I guess it isn’t very clear. On SDA (Speed Demos Archive) the Timer starts when you start moving the character in the first level and stops when you can’t move the character after killing the final boss.

I couldn’t stop playing the game and improved my record a bit. I had to do about 120-130 attempts and this was nr. 17 of my finished attempts. Thanks to Stanski I didn’t stop that much in Snow field and thanks to Verberos at youtube and his speedrun I’m very close to pass the waterfall level without a stop.

Its not the first time I’m surprised over realising how fast you can beat this game. When I saw Tmonts 11:25 I thought an improvement with 15 seconds where possible but when I practiced like Crazy I realised that even sub 11 minutes where possible and I did 10:55. When I got 10:55 I had a theory that 15-20 seconds fast should not be impossible for me.

And When I got the 10:40 I believed my potentials limit should be somewhere around 10:25. And now I’m here at 10:24! And I belive that in the theory its possible to beat the game under 10 minutes but I’m pretty sure that a sub 10 will never ever happend. Its though to beat the game under 11 minutes. And you got to be a fast shooting bastard if you want to came close to this record.

I think I will keep trying to be even faster. though. I’m not sure If I will ever improve the run even if a multi segment probably is 15 seconds faster. Where you can save most time is killing the waterfall boss and the base 2 boss faster.

Today I rank these Contra speedrun as one of my very best runs. Together with, I guess, Mario 3, Mega Man 3, X, X2. though. Mario 3 took a lot more time to accomplish.

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The run where in general very smooth. Except for the first two room in Base 1 my spread rhythm where good. I did what I can tell two small details that I can call mistakes. My position on the waterfall level where a bit off and a random enemies pop up and shot exactly when I did a jump in snow field. I had to dodge those bullets. I knew a random enemy pop up here in about 1 out of 50. Other than that everything is about getting luck and better spread rhythm. Freddy Andersson

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