Almost beat it. I did over 2 hours practice with the 99 lives code and then this was my third full attempt. The first full attempt was prior to using the lives code to practice, so it was short lived. Got to the final boss here and almost beat it. Should have the full run up soon and I will post and edited tutorial version with commentary.
Normally I would use save and load states to practice but I was using an emulator that didnt support them and decided to just use the lives code. Practice is not nearly as thorough but it should go down soon regardless. The issue with using a 99 lives code to practice is that I only beat a boss or hard part one time, so my additional practice came from my failed attempts on the full runs.