Emulator: FCEUX 2.2.2 (with TASeditor)
Had a lovely July 4th and didn't really have much else to do so I, uh, spent the last 8 hours working through the rest of the game.
It's decently optimized, though there's still a lot of work left to do: The prize world code could very well end up different in the final run, fadeout lag needs to be optimized further, I still have to do some testing with some of the tricks I found, and some of the playaround sections could be more entertaining. Thankfully, the game behaves nicely and it shouldn't take more than a day or two to finish up. I'm expecting a final time of around 20:15 after full optimization unless I find something big.
This run gets up through Stage 3 976 frames (00:00:16.27) faster than micro500's WIP, and finishes the game 29,712 frames (08:15.20) faster than CeSaR74's rejected submission. The prize world code entry is all micro500's input since I started working off of his WIP, so if it remains intact by the time I submit the finished run (which is highly likely), then he will be listed as co-author.