Excellent job! I would never have been able to do something like that even though I'd played it for years, and I didn't know there was a Harcore mode - at least I didn't have it in my game. I do not hide that I would like to see how the best of the best deal with such a level of difficulty. Would you be willing to take on such a challenge - 100% Speedrun on Hardcore mode? I'm sure that barely a few have ever tried and I doubt any on the renewed / remastered version of this game. I know that I can ask a lot because it takes a lot of time and effort, especially playing at your level of skill. In the future I intend to try it myself, although I do not hide that I am not a speedrunner and I may not have the necessary level of skill to do so - I played it last time at least 15 years ago. I just like the high level of difficulty, both to deal with it and to admire others for make it look easy, and i you are the best in it.
Hey! The saving and loading is a trick we call load warping! Basically, when we enter a map transition (like a level portal) the game naturally wants to put us wherever that leads. It is possible to open the pause menu during these transitions, and load a different save file. Because we're already in a scene transition, the game will prioritize putting us wherever the portal is taking us, but the different profile will be loaded instead! This is why we set up a save early in the Hub after level 4; so we can load that save, enter a portal, then load whatever save has the most progress and then return to the Hub with all of our items. This is most noticeable in level 6, as we skip the run to the exit portal after the last key.
