Non-Stop Boss Rush strats

https://www.cavestory.org/forums/threads/boss-rush-again.336/

Cave Story Boss Rush Non-Stop mode strats that I used in my 4'24"0 run (https://youtu.be/56vZ0JoMmNk):

• Weapon choice: Spur, Super Missiles, Blade, and Nemesis are your best guns. The reason I also grabbed the Machine Gun was not for the weapon, but rather the Turbocharge equip, which actually makes the Spur charge faster. (Not too many people know about that mechanic, because you normally can never have both items at the same time in the vanilla game.)
NOTE: You can only have one Spur laser on screen at a time. Be careful that you don't try to fire off a second one before the first one has fully dissipated!

In terms of DPS, Super Missiles >>>>> Blade > Nemesis >>>>> Spur.
Super Missiles are by far your strongest weapon, although the limited ammo means that you have to use them strategically rather than spamming them willy-nilly on every boss.
Although the Spur has bad DPS, it's still useful for doing a lot of damage in scenarios where you have enough downtime to charge it (usually between boss rounds).
The Blade does slightly more damage at Level 2 (6 damage x 3 frames) compared to Level 1 (15 damage x 1 frame). I went with Level 2 Blade for this run, though there IS a case to be made for using Level 1 instead because the "piercing" ability of the Level 2 Blade and the fact that the damage is spread out means that not every shot will always do the full 18 damage, whereas the Level 1 Blade is guaranteed to do 15 damage if it connects.
The Nemesis (4 damage x 4 frames) is weird because for some reason, it's much less effective when you're standing at point blank, so keep that in mind. It's also not very good against smaller enemies and bosses, since the bullets travel so fast that they will pass straight through them and you won't get its full damage potential.

• Balrog 1: Defeated in the blink of an eye with the Nemesis.

• Igor: I spawn too far away for the Blade to be effective, so I fire off a couple of Nemesis shots before letting the Blade do the rest of the work.
It would probably have been slightly faster to use a couple of missiles instead of the Nemesis, but I didn't feel like doing all of that weapon swapping. :3

• Balrog 2: Once again, I spawn far away from the boss, so I fire off two opening shots with the missiles before boosting over and finishing it with the Blade. The Blade's hitbox starts slightly behind you when you shoot it, so I'm able to hit Balrog while standing on his head by aiming upwards.
The Level 1 Blade might have been more effective here (see my weapon choices explanation above—I think my Level 2 Blade was only doing 12 damage per shot here), but I don't know if that tradeoff is worth it in the long run.

• Balrog 3 (Balfrog): Defeated in two rounds. Super Missiles are essential for a two-round kill. Balfrog has a pretty low damage cap (90), normally requiring four rounds to defeat (he has 300 HP); however, he only checks his health every 16 frames, so the trick here is to wait a few frames after he opens his mouth before shooting him, so that you do slightly less than 90 damage in the first 16 frame window and then a ton more damage in the next 16 frames. A LOT of my resets were due to missing the timing on this fight and failing the 2-round kill.
Note: If you manage to do enough damage in the first round, you can save some missiles for later by using the Blade in the second round.

• Curly: Once again, I use the fact the the Blade spawns behind you, and stand facing to the right just in front of Curly, which allows me to spam the Blade much faster than if I were facing left. You can actually defeat her this way before she barely even starts moving, but I had a bit of a sloppy fight here.

• Omega: Spur opening shot + Super Missiles makes for a pretty quick fight. You might know that Omega ends his cycle prematurely if you use missiles on his first phase, but luckily for us, that only applies to regular missiles, not Super Missiles. :)

• Toroko+: Spur opening shot + Blade. Toroko has a random delay between each of her actions, and she jumps 50% of the time for those actions, so I lost a lot of runs here due to her jumping out of the way before I could kill her.

• Pooh Black: Super Missiles are the most consistent (and fastest) way to one-cycle it. Stand under it and shoot up!

• Monster X: This boss has to turn around twice before opening up, so rather than worrying about the other enemies in the arena, I chase after the boss so I can get it to turn around sooner. Spur + Blade takes out phase 1 in one cycle (I did it a bit sloppily, though), and Spur + Super Missiles takes out phase 2 in three cycles.
On the final cycle, I swap to Blade in preparation for the next fight.
UPDATE: It has been made aware to me that phase 2 can be two-cycled, by shooting the Spur horizontally (rather than vertically) and using lots of Super Missiles alongside (shoot them directly in its face, rather than from below or from the side). So do that and you'll save a LOT of time. :)
Demo: https://youtu.be/Omh5kDZu7gA

• Balrog 4: Standard full-game speedrun strat, once again abusing the mechanics of the Blade to shoot behind you. The timing for this is pretty tricky, and I've definitely lost a good number of runs to getting chomped by this boss.
For some reason, Balrog jumps a lot sooner in this mod than in the normal game, so I'm not able to defeat him as quickly as I normally can.

• Core: Also very similar to the full-game speedrun strat for this boss (https://youtu.be/uQ40psb9tTg), except I use Spur + Super Missiles (or Spur + Blade) instead of Super Missiles + Blade. Shooting the Core's projectiles for potential missile drops is recommended.
It's possible to three-cycle this boss if you use enough missiles, but I played around with it for a bit and wasn't able to get it with any kind of consistency. If you can manage to pull it off, that would be a pretty significant time save over this run!

• Ironhead: This boss appears after what seems to be a random delay, and seems to move at a random speed as well. You ideally want an early spawn and slow speed, so you can kill it with Spur + Nemesis before it disappears off the right side of the screen. Unfortunately, I got a pretty late spawn with a high speed in this run, but at least I somehow still managed to one-cycle it.

• The Sisters: idk how to do this boss fast lol. This boss killed SOOO MANY runs. It's easily my least favorite fight (because I don't understand this boss LUL).

• Ma Pignon: Here's where Spurbocharge (as they call it) comes in handy. Ma Pignon charges towards you after a few hops, so you ideally want to be on the side of it that's closer to the wall when that happens, so that it doesn't have to charge as far. Unfortunately, I just barely missed the timing and didn't get that. :(
Note that right after Ma Pignon hits the wall, it can be damaged freely, so I take advantage of the downtime before it starts jumping again to sink a ton of damage in with the Spur and Nemesis (Ma Pignon is immune to Blade and Super Missiles, annoyingly).
I feel like this fight could theoretically be done faster using the full-game strat for this boss, i.e. using the Machine Gun and spamming it while jumping in perfect sync with the boss so that you're constantly hitting it even in the air. However, that's *extremely* hard to do well enough so I don't know if it's worth going for it.

• Red Demon: I just went in with the Blade. I missed a few shots so this could've been done slightly faster.

• Misery: Defeated in 5 rounds. Misery has a damage cap for each round, but any damage you do to her while she's spawning her lightning orbs isn't counted towards that damage cap (but still depletes her health nonetheless). The direct hit that I scored on her at the beginning of the second round is probably the biggest reason why this took only 5 rounds instead of 6 or 7.

• The Doctor: Super Missiles would be much faster for this fight, but I was trying to save them up for Heavy Press and Ballos, so I just used the Blade. This boss teleports around randomly, which also killed a good number of runs whenever he decided to teleport across the map several times, preventing me from killing him as quickly. The spawns I got in this run were pretty decent, fortunately.

• Undead Core: Standard full-game speedrun strat at the beginning. The Undead Core opens up more frequently when either Sue or Misery are taken out, so after taking care of the first round, I go ham on Misery with the Blade. The Spur does more damage to the main boss (and more quickly) than Blade spam, so I use that for future rounds.

• Heavy Press: Ideally, I'd want to enter this fight with 30-35 missiles, so I can just dump missiles into this boss like you'd normally do in the full-game speedruns. Unfortunately, I was a few short, so I had to use fewer missiles than I wanted (I need to save 11 for Ballos). Fortunately, the Nemesis is also pretty strong in this fight.
Taking damage off of a Bute to survive getting crushed by the boss after the fight is a pretty old and well-known speedrunning trick. The timing is very lenient (as long as a Bute is there to begin with that you can take damage off of).

• Ballos: I don't have a lot of missiles left, so I pretty much follow exactly the full-game speedrun strat for this boss (aside from the opening Spur shots at the beginning of phases 2 and 4). In other words:
Phase 1: Blade + Nemesis spam (stay on the ground and shoot up to get both to hit). You will also need to move left and then right slightly in order to follow Ballos's movements. Ideally, you should only take a total of 6 damage during this phase.
Phase 2: Spawn it on the left side of the pillar that's to the left of the throne, so that it bounces to the right end of the arena.
Once again we abuse the Blade's mechanics, facing AWAY from Ballos so that both the Blade and Curly's Nemesis can do damage.
You want to stand on the outer edge of Ballos's eye, otherwise you won't get the full damage potential from Curly's Nemesis.
Phase 3: Stand on top of his head, face to the right, spam the button, and pray that you don't get unlucky and an enemy knocks you off of his head.
Phase 4: Standard speedrun strat. I also charge up a Spur opening shot during the phase transition.