World's Hardest Game 4 level 5 any% in

This video is an improvement of my previous pb of 6:05 • (former WR) World's ha...
If you are looking for a run with safer strats, watch that one.
The previous run is sort of an intermezzo pb, only saving 13 seconds. I initially planned to implement more new strats, but decided to focus on full game runs first. Afterwards, once I started focusing on this level, I found many more timesaves, so now there’s still a lot to talk about anyway. (parts of this description were written years ago)
A3: I optimized the ending with a little setup.
B3: One of the more recent improvements. I spent so long just ignoring this section, and then I messed around with the ending a bit and somehow saved time, more than I expected even. And then in the second trip I just manage to pull off the timesave properly instead of dying to it like in my previous video.
B4: The coins on the left have always eluded me, I could never figure out a good way to grab them that’s both consistent and fast. After many iterations, I went with the most stupidly simple option I could think of, and it turned out to work surprisingly well. The enemies also create a bottleneck, so this route is decent enough.
A4: I used to be convinced that this room was maxed. I actually went out of my way to completely reroute the entire thing to possibly squeeze out a slightly faster ending, but then I accidentally found a faster ending without even needing a new route. It’s fairly tight though.
C3: Following the pattern of every room so far, this room also used to just have a small optimization at the very end of it. Instead of waiting for the enemy to move out of the way, I go around it, while at the same time going onto a conveyor that doesn’t push me downward. I also decided to go insane and implement a very hard route for little reason, which makes it possible to squeeze past the enemy on the right side saving a couple frames, which I opted out of during this run.
C4: I had always been disgusted seeing other people speedrun this room and only grabbing coins in horizontal lines, since the way they handle the diamonds and the pattern reset just didn’t feel right. Then I realized the overall idea is straight up faster because of less turning, and I constructed a mashup of my old route and everyone else’s route, and the result works for me.
B2: There was only one possible way to save time here, and it had to be done with one of the very few unintended strats in the game. Going from the diamond on the bottom left to the non-ice platform was seemingly intended to be impossible, since one of the holes on the platform blocks the path. However, while I was learning more about pit mechanics from playing this game a lot, I realized it was definitely possible, though it would probably be pretty precise. First I tried doing a diagonal which was pretty inconsistent, but then I figured I could also line up on the ice beforehand and hold right. This lineup is fairly precise and doesn't make that much sense. With this faster route, the middle left coin had to be accommodated for, which turned out to just barely be possible.
A2: Three segments, two unique ones. Both improved by roughly the same amount in a way. The shorter segment is just the result of a little experimenting with how fast I can go.
The big segment is a bit similar. With a little optimization, it’s possible to not go back and forth as much on the bottom. Everything else after that is pretty much just a continuation of that timesave; you enter the water earlier and try to make the route work from there. This was a lot harder than it seemed though, but luckily I managed to find out that you can enter the key corridor while the enemy was in front of it. After going through many awkward routes, the fastest one happened to be relatively straight forward. Then there were the coins at the end. At first I made a really hard route with a very low chance of success, and then I took a different approach that was just way easier and also faster. I did mess it up slightly in this run, but expertly recovered.
A1: No timesave here obviously, but I did modify the route to shorten the first segment and get to the harder parts of the run faster. The only real change was getting the cutscene key while the platform is going the other way, which can be made easier with multiple setups.
B1: At some point I was considering possible timesaves, and my thoughts landed on this room. It’s essentially a hold right simulator followed by an autoscroller, but not exactly. The left half is done twice as fast as the right half, due to the nature of the platforms. I started to think about how there might be a way to move three tiles at a time, instead of just one. I went to try it and it was totally possible. In fact, even more was possible, but that was quickly getting too difficult. Still, this was a pretty decent timesave, one of the bigger ones in the level. Ironic, seeing as this room was once considered to be practically an autoscroller.