Around 32 minutes to beat. This was on the default 3 lives and default difficulty, normal. You can set the lives up to 7 but I wanted a little resistance. This game has limited continues, maybe 6 or 7 but I didnt count. My first full attempt I made it to the semi final stage. On my second full attempt I beat it. My only additional practice was resetting the first stage multiple times until I was able to No death run that stage. Once I got to the second stage I was able to No death run that stage right away and the other stages were sloppy improvisation. I watched my friend Bob Rupples fuck around and work on the game for a little while which also gave me a few ideas, though my play style is much more aggressive, so I was looking more at stage layouts and how to exploit them.
Afterward I spent around an additional 2 hours to No Death run each stage in segments with save states. I would start each stage from the beginning and that was my only practice. For the final stage I decided to go with 1 death only since I found a way to sacrifice a life for a super fast final boss kill. This will all be shown in the tutorial version and explained with commentary, so stay tuned for that. I may also 1 CC this game since I learned it so quickly and maybe go through the hardest difficulty mode.