I've been practicing this game for about an hour (well, except playing it for a bit over 20 years ago), after the first 15-20 seconds of the run it seems very random. If I wasn't so awful at it, I might have gotten Rank 1 about 1-2 seconds quicker probably.

First black frame after clicking start: 0.03s [frame 201331] First frame after getting Rank 1: 44.26s [Frame 204002] Exact time: 44.23s [frame count 2671]

Emulator: QuickNES 1.0-WIP 5a38b43