How do item drops work in this game? It seems that there would be a way to manipulate them, as I can get the same drops after a new screen loads if I kill the enemies the same way. I've worked a little bit on some manips, but wanted to know more about how the item drops work before I dug into it much more. Thanks!

same as you , i can get almost same everytime on stage 1-2 and on stage 2 if i do same things. reming me a batman a bit, but harder

Drops timer seems to be reset every time any cutscene plays, so it resets as the start of every stage and after you pick up an item. As long as you losing as few frames as possible and killing enemies in the same frames, drops will be the same. It's hard to maintain 50 exp frop from every enemy but you can adapt depending on the drops you see, speed up or slow down a bit accordingly. From my experience if you killing birds at 1-1 (before the chest) slower, there's higher chance of 50 exp drops. 1-2 start can be manipulated for at least 6 50 exp drops. My strat for 1-2 gets 5 shields in the start. Actually I should record and post some videos here until I forgot these strats :)

Awesome! I know the beginning of 2 I can do three 50 drops, and working on keeping that going. The little hopping bird on the ground (2nd enemy in 1-1) seems to be positioned randomly. Maybe skipping it can help keep timing consistent throughout 1-1.

@Skunky48 tried it before, didn't help me much, yeah 1-1 horrible sometimes, slow + low amout of EXP. the best idea what i thinking about it, you can try do it on Emu with rewind, easiest way to understand what you have to do on 1-1. I was too lazy to do it. i found for myself strats for 1-2 and 2-1. pretty sure you can find something, also should be faster if you can get 600 EXP on 1-1 without losing time, and then something like 1000 or more.