Broadcast on June 28th 2024. Played using Mesen-S.

This must be the first run I'm submitting that has the AI friend dying off completely and me buying him back. Can't believe it was still a WR. A lot of things went right but a lot of things also went wrong.

• Great start.
• Slow 1-3. Had to play it safe with the beetles and messed up trying to kill some of them too (3 second loss).
• Not optimal 2-1 because of bad RNG with the rock whirlwinds (1 second loss).
• Slow 2-2. Screwed up the golden monster kills and the exit. (3 second loss).
• Slow 2-3. Went for the safety money in the beginning and screwed up after the death skip (1-2 seconds lost).
• Nice 2-4.
• OK 3-1 with CPU also not dying too much.
• Good 3-2 although the CPU did die (again). But I'd rather have him die before the teleportation than after it because that would kill the run (can't pick up the specials at the end).
• Slow 3-3. Got stuck in the trap because I messed up the bomb throw (2-3 second loss).
• Fast 3-4 at the expense of the CPU dying and having to buy him back. The game runs faster without your partner so gained a good 4 seconds there. Unfortunately forgot that I couldn't do the bomb trick to activate the last node beforehand so messed up the exit a bit. A 4 second gain with a 1 second loss from the buyback in the next split.
• Great last levels with the only loss coming from having to buy the CPU back in the 4-1 split.
• Got to use yet another variation of the 4-2 switch room which seems to be the fastest option and saves one special.

All in all there were mistakes that tally up to ~10 seconds probably but with also some great times I probably can't replicate. I think using this route you should be able to get a comfortable sub 19:40 with better execution.