Hey, just putting out what I know:
Back in 2007, there was a playlist of 6 videos on Youtube of a Japanese player who speedran this game (1-player on Normal), but it seems that the videos have been deleted. And at the moment, I can't remember the name of the author.
I remember the run being quite impressive (...but I was pretty noob to the game back then). IIRC, I think it was also no damage, though.
Anyways, this is the forum post I had found it from and the speedrun video that was deleted. From some searching, I've found what appears to be therestofthevideos...that were deleted.
If anyone's able to find a mirror of the run, it may be interesting to see what the run did, and maybe you can also get/learn something out of it.
Edit: Also, on the forum thread I linked to, someone mentioned this:
On hard, Japanese version plays at a faster rate, gives you two lives and one bomb at the start, and has a max bomb capacity of 3.
So, take note that Hard appears to be different in the Japanese version. It may be of interest to run this category.Edit #2: Err whoops, actually just read page 2 of that forum topic and realized he was comparing a Japanese cart to a PAL cart - where the latter is 50FPS and not 60FPS, which is what led the poster to believe the J version was faster.
I also tried comparing Hard between the US and J versions; and at least from the 1st stage, everything appeared to be the same.
So nvm :\
When you were fighting the shoguns, you used Geno to defend before having Mario use his hammer. Why didn't you make Mario have the highest speed (either equipping Zoom shoes on Mario or lowering Geno's speed)? Wouldn't it be faster that way?
Also during the Czar Dragon battle, I noticed that you used an Ice Bomb before using a Power Blast. Why did you do this?