Changes

Stage 9 boils down to dealing with hunchbacks (which you can get the same pattern every time if you always play that room the exact same way), and a few flying sections. You can relax a bit in 9-03 as you can't go any faster than the incremental autoscroll allows you to. Just don't fall too far behind!

:*This assumes you get a low axe from Uses Baize's strategy for getting past the axe armor vertical room in 89-02 first try; your run may be slower if you're not lucky.