I'm curious if this is allowed: reaching a level after sacrificing two lives, quitting the level, then using the password to skip back to the level you just reached with full lives. The reason I ask is that I can probably finish a speedrun with someone like Warthog without losing all 3 lives, but it would end up taking over an hour to complete; not really worth submitting. However, if I use Twister, I can use the insta-kill combo as much as I want for super quick level times, but I will most likely lose a lot of lives in the process. Likewise, sacrificing lives with Thumper or Mr. Grimm would refill my specials without having to wait the entire cooldown time for them to regenerate, also saving time (2 specials take 140-160 seconds to regen, while load times between acquiring the password, quitting, and entering a new game with the password would take about a minute). So I wonder if allowing lots of deaths and just adding extra time for the extra load times that would result from quitting would be a viable strategy that's allowed. It might require less skill than going through a no-death run, but could add lots of entries with other characters besides Axel. What do you think?

I don't believe we've ever even thought about penalizing someone for using the password system to get back into the game after having lost all of their lives. It's always been thought of as time loss to have to go back to the main menu, so that's penalty enough.

If you think you can find a way to go fast with tons of deaths, by all means. As long as you're reaching each level legitimately and you're not skipping anything, I don't see why not. Just seems like strats to me.