There is loading time between the main level and the boss, which is also cut out.

Basically I count the "game" time from start of fade in to end of fade out, and nothing else. That said, I don't expect you to use the leaderboard timing for your splits... I've been retiming everything manually on my own - and though it's a bit of a pain in the ass, I've found that there are significant load time differences between people's runs that make what I have been doing much more fair than a straight-up RTA run.

Is there no way to make an auto splitter for this game to keep you from having to do this every run?

I appreciate the interest, everyone. Since the community is larger now I am going to release one of my "Timing Files" (every run that I verify gets one) which shows all the counted frames. MyOhMyke, since you just got the Bitch WR I'm going to pick on you here. This video shows exactly the frames that were counted towards your loadless final time.

I make this in a video editor and it allows me to be consistent and precise across all of the communities' runs. If you were making an auto-splitter, the "stop" trigger would be the boss health going to zero, as I use the final keystroke that kills the boss to stop the timer. However, I would wager that it is more difficult to code something that would start and stop precisely on fade in and fade out for the main body of the levels. I looked for another more obvious breakpoint but this is what I settled on after not really being able to find anything more distinct (and at this point I am committed to the method for consistency). The only weird exception to the fading is Coco and Cindy, which for whatever reason does not "fade" in but rather transitions as a blend directly from the loading screen. No other level or boss fight does this.

That's pretty helpful thanks, was unclear as to how the timings worked prior to seeing this thread