laser hit to finish him, which I do. I nail a 2:36 in the end, which is around 10 seconds shy of my best time ever on the level. Don't ask me how I do it with all these things going wrong, because I have no idea.

• Mission 19: This level is a test of my skill in general as it's just controlling the dice and fighting the main bosses in the game. I do the dice game perfectly of course since it's run-breaking if I don't, use my saved holy water (OK OK PSYCHOCHILD) that I rescued from mission 14 on the first set of knights, since it instant kills them and saves tons of time depending on the death ball or fighting them, and proceed to fight every boss. Most bosses go well, though one annoying one was the rematch with Dagon (The toad) since he swallows me once and disappears TWICE. Oh well, not everything is gonna go perfectly. This is my major mistake of the run I feel when I get swallowed, which isn't really too bad all in all. A few times it looks like I should have been swallowed, but I found that jumping a certain way prevents Dagon from doing so, the way I screwed up when I actually was swallowed. Everyone else gets pwnt more or less, and since there's no way to really speed run bosses with Nero besides owning them, that's all I do.

• Mission 20: Perfect. Nothing less, nothing more. Watch for yourself. I nail the mini-game at the end also this time, for a damageless 2:04. Couldn't have gone any faster unless I had a holy water handy, which wouldn't have sped it up by more than around 10 seconds.

That's it I guess. I just wanted to make an appearance on SDA with a game of the series I love. I proudly stand by my work here, and if someone DOES beat my time, I feel they more or less will have to copy 90% of my strategies and then just get even luckier than me for the most part. I won't be even attempting to improve this run for a long time to come, unless some crazy shortcut or glitch is discovered that I'll have to do. Enjoy the run people.