I started speedrunning Contra. Here is the first stage in 57.46 seconds. (Sorry for potato quality)

neat. I died twice to get there.

Some things to explain here. In the first stage, you need to pick up the S (spread) and the R (rapid fire). There are three reasons for this, the two simple ones being that R lets you fire faster, and S gives you a spread to hit targets out of reach with other weapon pickups. The third reason is quite complex and has to do with tricking the fire rate limits by manipulating the amount of bullets you have on screen, giving you fast fire rates to kill bosses quickly. Also, the R resets when you pick up a new weapon, so you have to get the second R on the stage, not the first one at the bridge.

This is a very good first stage, but it is not optimal, the world record run is 1.6 seconds faster. I fucked up in two places:

• At the 40 second mark (by my timer), you will see two powerups appear on the screen flying behind me. The top one is R, and it needs to be collected. The bottom one is L, and you need to avoid it because it will replace your S and kill the run. To do this, you shoot away the L in midair, which is quite tricky but I managed it, then you have to shoot down the R, jump the turret and collect the R. When I drop down from the ledge, you can see me turn back a bit before running and jumping to the R. I did that because sometimes you will hit the edge of the bottom ledge and not get a chance to jump before you fall and die, that didn't happen though and I could have saved some time there.

• At the end of the stage when I run up to the door and blow it open, it is possible to land on the last ledge of the stage and shoot it from there, which is slightly faster. The projectiles shooting out of the turrets have a randomly generated pattern though, and they will hit you a vast majority of the time if you go for the ledge. They can hit you if you run straight to the door too, but it has a much higher success rate there.

Also, if you're wondering why the timer doesn't start and stop at the beginning and end of the stage, its because your time starts when you gain control of the player and stops when you lose control.

Nice, pretty good run. I think Level 7 would be an absolute bitch to speedrun well.