If anyone is curious, this run is not very optimized. There are two main issues:
1) Picking up strawberries only saves a few frames, but costs about 5 seconds per stage for the bonus scene (Total savings: ~30 seconds)
2) The original runner didn't optimize lag frames very well.
A good example is how the runner attacks the first boss with balloons while it's invuln. This game is very poorly programmed. Most of the time it runs at around 45 FPS. But with as few as 2-3 sprites on screen, including your own projectiles, it'll drop to 40 FPS, or even 30 FPS. As such, by redoing the stages while paying careful attention to lag management, you can cut seconds off each level while still avoiding the bonus stage.
I did a test run of the first two levels, and finished in a total time around 2:01.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxwC37qf9g8
The current run reaches the level select screen at 2:14.
The 13 seconds of savings is about ~10 seconds for skipping the bonus stages, and 3 seconds for optimizing lag.
I estimate the true optimal time for this game is probably 12:10. I would suggest anyone considering this game check Kid Klown in Night Mayor World to see how it handles lag. Given that KKiNMW came out later, there is a good chance it's better optimized. The bosses are also more interesting, featuring new attacks (e.g. the owl boss now has projecile attacks, likely indicating that the game engine was optimized to not suffer the same lag issue).
To this:
...
By the way, I forgot to thank Dark Fulgore for his run, so I edited my original submission.
