• Emulator used: development version of BizHawk, but syncs just fine with the latest official release
• Game objective: beat Mandora (purple-ish boss) as fast as possible

TAS notes

• The player can shoot optimally once every 9 non-lag frames.
• The game lags surprisingly little, but to prevent it, one can defeat enemies as soon as possible. In some exceptions, kills have to be delayed to prevent explosions causing lag.
• Many enemies always appear in a specific position, but others will depend on the player's position. The most common way this happens is: if the player is in the left half of the screen, enemies will appear on the right, and vice-versa. Sometimes there are three possible outcomes (if the player is on the left, center or right). There is something similar relating to the player's vertical position. Enemies are most often manipulated to appear as close to the player as possible, and at the top of the screen (because we can't easily or always attack backwards). The decision also has to consider lag implications of some enemy formations.
• There are some checkpoints in the game, which are not marked. Sometimes, the respawning position is further ahead in the level than the checkpoint is, which makes deathwarping an efficient way to save time in what is mostly an autoscroller. The player loses all their upgrades when dying, but they are not that important in this game (at least for a TAS).
• After certain amounts of points, the player will earn extra lives. These can be used for additional deathwarps.
• Having all upgrades and collecting one more of them will turn the player into some kind of invincible phoenix. This makes the game easier for human players, but this does not matter at all here. Since it loses nor saves times, I let it happen here for entertainment.
• I moved the ship a little after last shooting the final boss, because otherwise I would die and respawn earlier as if I had not defeated it.
• Memory addresses in the 00FX area contain the bosses' HP.

Possible improvements:

• More deathwarps and/or better places to do them?
• Lag reduction?
• Boss fights?

Thanks:

• lackattack and NESCardinality for playing the game competitively and sharing it with the world!
• The BizHawk team. TASing has never been as easy and pleasant as it is now!