Can we get low% added, possibly as a miscellaneous category? I worked on it as a challenge and I think it's interesting Here's a run:
Low% has a few major differences from Any%.
Low% does not collect the Level 1 Wind Ring, so to get speed up it must combine the Level 2 Wind Ring with the Level 1 Earth Ring, severely limiting the projectile options early on as compared to Any%.
Additionally, Low% does not collect the health upgrades in any stage, which makes health a more precious resource in the early game as compared to Any%. (Notably skipping the Stage 2 health up)
Finally, Low% skips the Level 3 Earth Ring, and therefore misses out on the "Blade" super-weapon. The Blade is normally used to dispose of the last 8 bosses very easily. Low% must come up with alternative strategies for these bosses.
I can add this as a Misc category. Also, seems fun to try it as a achievement alone. Any difficulty requirement?
I did it on Normal, not sure what the best way to handle difficulty would be (we don't exactly have a lot of people running any% easy or hard, can't imagine we would have a lot of low% competition on different difficulties)
Here's a Normal-difficulty Low% run that doesn't play through the final stage over and over (19m50s total time):
Low% category created as a Misc. category.
Finally could watch the VOD. When I have some free time available, I'll try to finish the game with this ruleset and add some ideas to try to optimize it.