A richter or maria bare run will be faster regardless, for two main reason, the glitch itself takes time as it involve to save and soft reset (thats many thousands frames worth), it also take more time to complete alucard scenario, you get dracula (who has 10'000 hp). Factoring the dialogues in and you get an inherent extra 2min30 to the run (thats what replay mode does skip) If you try to start with richter instead of maria; you will be 32hp and 10 mana, the problem with this is that with only 10 mana you wouldnt be able to do the wingsmash or super jump like we doing in the rejected run. A full level maria... so in maria or richter gameplay, you do get experience and levels, but they arent changing your stats (hp, mana, strenght ect...), the only thing that can happen is increase your HP with hpmaxup But it is very likely that if maria or richter happen to have -1 luck like alucard does in this run, they will also deal 9999dmg, that is possible by simply loading alucard and do the glitch then start new game with maria or richter. But because the soft reset take long, and increase loadings by a lot, it will still not beat a run that just go directly as maria, the bosses still die quick so its unlikely to be faster to have max dmg. (this is an assumption, I could be wrong, but we are within few seconds range at best) Yesterday I was talking to paulo, and there is one thing ive overlooked while making the movie(s), its not important for them, but its important for the glitch capacity to alterate routing and make stuff that would be impossible otherwise. You _have_ to use a save room, but you can glitch your position in the entrance further than the save room, for instance, you could start alucard, switch to maria, go into the marble gallery cdroom, reload alucard and boom, access to marble gallery, this is a scenario that wont make it in a tas here as it wont beat any speed record, it require more soft reset, but it allow for an insanly destructured run where alucard beat no monsters and no bosses, among the possible feats. The botom line is that yes you can alterate your start position with alucard in the entrance, but you cant start near dracula, and we are already in the most optimized position for speedrunning, it does look like arbritary but it happen to be the right place (and the fastest method).