Easy trick I discovered. Instead of playing for 6 hours to unlock freeplay (unlimited continues) I set X to auto fire on my controller, turned auto save OFF and put fast forward on in the emulator. If you dont have auto fire you can set rapid fire in an emulator, or use a rapid fire controller and tape the button down, put a weight on it. You dont need fast forward it just speeds the process up. Luckily you dont need to press start to start the game as the rapid pausing would slow everything down. If you dont turn Auto Save off it wont work properly.
Some emulators have a rapid fire setting if you dont have a controller that does it. Alternatively if you are using a PS1 console you can use a third party rapid fire controller and tape the button down, or use Auto Fire if the controller has it.
I am going to try this for Gradius 5 on PS2 , Ikaruga and some others to unlock freeplay, before beating them. You can let this run over night easily.
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