I finally went back and got the medals I was missing. Better than an infinite life hack, two here that should easily allow you to get the speed run:

Double jump height:
96 07 00 08 50 07 14 00 00 00 =>
96 07 00 08 50 07 28 00 00 00

All enemy forms have one health:
96 07 00 08 e7 07 78 00 00 00 1d 96 07 00 08 ec 07 96 00 00 00 1d 96 07 00 08 ef 07 14 00 00 00 1d =>
96 07 00 08 e7 07 01 00 00 00 1d 96 07 00 08 ec 07 01 00 00 00 1d 96 07 00 08 ef 07 01 00 00 00 1d

Well, that one health thing can help you get an insane speedrun screenshot after you beat the game. I guess that's what it's good for now that damn near everyone who plays at least once or twice a week already have the medals.
But as always, thanks for you hard work Deity. I've been reading for 3 days now and I gave up- I'll never be able to understand all that. I don't even know what the numbers mean, much less how to change them and what math is involved to get, for example, the 78 to 01 like in your one health batch up there.
I'd give anything to know how to do that, not just to hack stuff and keep the knowledge to myself, but to join the ranks of you god-like helpers around here. I feel useless if I can't help people, so yeah.

I didn't sleep so yeah, ha, I just ranted! xD

I'm useless at jumping games, so this was to help me speed through the combat to get to the bad bit (the jumpy bit). Strangely enough I actually managed to complete the game straight, so there may be hope for me.

In terms of what I changed, these were simply changing variables - so they're pretty much the easiest of the easiest. I changed the variables:

• jmpht from 20 to 40
• BOSS1LIFE from 150 to 1
• BOSS2LIFE from 120 to 1
• BOSS3LIFE from 20 to 1

The byte hack breaks down into:
96 - push
07 00 - number of following bytes (0x0007 = 7)
08 50 - 0x08 = look up string 80 (0x50) in the constant pool list (jmpht)
07 14 00 00 00 - 07 = integer 0x00000014 = 20

So change the 0x14 to 0x28 and we have double the jump height.

Are you guys comfortable with hexadecimal numbers (which I signify with the C standard 0x)?

I'm learning how to convert binary / 8 bit / hexadecimal values in math right now haha. Still kind of out of my league, maybe by the end of the semester? lol

I supposed that was the advantage of being taught maths with pre-decimal currency whilst I was at school: it got me used to thinking in bases other than 10 (?/s/d is evil). (No, I'm not old enough to remember pre-decimal currency, it's just our primary school couldn't afford to replace the books.)

Hexadecimal is just counting in base 16. In normal numbers (base 10) we split numbers up on powers of ten, so 1234 has 1 thousand, 2 hundreds, 3 decades and 4 left overs.

In hex its the same, just base 16 is used, so that numbers are split up on powers of 16 (with the extra numbers being marked with a - f). So 3e4 is 3 256ths, E (i.e. 14) 16ths and 4 left overs, so we can convert this to decimal by:
3*256 + 14 * 16 + 4 = 996
(or you could just use the Windows calculator in scientific mode).